Our next featured artist for the "Chats With the Cats" series is bassist, Steve Wood.
Family influences played a strong role in Steve's early development, "My dad played some piano as a hobby. He got me into classical music. Also my older brother started playing guitar and turned me on to jazz and funk. I started playing bass just before I turned 12. For Christmas that year my parents asked my brother who's records they should get me. He told them Charles Mingus and Ron Carter so that's who I first started checking out. My high school in Oak Park had a pretty extensive music program run by a guy named Dr. Ron Holleman. I guess fighting to keep that program going took a lot out of him and he could have a short fuse at times. I know a lot of my fellow alumni don't have the best memories of him. But looking back on it now I can't imagine the sacrifice and dedication it took him. In any case, there was a huge music scene at my high school and I'm pretty sure that had a lot to do with Dr. Holleman."
From as far back as he can remember, Steve knew that the arts were his true calling.
"Even before I started playing music, I just knew I had to go into the arts. I don't really know what that's about but it always seemed to me that it was the only way I was gonna make it. After I started playing music whenever someone suggested I should have 'something to fall back on' it only made me more committed to music. I was taking private lessons with a woman named Judith Hanna. She told me that sometimes at the college level teachers won't push a student as hard if he/she is an Education major. Performance majors will get pushed harder because they don't have a backup plan. So I majored in Performance."
"After college I tried living in Europe but I think I went about it wrong and I wouldn't say it worked out that great. That said, my main goal was to find an environment where I was free to concentrate on things that interested me and I definitely found it there. Since moving to New York I find I'm always trying to 'crash course' someone else's repertoire. It's usually pretty close to something I'm into anyway but I sometimes feel it has this effect of pulling me off course however incrementally. But then it's also part of the constant challenge that is New York, that forces us to grow continuously as musicians and as people.
During the shutdown and pandemic, Steve has been keeping a variety of music options on his playlist from easy listening to West coast rap. He's also been working on releasing his first album. "Since the pandemic I've been checking out a lot of ambient music. It started after watching a documentary about Brian Eno. Then listening to his stuff on YouTube led me to Hiroshi Yoshimura. I'm still trying to work my way through it all. Also I've been listening a lot to this rapper from San Francisco named Larry June."
"I will hopefully have my very first album up on the internet and available for listeners by the end of this year. I've been dragging my feet on this forever so I don't want to commit to a release date at the moment but I should be able to get it done soon. The title of the album is Black Leather Gloves and features my arrangements of music from these trippy Italian slasher movies from the 70s (known to film nerds as giallo)."
"I just try to do a little good each day which honestly was what I was trying to do before quarantine. Time moves fast to me. There's a Bukowski poem called The Days Run Like Wild Horses Over The Hills. That's exactly how I feel."
"I would sub for Rob Duguay at the Turnmill from before Keyed Up got involved. Then I think after a year or two Keyed Up! started matching what the venue was paying. I'm pretty sure it's the only time I've experienced the pay on a gig doubling. I also did the Brightside Tavern in Jersey City a couple times. Both of those gigs are jam sessions that are really well run. They definitely feel like they're promoting the culture besides getting some extra bread to whoever might be in the house band. I don't like that word 'preserving'. Keyed Up! seems like it's been able to provide support in a way that breathes life into the scene.”