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Journeyman
Flag music veteran Steve Reynolds on craft, composition and being the consummate perfectionist
By Dean Bonzani
Published on 03/11/2010
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Flagstaff’s own guitarist and troubadour extraordinaire Steve Reynolds with his trusty pooch Edie, his traveling companion and frequent on-stage guest. Photo by Josh Biggs.
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Steve Reynolds is a local guitar legend. Before he made his home in Flagstaff, he’d play here on many of the countless state-hopping tours he’s been doing since he began his life as a singer/guitarist in the late ’60s. His latest album is the all-instrumental Shut Up & Play, and features stunning fingerstyle renditions of Tommy Emmanuel compositions and carefully chosen and expertly executed covers of daunting guitar pieces. Dog lover, craftsman, avid mountain biker and winner of the 2003 Telluride Acoustic Blues Competition, Steve really needs no introduction, so he’ll barely get one here. We talked shop over delicious home-brewed espresso recently, while his constant companion, Edie, reclined demurely at our feet.
Steve Reynolds will perform at Altitudes Bar and Grill, 2 S. Beaver, Fri, March 11 and Sat, March 12, from 7–10 p.m. To know more, visit www.stevedreynolds.com or call 214-8218. For a little more background and opinion on Mr. Reynolds, see the Editor's Head in the column section.
Steve Reynolds: So, I’m trying to write for the new CD and it’s running me through the wringer. That’s what I said about the all-guitar album (Shut Up & Play), because I wanted to get the songs as close as I could to perfect. And I had some cool arrangements from years ago, like “The Sad Pig Dance” and “Lady Madonna,” that I just wanted to put down. A lot of people do want an album that’s not a lot of vocals—it’s just mellow and they can still work at the computer, too. So I’m glad I got it off my chest, but to register all those songs, man—it’s like $95 per song now for covers from the Harry Fox Agency.
I want to be legal about it and everything, but it cost me as much to register 13 cover songs as it did to print a thousand CDs. So I’m going, “Well, there’s some motivation to write some stuff!” You know, I’ll write 10 songs and I like two of ‘em.
And other people might really like ‘em.
Dean Bonzani: You end up being your own worst critic.
SR: I agree. I run them by my favorite people with artistic taste.
DB: Your test audience.
SR: My litmus people. But it comes downs to what you like. You gotta live with the song. I mean, I’m sure that Ray Wiley Hubbard regrets writing “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother” as much as Jerry Jeff regrets “Mr. Bojangles.” But that’s what put him on the map. Like I said to George Nardo when we were doing the first album, “This stupid song … ‘There’s something wrong with everything, and all your wealth won’t change a thing, with all the help your friends can bring, there’s something wrong with everything.’ That’ll probably be the one that gets noticed.” He goes, “Well, we can hope it will be. If any one gets noticed.”
DB: He produced Too Much Coffee?
SR: He recorded and co-produced it. I did it in Prescott. Great guy, great ears. Chris Donelly filled those shoes for me fine for Downriver. And he mastered Shut Up & Play. Before he mastered that, like my brother said, “I used to like our mixes!” We had good mixes until Chris used (in German accent) Brainworx from Deutschland. Not only is he good with all the technical stuff, he’s a good artist. If I’m not with someone who has ears at least as good as mine in the studio, I’m not happy. That’s why I don’t do these things in my house. The people who do it in home studios almost never put much out. My friends didn’t, anyway, because they were always re-doing it for free. “I can do that better.” They were working on a song that was seven years old. They started recording it seven years ago, they’re on take 300,000. Having a deadline’s really good for me. That’s when I get stuff out, when I have a deadline money-wise or time-wise. I spend money on my CDs and I think it shows.
DB: Shut Up & Play has very intricate guitar work.
SR: I really like learning hard guitar stuff. Now my challenge is to work my new guitar knowledge into my next set of originals. I’ve got three or four new ones, and I really like a couple of them. What’s hard is, I think I have good taste in songs. So my problem with good taste is, since I’ve been playing pretty classy songs most of my life …
DB: You’ve set the bar kind of high.
