The Steph Green Interview
When did you first begin to fall in love with music, more specifically the guitar? Was this something that was relevant growing up in your household?
One of my earliest memories of falling in love with music: my Aunt Rosemary coming to visit from Montreal with her CDs, and dancing around the living room to them with her -- The Clash, The Cramps, The Ramones, Joan Jett. I think the early introduction to punk rock probably had an influence on my impressionable little 7-year old bean. As far as guitar goes, I'm actually kind of ambivalent about it. I've definitely felt more of an aptitude for, and connection to, other instruments and aspects of making music. I really badly wanted to play electric guitar as a kid, my folks weren't into that, so I didn't get one. At one point I somehow managed to get one from my older brother's friend that I had for a couple of weeks, but had to give it back. I was actively discouraged from playing, and told I wouldn't be able to learn anyway, because I have small hands. As ridiculous as that sounds, I actually walked around believing playing guitar was out of reach for me for years. I came back to it as an adult over a decade after the initial interest was squashed. By then I had already been playing banjo and a bit of dobro, had borne witness to plenty of tiny-handed people playing guitar, and was always around other musicians and their guitars. So, inevitably someone (in this case, Riley Downing) showed me a few chords, and that's when I realized guitar was feasible and started playing it. So, thanks to Riley, wherever he is.
What would you and your friends do for fun growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your very first concert? When did you realize you wanted to spend your time pursuing music?
Me and my friends were into riding our bikes around without any clear objective and other similar, standard childhood activities. Along with the abovementioned early influences, I became really obsessed with Nirvana during the entire age of 10. As a teenager I loved the Velvet Underground, Pixies, Mazzy Star, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Talking Heads, Modest Mouse. I also liked punk music -- The Germs, Bikini Kill, The Buzzcocks. I definitely related to the outsider perspective. The idea of DIY and the message that you don't need to ask permission, have lots of money, or perform at an elite level to do something or participate in making art made a lifelong impression on me. I liked folk music, too -- 60s Bob Dylan and Melanie Safka. When I was a little older in my late teens I stumbled upon "Engine 143" by The Carter Family on the internet, and I had never heard anything like it. It was so sad, eerie, and very moving. I felt a really strong and inexplicable connection to it. I actually wept! Wept in the glow of the desktop monitor light. That was my gateway to roots music, which I spent a lot of time digging around, seeking out. I started listening to Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Bessie Smith, compilations of old gospel recordings, and 60s soul, R&B, and girl groups. I don't remember a specific first concert. It couldn't have been that great. I realized I wanted to spend my time pursuing music around 13 years ago, after I had been teaching myself banjo for a year or two.
I was living in Toronto, and I met some street musicians in Kensington Market who lived in New Orleans and encouraged me to give busking a try, so I did. I had been pretty shy and private about playing up to that point and I didn't know any other young people my age who were into the music I was learning, which back then was a lot of old-time, early country, and blues/jug band music. Styles that are an accessible entry point if you don't have any musical background, or much money -- you don't have to be able to afford a bunch of gear or pay for a rehearsal space, you can just get a cheap banjo or acoustic guitar and learn three chords and get started. After meeting those buskers and getting the tiniest iota of encouragement, I started biking down to Kensington Market and other parts of the city and putting out my case while I practiced. I had been working as a waitress and bartender up to that point, and I quickly started making about the same amount of money busking as I would at a restaurant shift. I thought, "I can be miserable running around serving people and dealing with assholes, or I can be outside and get better at playing music and make the same amount of money". So I started traveling around and busking instead. It really opened up another world to me, allowed me to travel in a way I otherwise wouldn't have been able to, and it's how I learned to play music and how I met other musicians. I kept that going full-time for three, or four years before I burnt-out on it, got a day job, and started shifting my attention, musically, to writing and recording my own songs.
Did you participate in any groups, or projects prior to becoming a solo musician? You released two EP’s in 2019. Tell me about writing and recording those albums and what the overall vision and approach was for those bodies of work. Would you mind walking me through songs such as “Wolf Moon”, “Devotion”, “Last November”, “Junk Sails” and “When I Move TO The Sky”? When and where did you make your live performance debut and what was that experience like for you?
I started out solo, and then I went through a period of a few years in New Orleans where I was in some other bands, concurrent to my solo project. At one point I was in about 6, or 7 groups, mostly playing lap steel. A lot of it was backing other songwriters -- Duff Thompson, Sabine McCalla, Liza Cane, Pony Hunt, I played dobro in a cool, but short-lived early country band called The Mud River Warblers, and drums in a shabby and fun garage rock trio called The Invisible Mans. During and a bit after that time, I also sat in on recordings for different songwriters, as well -- Dean Johnson, Mr. Sam, Dr. Kinsey, Todd Day Wait, Leonie Evans, Max Bien Kahn. I learned and developed a lot by being surrounded by some great musicians and doing that. I eventually needed to economize my time and energy differently, though. I made the conscious decision that I just wanted to narrow my focus to my own music and playing in Duff's band, and that was it. My first EP, "Salt Spring Island Tapes" was recorded before the above mentioned collaborative period in New Orleans. I was acquainted with this guy who was living in his van in a junkyard on Quadra Island, and he would build amps and instruments with parts he found.
