Meet Stevie C. of New York

Today we’d like to introduce you to Stevie C.

Hi Stevie, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Ah, the age old question of “who am I?”. I guess at the very core I’m a creative that loves to perform. Even as a kid, I loved making things and sharing them. Stories, plays, recitals, photography were all channels for me to create and have an audience to enjoy it with. Music, throughout my life, has really been the main outlet for this condition of mine. Started out playing the piano around age 6, mostly classical, focusing mainly on rhythm. However, for the number of lessons I had, I should be WAY better at it. Slightly sad about that cause I love the piano. It just wasn’t the thing that resonated with my soul. You know, the one thing that spoke through me. I loved music but it was the instrument that I just didn’t click with. The guitar however was a different revelation.
When I was 13, my friend Rob got a 6 string. I said, “My brother has an old acoustic that I could learn, and we can rock out together!” The seed was planted. With this old black acoustic, the action set super high, I bashed my fingers learning the basic chords of the Beatles, the Who, the Doors and other classic rock songs. Rob lost interest but I stayed with it. I got a teacher. Buddy, from Monmouth Music in Red Bank, NJ. He taught me the next level for my playing. The guitar became a part of me. An extension not only physically but metaphysically. It started to define who I was as a person. By 16, I upgraded to the electric. From there, rather than songs progressions, I was more interested in the musical expressions. How can I make this thing cry, yell, sing? My tender ears were just eating alive Jimi Hendrix, BB King, Jimi Page, Pete Townsend. Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eddie Van Halen, David Gilmore and more. These were guys that could make you feel something. The music supported what they were doing, and I tried desperately to copy all the “licks”. It was the summer of ‘92 that sent my playing off into the atmosphere……I got grounded.
For the whole summer I was on parentally mandated house arrest. Dad said I couldn’t go out for 3 months, the whole summer. Yeah it was that bad. My girlfriend Melissa dumped me for my best friend Andy. That hurt, a lot. All my friends were out having a great time at the beach. Miserable and alone, just played guitar every day and every night. I woke up and played till I passed out. What kind of music do you think that I listened to in my despondent state of depression? The Blues. No other genera of music can quite capture the hurt and pain of someone going through “it”. It can drag you down to the deepest depths of hell. Where you are surrounded with the misery and pain by the hellhounds that have forced you to confront your wrongdoings. The Blues also has the opposite impact. It can heal you. Lift you up to the glorious heavens and cleans you of your sins and your troubles. It gives you life to a once lifeless body. Through its music the Blues is a healer and a reckoner for ones fragile soul. In order to be a great guitar player, one must be able to make that link from heart to strings. It was there where my emotions started to flow through my playing. My guitar had a purpose. It was my salvation. After that summer, I was not the same. In my possession was a force more powerful than words. Mightier than a sword. I was a blues guitarist.
With all that practicing and playing I got pretty good to start playing with others. I formed my first band “Zamboni” with a couple of guys for school. We did a few gigs and some talent shows but nothing really big happened. After graduation, starting college for classical guitar at the Wilkes University Conservatory. It just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t FEEL the music. It didn’t speak to me like the Blues. The summer of ’98 I answered an ad in the paper. A band was looking for a lead guitarist to fill out their Jersey sound
“Johnny-Seven is currently seeking a lead guitarist; We are an original Rock/Pop band with a blues feel. Johnny-Seven is based in the Central NJ area. We are looking for a tasteful, melodic player with stage and studio exp. Please be between the ages of 21-30. Our music is in the vein of Counting Crows, Soul Asylum, Live and Lenny Kravitz……Please be “reality” based and career minded. Heavy metal speed kings need not apply.”
I auditioned and got the gig. I quit college and for 5 years, I was with Johnny-Seven. We toured most of the tri-state area and even got nominated for a few Asbury Park Music awards. 2 albums, radio, TV, magazines, groupies. This was the rock star life that I wanted. It’s where I learned the business side of a band. The marketing, the budgeting, booking, scheduling, all the shit no one wants to do when they say they want to be a touring musician. Yet, this is something one needs to learn and own when starting out. We would print out flyers and go to the club. Hand them out and beg people to come to the show. Promoters would hand you 100 tickets and tell you to sell them. Cause it’s really not about the music to them. It’s about the asses in the seats. “What’s your draw?” they would say. We lie and do the show anyway. Sometimes we just pay to play and hope the music resonates with them. I learned a lot with those guys and I’m proud to call them my brothers. We never fought with each other. Crazy! I know, but we never got into an argument. The writing was good and the playing was even better. Hell, I was a 20 year old living my dream. How could I get angry?
