"I like the modern world and it fascinates me. I grew up in a period of musical renaissance, a fortunate time when the best and most commercial music was born. There will be no more moments like that, but for me the only criterion is greatness. That's all I care about. Is what I'm doing chasing greatness? Whether I achieve or not, that is my criterion one hundred per cent".
- Stevie Van Zandt
Wicked Cool/Big Machine/Universal Music Enterprise announce the highly anticipated new album from the legendary Little Steven, due out on 19 May 2017. SOULFIRE will be released on CD, digital and double LP.
SOULFIRE is Stevie Van Zandt's first album in two decades, and is without doubt his purest artistic statement. The track listing includes songs that span his career as an artist, performer, producer, arranger and composer, and returns to the soul horns-meets-rock'n roll guitars approach of his early albums with Southside Johnny and Asbury Jukes.
"I have always been thematic in my work, very conceptual" says Van Zandt. "I need the context, I can't just do a collection of songs, it doesn't work for me. In this case, the concept is 'myself'. Who am I? I'm almost a separate "genre" now. So there are some covers, some new songs, and some reinterpretations of what I think are the most beautiful songs I've written over the years. This album is me being myself."
Little Steven & The Disciples of Soul They returned last October at the request of a friend who invited them to play at BluesFest in London. Van Zandt had just come from touring with the E Street Band and was planning a trip to the UK to celebrate his wife's birthday and Bill Wyman's 80th birthday. "A series of circumstances that fit together perfectly"says Van Zandt.
Little Steven quickly brought together the Disciples of Soul of the 21st century, what it benevolently calls the "a group of misfits, thieves and dockers".He added three backing singers and a horn section including Stan Harrison and Eddie Manion, former members of the Asbury Jukes/Miami Horns.
Stevie and his band crossed the Atlantic for what should have been a 'one-night-only performance' featuring classics such as 'The Best of the Best' and 'The Best of the Best'.I Don't Want To Go Home"other songs from his solo career, songs written for others and covers of Etta James, James Brown and Electric Flag.
"A at that point I thought well, we've already learnt 22 songs... We could make an album!"
SOULFIRE was arranged and produced by Van Zandt in his New York studio, co-produced by Geoff Sanoff (Fountains of Wayne, Stephen Colbert) and the guitarist Marc Ribler. The choirs in "I Don't Want To Go Home" e "The City Weeps Tonight"are of the Persuasionsthe famous acappella group. The mixing was entrusted to the famous Bob Clearmountain (Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Who, Bryan Adams) while mastering is by Bob Ludwig (Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, The Band, Sly and the Family Stone).
"I've never had so much fun recording an album. We did it quickly, with the energy of the London show. We brought that energy into the studio and it all came out of the blue, in six weeks we recorded and mixed. It was all very instinctive and energetic.".
Van Zandt's five solo albums have seen him express his songwriting in a very personal way through a variety of sounds and approaches, with the ambition that has fuelled much of his creative output over the past two decades. Meanwhile, Little Steven has broadened his horizons, starring in the Sopranos and in Lilyhammer - for which he also wrote the soundtrack - and with his radio programme "Little Steven's Underground Garage"
"I feel a little guilty about being away from Little Steven, the artist" he says. "the hleft aside and now I want to make up for it.".
"I want to take the band everywhere they want to see us. It's hard with 15 people, but I'm trying to make my dream come true.!"
SOULFIRE marks the necessary return of a truly great artist, revitalised and unstoppable.
"I'm back into it," says Little Steven. "And this time I'm going to stay back."
Van Zandt - who remains a member of the E Street Band - will tour Europe with Disciples of Soul from 9 June to 8 July, with the only Italian date being in Pistoia on 4 July.
Here are the confirmed dates of the exclusive European tour Barley Arts Promotion:
LITTLE STEVEN & THE DISCIPLES OF SOUL
Fri 9 June 2017 - SWE - SOLVESBORG - Sweden Rock Festival
Wed 14 June 2017 - DE - LEIPZIG - Parkbuhne
Fri 16 June 2017 - DE - FRANKFURT - Batschkapp
Sun 18 Jun 2017 - UK - MANCHESTER - Manchester Arena
Thu 22 Jun 2017 - IRL - DUBLIN - Vicar Street
Sun, 25 Jun 2017 - NL - AMSTERDAM - Carré
Sat 1 July 2017 - FL - JÄRVENPÄÄ - Puisto Blues Festival
Tue 4 July 2017 - IT - PISTOIA - Pistoia Blues ℅ Piazza Duomo
Wed 5 July 2017 - SLO - LJUBLJANA - Krizanke Theatre
Sat 8 July 2017 - ES - BARCELONA - Cruïlla Festival
Sat 5 Aug 2017 - N - NOTODEN - Notodden Blues Festival
TRACK BY TRACK BY LITTLE STEVEN:
- 'Soulfire' (co-written with Anders Bruus of The Breakers) "Doing the radio show keeps you very much in tune with what's going on in the world of rock 'n' roll. It's not the real world, we live in a completely parallel universe, but we've broadcast over 700 new bands in the past 14 years. A lot of them we signed to my Wicked Cool label, like The Breakers, who are a very good band from Denmark. This was a way of exercising my songwriting muscles at that time. I try to live with purpose, and that includes songwriting. I don't get up every day and write a song just to write a song, I have to have a specific reason for it. So if I'm producing a band and I feel they need a little something extra or something specific, I'll write it for them, or in this case, with them. To some extent, that's what kept my songwriting alive over these past years."
