One of America's most consistently excellent singer/ songwriters and leader of legendary cult bands THE DREAM SYNDICATE and now THE MIRACLE THREE, STEVE WYNN has a back catalogue that most performers would give their right arm and trade significant family members for.
Brilliantly, unlike many of his LA contemporaries from the early 1980s, Steve has maintained a prolific and quailty-first output ever since making his first post-Syndicate solo album "Kerosene Man" in 1990. His fiercely good new album "...Tick...Tick...Tick" was released by renowned German label Blue Rose last Autumn and W&H were fortunate enough to be front-of-stage at an incendiary show Steve performed with THE MIRACLE THREE at the end of November.
Afterwards, Steve very kindly agreed to an e-mail Q&A and we can now proudly present his thoughts on recording in the mysterious Arizonan landscape, why the best songs are usually the ones that come quickly and why touring with Ryan Adams is to be recommended.
W&H: Steve, you've just made three terrific albums in a row with Craig (Schumacher) in Tucson which are now being referred to as the "Desert Trilogy". Obviously the results speak for themselves, but why do you feel Tucson is aspecial place for you to make music? Is the vibe of the place especially important to you?
Steve: "Well, it's pretty much the antithesis to my life in New York. There's really no hurry to do anything. Time moves at it's own pace. Efficiency? You can forget about it. If you're going to spend two hours of your studio day drinking coffee and talking about some weird old guitar, then that's the way it's going to be. Somebody drops by the studio and everything stops while you shoot the shit. And somehow, I end up doing more, getting more down and liking the results more in this environment. I guess it's just allowing yourself to be distracted that makes you all the more focused when the tape is actually rolling. Or maybe it's just the Mexican food."
W&H: I'm guessing here, but a lot of "...Tick...Tick...Tick..." sounds very live and aggressive - particularly songs like "Wired", "Killing Me" and "Wild Mercury". Was most of the album tracked live with everyone playing in the same room? The energy and aggression would suggest so.
Steve: "Yeah, but that's the way I've always recorded. I can only think of a handful of songs that I've done in the last 10 years that weren't recorded as a band. Sure, you replace something here and there but, for the most part, what you hear is what we did. I really like listening to music that captures a particular moment and that's hard when the moment is actually a collection of many different moments. I like the choices people make when they have to react immediately to what's around them. No second chance. It is what it is. "
W&H: Having seen you live recently, I was really impressed by the way you play with Jason (Victor). There's a real intuitive feel in the way you play guitar together, which - if I may be so bold - does remind me a little of the intensity you had playing with both Karl and Paul in the Dream Syndicate, as well as making me think of people like Verlaine and Lloyd. You played a number of great songs from your early catalogue when I saw you too. How does it feel to play the Syndicate's songs with a different, but equally great group these days?
Steve: "The nice thing about the Syndicate songs is that they are simple and open-ended enough to allow anybody to put their own imprint on them. I think that's why I enjoy covering Dylan songs, for example. Not much to them--three or four chords. But what you bring to those three or four chords says a lot about your style and choices. And, yes, I really enjoy playing with Jason. We have a very easy, unspoken chemistry on stage together and every night is different."
W&H: You tend to get referred to in the press as either part of the
'influential Paisley Underground scene' or even as a 'Godfather' of
Americana along with the likes of Paul Westerberg, Jeff Tweedy etc these days. Personally, I think you're all very different individual artists in your own right, but what do you feel about tags such as these? Are they a hindrance or a help to you?
Steve: "I guess we were all doing a type of music that most people weren't doing back in the 80s. The common wisdom was that people wanted to hear overproduced, neatly manicured little synthesizer ditties and the three of us (and others as well) ignored that common wisdom and made a idiosynchratic mess that pretty much assured that most people wouldn't get it or wouldn't care. But when you take that kind of chance, that means that the people who DO care are going to care a LOT. Anyway, the nice bonus of being a godfather of this or an influence on that is that people seem to trust that you know what you're doing. And that's a very useful thing."
W&H: This is possibly a difficult one to answer objectively, but how do you feel you are viewed as an artist in the States these days? You've got a good European following and I guess being with an excellent European label (Blue Rose) helps to maintain your profile as well as touring regularly, while both your solo work and the DS catalogue is highly recommended critically over here. Do you ever feel you're more popular overseas than back home?
