June 01, 2004

Interview with Steve Blaze of Lillian Axe Part 1

My guest today on Inspiring Minds is the founding member of Lillian Axe and Near Life Experience; Steve Blaze. I caught up to Steve while he was on the tour bus and had a long talk about his solo album which is newly released and what he is up to with his two bands. Steve has a very clear picture of what he has been, what he is now and what he is trying to be. I found him to be a very deep and thoughtful person who takes his role as a song writer very seriously. As you will read his lyrics have reached out and helped many people during trying times in their lives.

This interview is one of the longer ones I have done so I am splitting it into two sections. This first one covers a lot of what is new and goes into some of the songs that are closest to Steve's heart. The second piece which will be online later next week and talks more about what the future holds for Steve and his different projects and Steve gives some solid advice to you musicians looking to make it big in the industry today! So, sit back, get comfortable and see what you can learn from this truly Inspiring Mind.

---

Kathy: Hello

Steve: Kathy, its Steve Blaze

Kathy: Hi, how are you?

Steve: We're just getting into Chicago ... Things are great!

Kathy: How was the concert last night, everything went well?

Steve: Yeah it was fine it was a great crowd; we hadn't played together in a three, four months, so you know, since we're spread out in two different cities we wind up just pretty much rehearsing at sound check for the first show. You know we've been doing this for so long we don't really need to rehearse that much unless it's new material. So we did well, a lot of new fans that had never seen us before and it went real well. It was rainy and cool, but we made it!

Kathy: And the venue was good then?

Steve: Yeah, it was fine, it was good it's a place called The Whitehouse that we used to play years ago and then they closed down and re-opened and it's a nice venue - you remember the band Dangerous Toys?

Kathy: Yes

Steve: Well Jason McMaster, the singer, he's got a new band called Broken Teeth and they are doing all of these shows with us, they do a lot of shows with us.

Kathy: So they open up for you?

Steve: Yeah

Kathy: Great! OK, well we will start with the questions and if one generates another thought...

Steve: Oh yeah I'll wind up rolling with it - I am actually going into a more private area of the tour bus, so I can have some privacy and not have any noise from everybody else ... (laughs)

Kathy: OK, The name Steve Blaze is associated with some great heavy melodic rock! Lillian Axe, Near Life Experience, and Angel; three bands who have a loyal following, would you take a moment in the beginning to introduce yourself, the man behind the name ... and the music?

Steve: Hi my name is Steve Blaze, I started playing guitar when I was seven years old when my parents bought me an acoustic guitar, I guess they were looking for something for their child who didn't have a hobby or what not and they put immediately in lessons. It took of from there, my first teacher said I was taken from school that I had surpassed everyone and I couldn't learn anymore from them and I should go into private lessons, which I did and started playing classical and flamenco guitar. So I did that for several years and started entering a lot of contests and shows in the area.

Kathy: So it sounds like you had just a natural talent.

Steve: Yeah it was one of those God given gifts that I was fortunate enough to... you know I think that everyone has probably a multitude of God given talents -unless their cultivated you never really know. You and I could be incredible brain surgeons (laughs), but we didn't go to school for years and cultivate it so we never know. But, I enjoyed it so much and started listening to the radio, AM radio when I was about eleven years old, that's all I was into was listening to the music. So I started getting a little bit of an influence and learning at an early age how play rock guitar -Deep Purple and bands like that were actually getting played on the radio.

Kathy: Which were your roots?

Steve: Yeah, really I started right around that point when I was early teenager getting into Alice Cooper big time, it was probably my first influence - Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Van Halen - that's when I realized I really wanted to play rock guitar. It is much more glamorous, more fun, more exciting music, more passionate. From there I started obviously getting more in my own little bands with local friends who didn't play any instruments but looked cool with make-up on their face. We'd dress up like KISS and do the usual thing and then I just started getting into bands and gradually, the end of high school, serious cover bands that were actually out doing little shows here and there.

Kathy: So at what point then did you then find that you wanted to do your own song writing?

Steve: I always did, I started writing like really funny, cheesy songs when I was in seventh grade. They always had the theme of horror and the macabre, so I knew there was something the matter with me right away! No love songs when you're nine, ten years old. Then it just got to the point where my cover bands, we had popular people starting to talk about me and it was a real asset, I started getting popular at it, then formed a band called Oz, in about 82/ 83, something like that, when I was about 19 years old and Jim Dandy from Black Oak Arkansas - do you remember them?

Kathy: No, sorry I don't ...

Steve: Remember the song "Jim Dandy to the Rescue"?

Kathy: Oh Yes!