- "I'm Coming Back" (Originally found on Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes' 1991 LP, BETTER DAYS) "I did their first three albums in 1976, 1977, and 1978 but then we didn't work together for another 15 years. The lyrics were perfect for Southside at that point and they work for me, at this point. It's one of my favourite lyrics that I've ever written."
- "The Blues Is My Business" (Written by Kevin Bowe and Todd Cerney, recorded by Etta James in 2003) "I've never recorded a real urban Southside-of-Chicago blues thing before. I went though a blues period growing up but by the time I got to the recording studio, I'd kind of gone in a different direction. We worked it out for BluesFest and I liked the arrangement so much, we recorded it for the album."
- "I Saw The Light" "I had half-written it for Richie Sambora & Orianthi but the next time I talked to him he had already written 40 songs so I didn't bother finishing it. I came across it as we were making my album and thought, I like this, maybe I'll finish it for me."
- "Some Things Just Don't Change (Originally found on Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes' 1977 LP., THIS TIME IT'S FOR REAL) "One of my favourites. I wrote it with David Ruffin and The Temptations in mind. I was basically trying to write a classic Motown song. It can be an interesting artistic challenge writing for other people. As third generation rock 'n' rollers we grew up post-show business. It was art form by then, very autobiographical. That's one of the reasons for its success as an art form, people relate to rock 'n' roll in a personal way. So part of you wants to write something traditional, something classic, but part of you always wants to keep it very personal."
- "Love On The Wrong Side Of Town". (Co-written with Bruce Springsteen and originally found on Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes' 1977 LP, THIS TIME IT'S FOR REAL) "Bruce had the riff and I did the rest. When you wrote, arranged, and produced the original versions, it's not always easy to redo them. They become definitive. You did it that first way for a reason. I found it difficult to do much with this one but when we got to the end of the song I found an opportunity to change it up a little bit. I changed little things here and there on all the songs on the album but it definitely took a minute."
- "The City Weeps Tonight" - "It was going to be the first song on my first solo album. I was going to do a chronological history of rock 'n' roll with my own records but the concept changed and I got political. It remained three-quarters finished all these years, but I always liked it. I love doo-wop so this was a great way to get that onto the record."
- "Down and Out in New York City (Written by Bodie Chandler and Barry De Vorzon and originally recorded on James Brown's 1973 Black Caesar soundtrack) "I love the blaxploitation genre - we do a special on the radio show every year, the day after Thanksgiving, we call it 'Blaxploitation Friday.' My favourite has always been James Brown's theme from Black Caesar. It has the immediate common ground for me of being about New York City. We did it for BluesFest, came up with a really cool groove and a new horn line and made it our own. It has a bit of a jazzy element, which I explored with my Lilyhammer score, but like the blues song, it's unlike anything I've ever recorded before on a solo album so it was nice to get those genres onto a record."
- "Standing in the Line of Fire'. (Co-written with Gary U.S. Bonds and (L.) Anderson and originally found on Gary U.S. Bonds' 1984 STANDING IN THE LINE OF FIRE) "Gary U.S. Bonds is somebody you don't want to mess with. The records I did with him are so damn good, I thought, I can't really beat this, I need to really change it somehow. So I added a piece of music I did for Lilyhammer - now it's like Gary U.S. Bonds-meets-Ennio Morricone."
- "Saint Valentine's Day (Originally found on The Cocktail Slippers' 2009 LP, SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE) "I wrote it for Nancy Sinatra but unfortunately never did the session. I recorded it with The Cocktail Slippers, similar to the way I was going to do it with Nancy, and then David Chase liked it so we did a more rock 'n' rolly guys' version of it for his movie, Not Fade Away. For my version, I added a horn line that I think changes the whole complexion of the song, makes it more of a soul thing".
- I Don't Want To Go Home'. (Originally found on Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes' 1976 debut LP, I DON'T WANT TO GO HOME) "It's the first song I ever wrote and I wanted to do it the way I'd originally imagined it. I'd spent five or six years trying to write songs but I was never really happy with them. I decided to go back and really study the roots of rock 'n' roll. To me, the beginning of rock 'n' roll songwriting was Leiber & Stoller, so I decided I'd write a Drifters song. I was on the oldies circuit at the time, playing with The Dovells, and I got to meet all of my fifties and sixties early rock 'n' roll heroes, spend some time with them. I wrote it for Ben E. King but then didn't have the courage to give it to him."
- "Ride The Night Away" (Co-written with Steve Jordan and originally found on Jimmy Barnes' 1985 LP, FOR THE WORKING CLASS MANLater recorded for Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes' 1991 LP, BETTER DAYS) "Steve Jordan came over to my house one day and said, 'I've got a Jimmy Barnes session, I promised him a song and I don't have one so I'm not leaving until we write one.' That kind of songwriting-on-a-deadline goes back to Leiber & Stoller as well - I love that whole Brill Building thing, I wish I'd been around for that period."