Success may have come late to musician Seasick Steve, but music has always been in his life, he tells SINEAD GLEESON
OME DAYS, Steven Gene Wold – aka Seasick Steve – can’t actually believe his luck. At 70, he has found himself to be the ultimate late-starter, with success knocking on his door when most people are applying for a bus pass. Wold had always been a musician, right along the spectrum from busker to producer, but in an under-the-radar sense.
“I had a few years of wishing I could be somebody, but I started having kids back in the early 1970s so I didn’t have time to fool around with music. But I always played at home, or sometimes I’d join a little band and we’d play bars. I didn’t get to play for people very often.”
As a child, he remembers his father playing boogie woogie piano and making him listen to Nat King Cole and Jelly Roll Morton, but he can vividly remember his first encounter with a guitar. “I tried to learn piano, but always thought it was too big a thing. Every time I left somewhere, I couldn’t drag it behind me. The first time I really saw a guitar was at one of those summer camps in the mountains you go to as a kid, and they had a stage, where they would put on little skits. One of the props was a guitar that had no strings on it. I was fascinated with it. I was five years old and sat there pretending to strum it – I loved it.” He laughs with a wheezy chuckle at the memory, but it’s bittersweet.
He was born in California in 1941. His parents separated when he was small, and after constant clashes with his stepfather, he left home at 13. From train-hopping to couch-surfing, Wold frequently ended up on the streets.
“I never felt homeless though. Back then, that word didn’t even exist. I didn’t sleep in doorways. What I did was travel around, work and play guitar. I know what it’s like to live outside and how hard it is on people.”
He has never forgotten those times and recently, he played in London in aid of a homeless charity that was broadcast live online in a 360-degree format. Those peripatetic experiences have hugely informed his song-writing and he finds himself constantly returning to that nomadic life in his lyrics. “When I write songs, I seem to go back to that time in my head. When you’re young and you wander around, they are the years that form you.”
Is it true that he has lived in 57 different houses. “Sixty-two,” he corrects me, “in the last 29 years . . . and that’s just with my wife now. In the last 30 years, I’ve actually felt very settled down, but I guess I wasn’t.”
One major event that made him take stock – and which ultimately opened the door to a whole new life – was a heart attack he had in 2006. While recovering, he wrote some songs that became a low-key album. A couple of influential UK radio presenters, including the late Charlie Gillett of the BBC, heard it and recommended him to the producers of Later . . . with Jools Holland. He was invited to play the New Year Hootenanny show and has never looked back.
Where did the trademark three-string guitar come from? “I used to play on the street and if you break a string, you don’t stop playing. The options were, stop playing, buy strings and don’t eat, or figure out to play using just four strings and buy some food.”
His new album, You Can't Teach An Old Dog New Tricksfeatures Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones who "brought rock to the album", and the band are playing festivals every weekend until September, followed by two more months of solo touring.
Is he rueful that success didn’t happen sooner? “From a financial point of view, yes, because we’ve struggled over the years. We raised five boys and we never had anything. On the other hand, if I had made it 35 years ago, and been given a bunch of money, I’m pretty sure I would have been an idiot and blown it all.”
He has been married to his Norwegian wife for nearly 30 years, and they once lived in Washington state, because it reminded her of home.There, he got to know Kurt Cobain, who he describes as “a nice fella”.
Two of his sons tour with him, as his manager and guitar technician respectively. Touring may be a young man’s game but he adores it. “Physically, it’s hard, but I love to play, and I won’t get another chance like this again. You put up with the travelling so that you can do the good stuff, which is get up on stage. I played to 65-70,000 people at the Isle of Wight festival, so that really is a dream come true, especially as I didn’t have a job six years ago, never mind a pension . . .”
Song-writing is a constant, and he writes all the time, admitting he has more songs in him than time left to record them all.
“Music was always my friend, and you don’t give up your friends. I never stopped playing, and if I had, nothing would have happened for me.”
Seasick Steve plays Marlay Park with Rodrigo y Gabriela and Gemma Hayes on Sunday, July 31st