Steve: That was Black Oak Arkansas, Jim Dandy was the singer, he was the one everyone claimed that David Lee Roth stole his persona from. When I was a kid David Lee Roth used to go get all these great young players to back him up for solo projects and he asked me to play on one of his records and I did, it was the first experience I had with cutting a record and I was honored because I didn't know much of the music, it was a little before my time, but I knew who he was, just being recognized was an honor for me. That's when I first started doing the Lillian thing, then we became a very, very popular cover band but we were doing our own material as well, splitting the sets up in half. We were playing consistently and we grew this huge following, until we got asked to open up for Ratt and Queensryche on some arena dates and we were still basically a cover band playing clubs. We did five shows with them, matter of fact I think Poisons first album had just come out and they opened up one of the shows. And Milton Burrows nephew Marshal Burrows was managing Ratt and after the second show he called me at home and asked me if I wanted to work with him and he'd get me a record deal. The rest was history...

Kathy: Wow, what a nice story - Your parents started this whole thing!

Steve: Yeah they sure did, and my Dad died two years ago so I pretty much dedicate everything I do to him and especially my solo record that I just finished I dedicated it to him, and Near Life albums. Yeah they were the reason why I'm doing this and still out.

Kathy: I'm also sorry to read about Joel's mom.

Steve: Yeah that was pretty rough, he seems like he's coming around.

Kathy: It takes a while. I lost my mom not that long ago and it does take time, it was again sudden.

Steve: Oh wow, I am sorry to hear that - Yeah it takes forever you never really get over it. I mean my Dad died while I was holding him, you know so ... He had been sick for a long time and we knew what was going to happen but you know it doesn't make it any easier.

Kathy: No, nothing does ...

Steve: The fortunate part was that we had time to talk to him and say what we had to say to each other.

Kathy: If there is a way to have closure of some kind and feel good about it, but you always miss them and try to hold on to the good memories.

Steve: Sure, absolutely.

Kathy: That's wonderful. Your solo album "Random Acts of Blindness" is out on the market and ready to be added to our collections, when you think about all of the effort it took to record every instrument, write every song and do all of the singing, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

Steve: Uh ... My chair and my bedroom (laughs) I did it all, I have an eight track digital home recording setup that I do all my demos on and now a days the equipment - they are making equipment so compact and clean and clear that in a situation like that - with an album that is predominantly all acoustic guitars, good mic, good pre-amp and an knowledge of how to record can make music sound really good. The whole idea was to make something very intimate; there is a lot of acoustic work on there. There is one heavy instrumental there the engineer, and the house engineer for Lillian and Near Life, Rob plays drums, a very good drummer and very good friend of mine I've known him for years - he played live drums on that song. A few instrumentals, the majority are acoustic, plush - I guess you would say, kind of a lullaby type, I don't want to use the word somber or dark but very brooding, melancholy ballads. With a lot of acoustic guitars and pianos and strings, lots of harmonies.

Kathy: Sounds peaceful, calming and serene.

Steve: I've gotten a lot of different reactions to it - All positive, which is really nice 'cause its such a complete different aspect of myself. I was surprised by the result and what kind of responses I would get of it being so different, and I've had nothing but great responses, people saying that they put the album on and their at peace for an hour and its relaxing and spiritual and beautiful and all these things that reaching cords inside of people that they've never felt in the other types of music. It's definitely a different type of solo record from a guy that's considered a guitar guy. I mean of course, even in the ballads there's nice classical guitar solos and different types of guitar work and harmonies. If you are a guitar fan and you want to hear me do that type of thing there's plenty of it on there, but it's not your typical guitar shredder type solo record -"let me just show you all my tricks"- it's a song album. I enjoyed doing it so much and I did it all myself and I packaged it myself, I had some help from some great people, like Greg that does my website for Near Life did all the artwork he worked with an artist in Europe, asked permission to use his images. I have a girl named Ginger that does on of the Near Life sites she does all the packaging, reproduction and copies for me, my friend Rob does all the odds and ends. I engineered most of them in my bedroom, a couple things I did in Robs studio -so I got a lot of help from people that believe in me. It's very personal, I didn't go to a big studio and do it, I did it over the course of -God, some of those songs were written a few years ago- but I really figured out really maybe a year I wanted to go do it. It is something that I am going to continue to do constantly; it will be a constant thing, because even if I was the only person to listen to it, it does a lot for me when I hear it. I wrote a lot of the songs about my dad, I touch on a lot of subjects that I don't touch on in Near Life and Lillian.

Kathy: I was going to say it has taken years of effort and how did you feel about the album and what it meant to you but I think you've pretty much covered that ...

Steve: Yeah, you know after if you do a record, sometimes, you know you get so sick of hearing it, and you're listening to it everyday, and you're listening to it and it's rawest moments and your listening to it when it was just a bass track or a drum track and very primitive. So by the time it's mixed and mastered you're like "Geez, I've heard that song five hundred thousand times, I'm sick of hearing it." This thing I wind up popping it in and just really enjoying it as if it was someone else's record.