Like all good things, Johnny-Seven ran it’s course. We were getting to the next level so we ended it. We did the final show in ’01, for our fans and packed it up. Out on my own, a little wiser and armed with this new business knowledge, I was hired by the band Woodfish (woodfishmusic.com). Think Blues Traveler meets the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It was a unique funk rock band which centered around the bass player, Steve Kalorin. He is a MONSTER of a bass player. One of the best I’ve ever seen or ever played with for that matter. At gigs, I would just sit back in the pocket with the drummer and let him go off. He would do a solo on the bass with a beer bottle. It was crazy. We were good, REALLY good. The opportunities started to come in. Opening for Robert Randolph and the Family band, New Year’s Eve in front of 3K people at the Starland Ballroom was a big one. Otiel and Peacemakers (Bassist for the Allman Brothers) and a spot to open for Chis Barron (lead singer of the Spin Doctors). The band was getting somewhere fast! The one album we did “Bamm Diddley” is really good and was critically acclaimed. We were nominated for several Asbury Park music awards and won some of them. However, in this band, we did fight. There was a lot of tension on leadership. Who calls the shots? Is it a democracy or a dictatorship. We really didn’t define that and because of that, we yelled. Screamed to get our individual selves heard. There even was a fight about the album cover. It got heated! Soon the animosity took hold, and we couldn’t bury the hatchets. The blood had been spilled and we couldn’t cauterize the wounds. They festered and got infected to where I couldn’t take the arguments and quit. That was a first for me and it was hard. We really thought we had a shot at being huge. Beaten and broken I headed north to big ‘ole New York City to find my fortune and glory.
NYC is a place where dreams are imagined but rarely attained. Where you can find your passion and it can either grow to lengths you’ve never dreamed of or it can chew you up, spit you out and have you crying back to where you came from with your tail between your legs. It’s a hard place but it has opportunities if you know where to look. I worked in the corporate world of advertising, and it fell into my lap; A corporate cover band. The agency supported and provided anything we needed. I literally had an unlimited corporate account to start a band. As long as I used people within the company. “Late Night Car Service” was born. We would do client events, holiday parties and even an industry wide battle of the bands called Pharmaplaooza. Each agency created a band, and we battled it out at B.B. Kings Blues Club (the placed closed many years ago). You get 10 minutes to be as creative as you can be. Select judges from the music industry would come and grade you on originality, performance and how the audience reacted to you. The cool thing, it carried with it a huge crowd. Every agency brought 100 or so people. Multiply that by 10 and the place was packed. It was my job to get our band together, schedule the practices, book the rehearsal studio, figure out the setlist, what to wear, the budget, the marketing. It was a lot of work. Have you ever tried to wrangle 40 kittens into a box? Essentially the same thing. Of the 8 Pharmapaloozas, we won five 2nd place wins and one 1st place (Although, this was for another agency I was in and the band was Magic Pill). One year, we got 4th and another year I didn’t compete because they asked me to form the house band. We opened the show, but we did’t compete. That was at the Highline Ballroom (also no longer around). You can find the all the shows on YouTube. Then Covid hit.
No gigs, no bands, no audiences. Cooped up with no musical outlet I had a revelation. I had the ability to record at home. With today’s technology everything can be done in the comfort of the bedroom. So, I began painting with sound. Starting with GarageBand and an Ipad I created my first few songs. Then I got a Mac, better microphones and many more hours learning about production, mic placements, Dynamic vs Condenser, plug-ins, reverb, EQ, parallel compression, buses. There was SO much to learn. I was back, like in the summer of ‘92, grounded in my room, being a 16-year-old, devouring this new information and gaining a new skill. From there the songs started to pour out. New ideas were forming, lyrical structure, Key changes, layering on different instruments. A whole new canvas emerged, and I could use any color I wanted. 15 songs were done in a span of 1 year. The Youtube and Spotify channels were created. I once again, like that summer, was reborn and became a singer-songwriter. The world became different to me. Everywhere I went, anything I did had the potential to be a song. For instance, I was talking with my daughter one night (who was 11 at the time) and we were discussing the feelings you have when you lose someone you love. When my mother passed away, I was stuck in the “anger phase”. I just couldn’t shake it. She looked at me puzzled. “The anger phase?” she questioned. Then the explanation of the 5 stages of loss, anger, denial, sadness, bargaining and finally acceptance. Whoa, hang on. That’s 3 verses, a bridge and chorus. Where’s my guitar? That’s when “Levels” was born. It’s the 5 stages of loss in a rock song. So, that’s where I am today. A singer-songwriter, living in NYC, writing and producing my own songs. You can catch me live at the Bitter End (https://bitterend.com/#/events) once a month for the New York Songwriters Collective (https://newyorksongwriterscollective.ning.com) showcase. It’s streamed live via Volume.com (https://volume.com)

