LAND OF A 1000 Hooks: I am working with Adam Kutchman on a new track. It’s been an exciting challenge to connect with different producers and friends on developing singles I intend to reproduce on stage.
Some of these songs…they sound like hits. I am used to playing a song for years before I even have a chance record them, rather than realizing a rough idea before I ever see how it works on the dancefloor.
You play a song for a year or two every show, it gets perfected or it slides towards obscurity. Sometimes it’s lost its luster for the band by the time you cut it, like The Staxx Brothers song ‘Natural’. But no matter, the heavy lifting was done years in advance.
We were sort of sick of a song the world beyond our ears had yet to hear. But now listening back withJimmy James, Stephanie Walbon, Es Jae, and The 12th St Horns, Tracy Ferrara, Amelia Albert, and Mike Barber dubbed on there, ‘Natural’ is screaming to be heard on stage again as a lead single on The Staxx Brothers final album.
Natural was what? 7 or 8 years in the making? I wrote it on acoustic trying to sound like a Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis production on Control, and it ended up sounding like a slice of Stax / Volt with a twist of Rico Swave.
Now it sits all mastered and lonely on a couple of hard drives?
But this new world of bedroom bangerz also opens up new possibilities to work with people around the world, and to travel more.
To write, to play, to celebrate.
Yet it will be another challenge getting bands together that can knock these new songs out of the park while incorporating the producers / musicians involved, when they are available and interested in smashing a live show.
This vision was realized when the Englishman Lewis Harding joined The Staxx Brothers on stage to perform a spot on version of ‘Big Trouble in Little Brighton’ by our British band that yet to play live, Sherlock Soul.
The performance at Historic Everett Theatre was one of the highlights of a set opening for Los Lobos that gave the band a dynamic I felt was missing from our powerful sets of Hard Ass Soul. Something that you could find on our albums, but was harder to get across on stage.
That frosty chill. The devlish croon under a creole moon.
One major hurdle of promoting any song today, is that without a video would people really know as much about ‘Free Your Mind’?
Without videos or a feature in a love set, how do I market these equally catchy singles I cut in England with Sherlock Soul, if I am not selling them to rooms full of people I can convince to sing along by the second chorus?
But these are called good problems. I am grateful people want to work with me to turn my little acoustic songs into much more grand cooperative visions that will make you good on the dance floor.
It’s like bringing a little seedling and watching it grow in four hour intervals. Starting a song is a hell of a lot easier than finishing one.
I have started thousands, but finished only dozens as commercial recordings.
This song is the first one I wrote at Hangar 420 Snohomish after forcing myself to take a break, hoping something unique and particularly meaningful would emerge.
This song ‘Crisis of Faith’ may have done just that. It’s a neat little riff and Adam had actually been working on it before I arrived as a surprise.
Davin’s new song has become a global earworm and Caribbean dancehall hit. Listen here on Reggaeville: DAVIN MICHAEL STEDMAN & ANTHONY RED ROSE – FREE YOUR MIND FEAT. SLY & ROBBIE WITH LENKY MARSDEN. The video is now available on Youtube.
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many ventures, such as the AMAZING blog, 100milesofmusic.com. In the spring of 2018 he spent weeks networking in and reporting from Kingston, Jamaica. He will return there soon for more recording. His single with British band Sherlock Soul is available here.