Kathy: Is there actually one song on the album that has special meaning to you that you might be able to share some of the history with us, or why it's special.

Steve: Yeah! I have an instrumental that's called Five, my dad passed away two years and a month ago; and right after that, within a year period, four other people - total five people that were close to me, related, passed away in a year period. It was just a really rough year. I just wanted to acknowledge that fact in some way, so I just named the instrumental Five because I didn't really lyrically feel like writing a song about five separate people or what happened. Bridge of Azaleas is about the night the passed away; our entire family was at the house, my dad died of diabetes and complications, he had a heart attack a few years before, quintuple bypass surgery, he had cancer, everything complications from diabetes. He decided; they were going to have to amputate both of his legs it got so bad. He was only 58, he had been sick for so long that he just wanted to come home from the hospital, he was on dialysis for his kidneys for like seven years. He wanted to get off of it, and just come home and pass away at home. So we honored his wishes, and needless to say took an entire week, everyone was there around the clock. Well a lot of things happened in the interim, you know, everyone had time to spend a lot of time with him etc. But the night before he passed away my mother and sister in law were out in front of the house and they were looking at my moms garden and there were four azalea plants with nothing on them, just the big stems, no flowers or anything and she told my mom you need to get rid of these azaleas, because the fact that they are not blooming and it is 35 degrees out side and not going to bloom. And she said, yeah I'll get around to it. So, my dad passed away at 3 o'clock in the morning and after everyone had moments with before the people from the funeral home came to take him; about 4:30 in the morning everyone was standing outside - you know the smokers were taking their smoke break outside. Standing outside, everyone one just getting our thoughts together and we looked down and there were four white azaleas that had bloomed in that time on these just dead looking bushes that had been there dead the night before. The strange part about it is the day before my dad passed away he said that four people in white had come to him while he was lying in bed.

Kathy: Oh my God ... That gives me goosebumps!

Steve: He described them as having; he was in and out the last few days, almost like a coma and he said they had big heads and they were glowing and they made him feel, let him know that everything was going to be OK, and so it was pretty strong. And, then my mom decided to take a picture of the azaleas, and she trimmed them and had them pressed and matted etc. in a shadow box. We got the pictures back and one of the pictures has a perfect shadow of a crucifix on one the leaves, like big as day. And, there was nothing on the pedals, nothing between the light source and the pedal to make that sort of a shadow, needless to say everybody was totally blown away. So I wrote a song about his passing and what it would be like to be him and be where ever he is going, you know hopefully to heaven and experiencing being in a new place and not fully understanding that he's passing. It's called Bridge of Azaleas, that song in particular is pretty deep and there are a lot of other ones that I write about, I have always been, I wouldn't - I can't say fascinated -but concerned, anxious about death and passing over and the meaning of life etc. I think too deeply I think, and so a lot of songs are about that, about the beauty of passing from life into the next where ever we're going. Those are things that a lot of people get disturbed and don't want to hear about, but in a record like this where I am writing to get rid of some emotions that I have; I don't have a record label telling me "oh man it's too much this, too much that, don't do that..." it is what it is...

Kathy: It helps in the healing process and also for others who can maybe use it as a healing process.

Steve: Well it's just like Lillian stuff you know, I wrote a song dedicated to a friend of mine that died of cancer, and had thousands of letters and emails and comments; people contacting me about this song and other songs I have written; how it helped them get through things. I have had so many letters and I guess you would say, testimonials, from people that have had experiences with songs I've written getting them through things. I mean people that have, you know, played nothing but Lillian Axe songs while their loved ones were in a coma right before they died, another girl; her sister died and they found her, she was listening to our song while she died, and all these really unusual moments from thousands of people about our music being involved in some sort of spiritual footing. A healing, a death, or a birth, you know, it puts a little bit of a weight on you, it makes you feel like you have to be responsible with what you say and what you write about. Don't be phony about it, but realize that when you are making a statement and that you are touching a lot of people; so make sure you are speaking what you want to say and not anything that you would be afraid say to anybody...

Kathy: Well, you're being true to yourself and using your own emotions ... It's genuine.

Steve: Absolutely, the types of things that I touch on and the types of things that I write about are common to every individual on the planet.

Kathy: Can you tell you us about any news as far as Near Life Experience is concerned?