SR: Yeah, and when I come up with something that’s just OK, for me, I just don’t want to do it. I play it for a crowd, and if I don’t see a cool reaction—I give it a few months—I jettison the thing. And I’ll do that before I record. Don’t have brand new songs going into the studio and wonder how they’ll turn out. Time prove them. Road test them. Because then they get honed. Thank God I’ve got a regular road schedule.
DB: You cover quite a range of styles. Ballads, blues, English folk, funny songs …
SR: I’m interested in fun songs that either really grab you emotionally or are really funny and entertain you. I like both ends of that spectrum. That’s why I love Steve Goodman, and I love Richard Thompson. They’ll make you laugh and cry during the same show. They will wring you out to dry.
I think two things are important when people go to restaurants or bars. One is to see a craftsman at work. If you’re good at your craft—and by that I mean a good singer or a good guitar player—or hopefully both, people like to watch that. My instrumentals, I don’t do a whole set of them, I just sprinkle them through, but they’re hard arrangements and they’re good arrangements, and I can barely pull some of them off. I have to keep them very practiced up. But people love a really nicely delivered guitar piece that’s well thought out. It’s like watching a guy make a guitar. When they shave the braces, they go so fast. You can tell they’ve done it a million times. And that’s what I’ve done a million times, is play in front of people. I’ve been doing this since the late ’60s. And the other thing is to be entertained by a fun story or a joke.
DB: Do you spend a lot of time on the road?
SR: I’m traveling a lot now in the winters. In the summer, I’m glued to a few in-town gigs like Altitudes and Jotini’s, but mainly I’m over there in Williams, doing six shifts a week at Cruiser’s. Two lunches and four nights a week. So I’m doing two doubles and four nights. Then, just to get warmed up, I do a Friday somewhere else. Because I come in Saturday and have to do a double. I’m singing for six and a half hours. That’s why I’m glad I put out the instrumental CD, because now I’ve got so many instrumentals now that it really saves my voice. Then, in winter, I’m in Tucson a lot, and Silver City, New Mexico. Silver City gigs aren’t great, but the scenery is, and it’s just wonderful for hiking or biking. I do three or four places in Tucson, two or three in Phoenix.
DB: And you haven’t got tired of it?
SR: I still like it. I’m a journeyman guitar player—I gave up on being a star a long time ago. And I think that people still like to see a craftsman at work. When I play for all the Europeans in the summer, it’s true—it doesn’t matter which country they’re from—most of them speak at least some English, not all of them—but they buy CDs like crazy. Everybody wants a souvenir. The Europeans are a great audience. They listen, they applaud, they buy CDs and it makes me feel good. And I’ve been invited to a few festivals over there. I’ll probably go next summer, do some bluesy or guitar tech festivals over there.
DB: Summer’s your best season?
SR: I love summer. And as long as people keep going to the Canyon, I’ll be doing pretty well. Even though you don’t get rich, it’s worth doing music for a living. It’s the best job I could ever hope for. Traveling with my dog and my bike … I’m proud that I’ve been able to do it for so long. And I still think that live music is one of the best things going.
To see recent Flag Live cover story features, click here.
Additional photos for this story:
Photo by Josh Biggs.
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Full circle: Reynolds with Edie in March 2010. Photo courtesy of Steve Reynolds.
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“Always travel with a good dog.” Reynolds heads to Colorado from Michigan sometime in the mid-’70s with his dog Nanook of the Rockies and his ’58 Volkswagen Beetle names Col. Klink. Photo courtesy of Steve Reynolds.
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Reynolds (left) performs in Michigan with folk band Group W Bench. Reynolds’ early music mentor, Bob Kuhns, plays over his shoulder. Kuhns gave Reynolds his first guitar fingerpicking lessons. Photo courtesy of Steve Reynolds.
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Reynolds playing Scottsdale’s McDowell Mountain Music Festival in 2008 along with Flagstaff bassist Rich Neville. They shared the bill with Gov’t Mule and the Subdudes. Photo courtesy of Steve Reynolds.
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