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I’ve been in the industry for quite some time and there’ve been many “o bumps in the road.. Things have changed and evolved. When I started it was gigs. Where could we play? W’ll play anywhere! How can we lug all our gear there? Timmy will drive cause he’s got the biggest car. What time slot? 11:30pm on a Monday night is perfect. Will we get paid? We’re just happy to jam man. We’ll bring our fans. Who is gonna show up? No one, cause we only play original music and it’s 11:30pm on a MONDAY night. Do we have to sell tickets? Yes, 100 of them at $40 a pop. That was what we wanted to do. To play. Anywhere, anyplace and for anyone. Today I would never do that. For one it just doesn’t fit my lifestyle. I’m way more selective in my gigs. As time went on it was, how can I get heard? Let’s get this on the radio. We have to get on the radio. We figured out that if we bought advertising space on the radio, they HAVE to play our song. It worked. Because we paid for the advertising for our next show over the radio, they scratched our back and played our single. Nothing is quite like hearing your song over the airwaves and into your car.. Then the technology started to shift. We could make our own CDs. The CD burner was invented. Now we could press our own CDs and just hand them out to people. If you went to a Woodfish show in the early days, chances are you got a homemade CD. 2003 changed the game. The internet was still young and Myspace was just launched. This was pre-facebook or YouTube. It’s basically Facebook, but was for bands and musicians. That was the original point of Myspace. It was developed for us. You could tag your friends and upload videos, pictures and MP3. Most people didn’t know what an MP3 was. The beginning of what became the online community reared its ugly little head. A tiny fledgling that would eventually become this incredible, dangerous monster. Finally a place where you could reach a 1,000 people. I say 1,000, cause people still had dial up modems at this time and not everyone had a Myspace account. It was hard to navigate this new technology. We didn’t know what the rules were. They hadn’t been invited yet. Spam emails were a rage! Just blast everyone with anything, all the time. The more the better. It was online guerrilla warfare marketing. Terrible photos were being posted online. People had to start paying more attention to their actions. Careful, that could end up online! It could? It did. OH NO…..Do you think anyone will see it? EVERYONE DID? It got brutal fast.
Today, it’s leaning how to be a content creator and navigating the social platforms. In addition to being a songwriter, producer, marketing, booking, publishing, we have WAY more hats to wear these days. I’m learning about video editing (iMovie, Capcut) and sound production for live streaming (iRig). Do I pay for promotion on Instagram to get 50K followers (Don’t do this by the way)? Should I focus more on TikTok or Facebook and what the hell is Threads? We are moving so fast technology and at times it’s overwhelming. Again, no manual and the rules are writing themselves as we go. As “creatives” we need to adapt to our environment. Be nimble to go “I can learn that” and run with it. They just keep adding to our plate. However, this is making us very self sufficient. We can do more. We can create WAY more and put it out there faster. It’s very exciting.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
The music I put out starts with a theme. It could be a message about the 5 stages of loss (“Levels” or about how I should have died in a car wreck but, for some reason didn’t (“6 Feet”, Something was looking our for me that day). I look around the world and think “that would be a great song!” The music is everywhere you just need to listen. When the pandemic happened, I said to myself, how can I keep creating? So I learned about music production at home. I had always gone into the studio to make an album (Got 7 of them under my belt). Hire the engineer, book the room, mix and master it. This could take a full year. I just thought “what’s keeping me from doing this in my bedroom?” I had all the equipment. The tech is there, I just needed to learn how to use it. Mics and cables strewn all around the room. Youtube videos on how to get proper mic placement, parallel compression and using limiters. The consumption started.. This filled my days and nights when the world was shut down. By the time we got out of our mandated house arrests (the second in my lifetime), I had a full album ready to go. Complete creative control, I owned it all. This opened up a world of creativity. Painting with sound. The sonic canvas was extraordinary. Thus more ideas came pouring out. The songs started to flow. I have been in a creative hot streak and half the time I can’t finish a song cause a new one will pop out. I don’t need to wait to get all the logistical things organized to release my creations. The only thing standing in my way is my own faulty organizational skills.
This expanded my live show as well. I could play to my own recordings. This allowed me to “sound” like a full band. When I play live, I take out my vocal and my lead guitar to create the backing tracks. Essentially playing to my song. If you go to my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@stevie6string9276) you will get a good idea of what I present. The shows are upbeat, fun, exciting and at times, “face melting”.
I’m truly proud of the writing I’ve been doing these few years. Because the technology has evolved I’ve been able to create faster and easier, thus making my songs more flushed out. It’s overwhelming but I’m a veracious learner. Constantly reading and looking up how to do something. It’s part of my charm. If I don’t know it, I’ll learn it.

Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
I grew up in New Jersey, so, it’s only fitting that one get’s influenced by his environment. Bruce Springsteen has always been this shadow. He lived in my town. We would see him at the beach or at Donavan’s reef in Sea Bright. I grew up next door to Roy Bitten “The Professor”. One day, a skinny 7 year old boy walked up to “The Professor’s” door, in the late ’80’s (Right around the time “Born In The U.S.A.” came out), rang the doorbell and interrupted music being played inside. Someone opened the door. One head popped out, then another and then another. There were quite a few people standing on this doorway looking at this tiny little boy. The boy asked for an autograph. They said no and closed to the door. That 7 year old went across the street empty handed. Little did I know that I interrupted the E-Street band at practice.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevie6stringlive/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Stevie6String/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@stevie6string9276
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-310829110?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0hpSrjZQv0iQciYvBE5Y8A?si=iUcH7dXTTsGwWeSxC76tAA