He mentioned to me that he had found a cassette 4-track, a little Tascam Portastudio. He gave it to me with a crappy mic and I started using it to get better at playing steel guitar by recording a rhythm guitar track and then playing to that. Being given that 4-track was actually pivotal for me. I was just starting to write my own music, and being able to overdub and experiment with recording created a new outlet. There was no intention of ever releasing the recordings when I was making them, but a few years later I decided to. "Junk Sails" is little vignettes about people I met the previous summer in British Columbia when I was traveling around solo, playing at farmer's markets and living in my car. "Last November" was written as kind of an homage to The Carter Family, and "When I Move to the Sky" is the only traditional/gospel song on the EP, one I really love. The second EP, "Spooky Love", was recorded the following year in New Orleans in the house I was living in at that time, which was doubling as a very make-do, analog home recording studio. This was around the time I was playing in a lot of groups and people were always over recording, and that EP was just sort of fit in around all that. The version of "Devotion" on "Spooky Love" is kind of like the zombie version, it's more of a demo. I ended up re-recording it for "Thanks for That". "Wolf Moon" is just a sad song about feeling duped. I don't remember a specific, first live performance, which is either a good sign nothing traumatic happened, or a bad sign it went so poorly I've blocked it.
You released your full length debut last year entitled “Thanks For That” with Duff on Mashed Potato Records. How did you initially meet him and what led to you guys working together on this project? Would you mind giving some background to tracks such as “Look Twice”, “Thanks For That”, “Salesman” and “Next Place”?
I met Duff through a mutual friend in Canada 11 years ago, at his house. We've played music together for the last 7 years, and we started the label together 5 years ago, figuring out each step along the way by trial and error. When it came time to put out my album, it just made sense to do it ourselves. As for "Look Twice", "Thanks for That", "Salesman" and "Next Place" - - all those tracks were an excuse to try out different styles and sounds. I now had access to electric instruments, space to play loud, and other musicians who shared my less-folky references, so I was able to explore mixing in other genres I really loved but had previously never had the set-up to try playing. We were recording to an Ampex 4-track and did a lot of over-dubbing that required tedious bouncing of tracks in a tiny, overheated, mosquito-infested room in New Orleans as summer crept in. Not an experience I'd want to repeat, but we had to work within our means, and I'm glad it happened.
You have a new record coming out towards the end of this month, which I’m very excited for, entitled “Lore”. Can you tell me about writing and recording this album and how you approached this material that differs from how you’ve approached your previous material in the past?
I went into recording "Lore" with the idea in mind that I wanted it to put people into a certain headspace of feeling transported out of reality and into a fictionalized world they can be immersed in. I had around 20 backlogged songs written, and I bunched together 8 that all fit together for "Lore". Most of those songs also happen to be some of my oldest, the first songs I ever wrote. At the time I wrote them, I had been traveling a lot, living in different places in western US/Canada, spending a lot of time outdoors, and the songs reflect that. They're mostly like short stories, a lot of them pretty dark and supernatural, and I wrote a lot about places in the West, which was and still is a huge inspiration to me. I picked that batch of songs to record because I felt like they would suit the kind of sound I could achieve within the constrictions I was working under. I was recording at home in a building with other occupants during the pandemic, so I couldn't be super loud. I couldn't involve a carousel of other musicians because we were under lockdowns, so I had to be able to play most of the instruments myself. I was recording to a Tascam MS-16 borrowed from my friend, Bill Howard, which is a pretty decent tape machine, but not super hi-fidelity. So the recordings are going to have a certain sound. The unit I was in was small and carpeted, so that also was going to affect what was possible, sonically. I had just bought a Hammond organ from a community center that was shutting down because of Covid, so it was also an excuse to learn its different settings while coming up with parts for the album. I took the opportunity to familiarize with the tape machine, do my own engineering, and experiment with different recording techniques without the pressure and distraction of other people waiting around for me and bearing witness to my learning process. Duff let me use a bunch of his gear, and played bass and drums on the album. Other than that, it was the most solitary recording process I had embarked on since the cassette 4-track recordings from my first EP.
As summer draws to an end, what is your trajectory looking like as fall/winter closes in on us? Is
there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
"Lore" comes out October 20th, so this fall I'll be busy doing a lot of unglamorous behind-the-scenes work to finalize getting it released. We're also putting out Duff's new album October 27th, "Shadow People". So, I'll be busy working on that, too. I'm playing a few dates in Spain and Portugal in September, then I'm leaving for a five-week US/Canada tour in late October, all of which I'm super stoked about. Maybe see you out there! Thanks a bunch for inviting me to do this interview and be part of this cool project. As for the readers: thanks for reading! Have a great life.