Steve: "That certainly was the case for most of the 90s. I found that it was more fun to tour Europe where people knew and loved my music and where everything was still new and exotic for me. If I had to choose between playing a packed club in Rome, eating great pasta and walking under a late night full moon in a gorgeous piazza or hanging out in Iowa City and drinking Miller, I guess it would have been the former."
"And even though this made sense, it also really hurt my popularity in the States. But I made an effort to change that in the last five years, touring a lot in the States and now I think that I have more fans here than anywhere? And you know what? Suddenly Iowa City seems pretty exotic."
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W&H: Still on the subject of touring for a while, I can personally vouch for how great the Liverpool show was, but have there been any particularly great shows for you on the current tour? Any that really stood out for you?
Steve: "It was a really good tour and, thankfully, most shows were better attended than that Liverpool show. But it was a really fun night. I liked the opening bands and we got a chance to try out songs that we normally wouldn't play. That's why I sometimes like the badly attended shows the most even though I'd be happy if they never happened, of course. We had really great shows in Belgrade, London, Brussels, Copenhagen, Hamburg and.....well, most of the tour was really good."
W&H: One final one in this area: you toured with Ryan Adams a while back, didn't you? How did that go and what did you make of Ryan himself?
Steve: "That was a blast. I actually love being in the support slot for a bigger band. It brings out the competive edge in me and I like trying to win over new fans. And we really made a lot of fans on that tour. His audience really seemed to get the music that we were making and the response was good. And Ryan watched our set most nights, sold merch for us one night and was, as you could guess, always entertaining. I wish the tour had been longer. Although I may have ended up in a hospital."
W&H: I mentioned Jason earlier, but The Miracle 3 is a really tight, exciting unit as a whole and everyone seems to contribute a lot to the overall sound. Do you feel that playing with Jason, Linda and Dave (and now Erik) with a group identity has changed the way you write songs? To be more specific, do you feel you now write songs more with the band in mind?
Steve: "I definitely wrote the songs on "...tick...tick...tick" with this band in mind. We had really developed our own sound and style and intensity in four years of touring and it made sense to capture that on record. In the past, I've asked musicians to bend to my songs. This time I bent to the musicians. Immediate, hard, fast, loud, raw, loose, improvisational--all of those things work for this band and worked for this record. But I'm sure the next one will be different. That's just the way I usually work."
W&H: "...Tick...Tick...Tick.." has lots of the loud, garage-y excitement many of us love about your work, but as always it's challenging and thought-provoking. A song like "The Deep End", for example, sounds quite complex and somehow dreamy AND claustrophobic all at once. How did that one come about?
Steve: "Linda (Pitmon - drums) and I wrote that together around 11 in the morning in a studio in Spain a couple of years ago while we were writing and recording a side project (that should be out sometime this year under the name Smack Dab). We were in a hazy, unfocused, lazy state, typical for Andalucian mornings and pretty much wrote and recorded the song in 15 minutes. It just fit the mood of the morning. And it's not like I'm boasting when I say we wrote it that quickly--the truth is that the good songs come most quickly and the bad ones take forever."
W&H: "No Tomorrow" is a cool way to conclude the album, too. It has two quite distinct sections that segue together really well and allows the band to really cut loose. It has a real, 'throw all the inhibitions away' feel to the lyric, which of course culminates with the line "I want to love you like there's no tomorrow." Was this one written with the intention of being the album's grand finale?
Steve: "Yeah, this one was always meant to be the last song. And it was always meant to have the two parts together. I like the way that songs in the 70s always had multiple parts. It was like everyone was trying to write a rock opera in every song. Everyone. It's crazy when you go back now and realize that. Very few people do it now. And the first part is pretty loose and unstructured and that made it a fun song to do in the studio. Each performance was different and we just chose the one that fit with the record."
W&H: Last question for now. After the European tour and Christmas of course, what's next for Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3 and will you be returning to Tucson to record again?
Steve: "Probably not. I mean, it's hard NOT to go there. I love the city and the studio and Craig Schumacher is a great collaborater but I always get inspired by change and I guess it's time for a change. But that will come after another year of touring so it's hard to say what will happen."
(www.stevewynn.net)
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