Steve: Yeah, Joel just joined the band playing bass about two months ago, he's done several shows with us and he fits like a glove - he's great. We are working on a new record right now. The last record that we put out last year, Day of Silver Sun, it's like a black cloud that follows us sometimes. We had an independent deal and we had distribution through Southwest Wholesale in Houston and about a month into the release of the record, to the stores around the country -they went bankrupt. They were also doing distribution for Lillian Axe live albums, so all of these thousands of units were out in stores and they went bankrupt so we had no way of getting paid for them; finding out where they are, how many have been sold, do they need re-orders, on and on...so the Near Life record we're using it to shop, shop for a new deal and we have new material that we're writing right now. We're looking for a management company as well. Anyone at all that's interested...Lillian is unmanaged right and so is Near Life but Lillian really doesn't need a manager quite as much as Near Life does right now, because I think with the new Lillian record we'll be able to shop this thing around and get some attention from it. Near Life is basically a new project so...but pretty much if I have anyone who is managing me, they can handle all of my projects.

Kathy: In discussions about Lillian Axe the topic of who your influences are has come up on more than one occasion, different people credit different bands saying they can hear them in your music but always make sure to give full credit for a sound all typically your own, would you settle the argument once and for all, who are the major influences of the group?

Steve: That is the most difficult question to ask - I mean to answer, because my roots as far as my writing all come back from listening to classical music. I learned structure, composition, melody from classical music when I was a kid ... but, I went through the whole conversion of getting into hard rock music and realizing that we have the same patterns and melodies, I mean there are only twelve notes in the musical library. It's just a matter of how do you arrange cords and it is so many different things - if you started looking at it like mathematical signs you'll totally get lost. The first band that got me in to listening to rock music was Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, Kiss, Queen, Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Rush, Scorpions - all the great bands that wrote really, what I considered at the time, very powerful, I like darker stuff...I never was a huge blues rock fan, I totally respect them, I like listening to old, old blues. I liked the hard rock that had more classical style melodies to it, heavy guitar, I like light and dark contrast. I really like bands that were able to do a multitude of things, like for example early Alice Cooper band, that was one of the - they were so far ahead of time it was ridiculous. The stuff was so far ahead of its time and nowadays I feel that rock music has become way to formulated, its success is to hinged upon radio play and because of that people are trying to write things to fit the format. Trying to keep the time here, try not to keep to weird, try and make sure your composition - verse chorus, lead chorus, out, I mean its just kind of a shame. The bands that are just doing what they want to do like Radiohead, their becoming popular strictly on live shows - they don't get radio play. You don't see bands like that on the radio, bands like The Tea Party in Canada, their just sticking to their guns and doing their thing and takes them years to get popular.

Kathy: Absolutely ... We just don't hear any of these other bands or songs on the radio over here. In Europe if you talk to anyone over there they'll tell you "Oh yeah! They're playing them on the radio stations and touring here," but, here in the States we're left listening to the best sellers, not necessarily the best music.

Steve: I'll tell you what, it's so difficult to try to figure out why and what in this business that I have just come to the conclusion that I have no idea what works, what's going to work, the only thing I know is you've just got to stay true to yourself, work hard, and try to make things happen for yourself. There are very mediocre bands out there that are doing well because they are persevering. There are some great bands out there that probably never will get the justice they deserve. There's bands like Kings Axe, Saigon Kick, those are some of my favorite bands, Type O Negative - that are amazing; they've done well relatively speaking, but they haven't reached the status I think they should and deserve and I don't know why. There are so many different things, I am tired of being asked by people every single day - why wasn't Lillian huge? I mean I read these things all the time, "Lillian Axe was way better than their peers", "they should have had much more success than the Ratts, and the Poisons and Warrants of their time. Those were all great bands, and I like them all and I have all of their records, but Lillian wasn't really a band like that in the first place. We might have physically got lumped into that genre because we had long hair and everyone back then dressed the same, but we came out at that time, but we weren't that kind of band, listen to that material and you realize that. I don't really have any idea why, I do know that you have to have a machine behind you to reach full status success - to be multi-marketing and PR - you've got to have the machine from the label. You've got to have good management and you've got to keep your band together and that's a tough thing to do. People don't realize how difficult - I mean we have had a lot of changes in Lillian Axe and we probably will continue to have new changes in the future - you never know, but the bottom line is you keep it going and you keep it moving and a lot of bands can't do that. I mean look at the band that got lucky enough to have possibly have been the next frikin Led Zeppelin; Guns and Roses - fell apart, couldn't keep it together. That's a shame, travesty I mean I was a Guns fan, I mean I like a couple of their records, I mean I don't think that they were any better or worse than any of the other big bands of that day but they hit a nerve and they worked and if they had kept it together and continued to make good records they would be monsters right now, be where Metallica is right now. But, that's just one of those things if it was meant for everybody it would be a lot easier to do.

To Be Continued ...

Posted by Kathy at June 1, 2004 11:52 AM