Seasick Steve

Steven Gene Wold (né Leach; March 19, 1951), commonly known as Seasick Steve, is an American blues musician. He plays mostly personalized guitars and sings, usually about his early life doing casual work. From the late 1960s, he worked as a musician and recording engineer in the US and Europe; he played bass in Shanti and was in a disco band called Crystal Grass as well as other bands. He also pursued other works, including producing an album for Modest Mouse. He achieved his breakthrough, initially in the UK, at the end of 2006 when he appeared on Jools Holland's annual Hootenanny as Seasick Steve. He has since released a number of commercially successful albums, including I Started Out with Nothin and I Still Got Most of It Left, Man from Another Time, and Sonic Soul Surfer. The publicity about Wold at the time he first became successful in Britain, in the mid-2000s, suggested that he was then aged in his sixties, and emphasised his past as a hobo in Tennessee and Mississippi. In a 2008 interview in Memphis, Wold was quoted as stating: "I came down here as a young feller looking for the blues, but I didn't find them... Wasn't in Clarksdale but an hour before a big, old redneck policeman ran me right out of town again. That was how it was back then, and there were some places hereabouts you just didn't go if you were a hobo." By his own account, he would travel long distances by hopping freight trains, looking for work as a farm laborer or in other seasonal jobs. He claimed that he had worked at a carnival, as a cowboy and as a migrant worker. In a 2007 interview, he said: "I rode them [freight trains] for 14 years off and on..", adding "I've been married to this one girl for 25 years, so I’m a little bit settled down now..." In 2016, an unauthorized biography by Matthew Wright presented evidence that parts of Wold's backstory may have been exaggerated. Wright drew on interviews with Wold's estranged eldest son as well as previously published material covering his career in music since the late 1960s, and commented that Wold was "retiring about facts of his own life". Steve Wold was born in Oakland, California, as Steven Gene Leach, though his biographer suggests that he may have been adopted as a baby. He took the surname Wold in the early 1980s, from that of his second wife. In 2000, he gave his age as 50, though later publicity implied that he was older. Official birth records confirm his birth year as 1951. When he was four years old, his parents split up and he continued to live with his mother. He claimed that as a child he was taught to play the guitar by K. C. Douglas, who worked at his grandfather's garage, and later realised that he had been taught the blues. Douglas wrote the song "Mercury Blues" and had played with Tommy Johnson in the early 1940s. His mother remarried, to a Korean War veteran who Wold characterized as abusive, and, at the age of about 13, Wold claimed that he left home following a violent confrontation with his stepfather. Wold claimed to have lived rough and on the road in Tennessee, Mississippi and elsewhere, until at least the late 1960s. However, Wright's biography claims that Wold lived in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, for some time from 1965. He attended the Monterey Pop Festival, regularly saw bands such as The Grateful Dead perform in the area, and became acquainted with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. In about 1969, he toured clubs in the region as a backing musician with Lightnin' Hopkins. In 1970, as Steve Leach, he became the bass player in an innovative band, Shanti, who performed a fusion of Indian and rock music. Other band members included Zakir Hussain and Aashish Khan, and all the band members were adherents of Transcendental Meditation. In liner notes for a 2015 reissue of Shanti's only album, writer Richie Unterberger states that "bassist Steve Leach has reinvented himself as the blues musician Seasick Steve", and his participation in Shanti was confirmed by Seattle band the Tremens. He left California in 1972 and moved to Paris, France, where he busked in the Métro. He occasionally returned to California where he married Victoria Johnson in 1974; they had two sons together but later divorced. Wold also spent time in the 1970s in Hawaii, and worked as a session musician and studio engineer, as well as in occasional manual jobs. He has claimed to have played with other musicians including Son House, John Lee Hooker, Albert King, and Joni Mitchell around this time. In 1976, he worked with French producer Lee Hallyday and fronted the disco group Crystal Grass. Leach appeared on two Crystal Grass albums released by Philips Records in France, Dance Up a Storm and Ocean Potion, the latter credited to Steve Leach with the Crystal Grass Orchestra. The group also released several singles including "You Can Be What You Dream". He also sang on the first album released by Mike Love's side project Celebration, a collaboration with members of the Paris-based band King Harvest. Around 1980, Steve Leach returned to Europe. In 1982, he appeared as singer and guitarist on an album, Women and Sports, by the band Clean, Athletic & Talented (C.A.T.), co-writing their single "I Love To Touch Young Girls". He met Elisabeth Wold in a blues bar in Oslo, Norway, and adopted her surname after she became his second wife. For a time in the early 1980s, he lived in London, and then with Elisabeth in Skelmersdale, England, which biographer Wright notes is the location of a major Transcendental Meditation movement center. He later claimed to have run a recording studio in Europe before selling it. After returning to the US, he trained as a paramedic, before moving with his wife and their three sons from Nashville, Tennessee, to Olympia, near Seattle, in 1991. The move was partly motivated by Elisabeth Wold's desire to live in an area reminiscent of her native Norway, but also reflected the area's developing indie music scene. In Olympia, Wold established his own guitar store and recording studio, Moon Music. He was acquainted with Kurt Cobain, and began producing records by local musicians, including Kathleen Hanna and Fitz of Depression. Wold produced the 1996 debut album by Modest Mouse, This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About, and recordings by the band P.E.Z. on which he played guitar. He also worked closely with a local band, the Tremens, and with them started to form a band, Dr Steel and the Forty-nines, with himself as singer and lead guitarist, but this fell through. A 2001 interview with the Tremens described Wold as a "Pacific Northwest music icon... who has put his recording stamp on some of the most influential bands to come out of Puget Sound." In 2001, Wold closed Moon Music, after being involved in up to 50 albums made there. He said at the time: "I'm finished with America. I'm 50 years old now, and I've been watching greed play the main stage since I was a teenager. I just can't stand it anymore." With his wife and their sons, he moved to Notodden in Norway, home of the Notodden Blues Festival, and set up a studio, Juke Joint, with vintage equipment that he had acquired over the years. After Wold became ill on a boat trip between Norway and Denmark, he adopted the name "Seasick Steve" as a parallel to that of blues musician Homesick James, and started to form a band, Seasick Steve and the Level Devils. Wold released his first album, entitled Cheap, recorded in 2004 with the Level Devils as his rhythm section, with Jo Husmo on stand-up bass and Kai Christoffersen on drums. His debut solo album, Dog House Music was released by Bronzerat Records on 26 November 2006, after he was championed by an old friend, Joe Cushley, DJ on the Balling The Jack blues show on London radio station Resonance FM. Wold made his first UK television appearance on Jools Holland's annual Hootenanny BBC TV show on New Year's Eve 2006. He performed a live rendition of "Dog House Boogie" on the "Three String Trance