So, the cat is finally out of the bag. Seasick Steve is not quite who he claims to be. But, really! This has been an open secret for years. There are those in the industry who knew all along. Articles had been published, facts laid bare. But, like the news in general, it takes a spark to really bring it to life, to take it beyond the fringes and into the mainstream. You must have at least smelled a rat, no? For my part I did smell a rat, but hadn’t bothered to dig deeper. It just looked a little contrived, that’s all. I didn’t believe him to be sincere. Hobos, like old bluesmen, just don’t look like that anymore. Unless they are 120 years old for one thing but, does it matter?

Back in 2007, Mojo magazine (who perhaps should have – may have? – known better), gave its Breakthrough Act award to a 66-year-old man who fashioned a beat up guitar out of a cigar box and spatula. What they didn't (did?) know was that they were awarding the gong to a 56-year-old session man called Steven Wold, who had produced Modest Mouse's debut album in 1996, This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About. Wold even played on it. Soon after (including periods busking in Paris) he kickstarted his own career, appeared on Jools Holland's Later Hootenanny special in 2006, and released I Started Out With Nothin' and I Still Got Most of It Left in 2009. Suddenly, the hobo with a guitar was making some serious money. There was no way on God’s Earth that he could really claim the title of the aforementioned album, as relevant to the here and now? Surely.

Moreover, a biographer called Matthew Wright earlier this year claimed that Steven Wold (real name Steven Leach) had played in a transcendental meditation fixated band called Shanti in the early 70s, as well as being a session man for a 70s disco band called Crystal Glass, a Beach Boys splinter group (which also included Mike Love, another TM devotee) and various other projects, before becoming a producer in the Seattle indie scene in the 80s and 90s. This stuff had all been brushed under the carpet when Steven Wold re-emerged as Seasick Steve, re-inventing himself as an old school bluesman, with nothing but a beat-up three-string guitar, and a bunch of stories and songs. Sean O'Hagan had noted in an Observer piece that. “The trajectory of his life since (1973) is hazy and, one suspects, he plays down the semi-settled years, sensing correctly that his mainly young audience prefer the myth to the reality”.

Indeed, and who can blame him? Why do romance novels sell by the shed load? A professional musician or a hard-luck hobo. Again, does it matter? Yes and no. No, because, music is music and if it moves you it works for you. But music always has a back story, whether implicit or explicit, purposefully or accidentally. And when it’s altered to fit the invented narrative, well, it can leave a sour taste in the mouth, and bring on a different point of view. Much like if you discovered your wife or husband was a cross-dresser you might view them in a different light. Not necessarily for the worse, just differently…

So really, dear reader, it’s up to you. Personally, I’ve been listening to his new album in a new light, and I don’t particularly like the smell. Suffice to say it sounds like any other Seasick album. There’s lots of unadorned and loose electric hobo blues that marries a really dirty ZZ Top with Led Zep via the byways of ancient blues (John Paul Jones is the bassist with Seasick Steve’s band), plus a smattering of sad ol’ roots folk balladry and a number of choice covers such as ‘Gentle On My Mind’ and Love’s ‘Signed D.C.’. There's no doubting Steven Leach is a very fine and talented player (and he can turn his hand to a myriad of styles) and there’s no doubting he can write a decent tune but I was never fully signed up to blatantly retro music per se in the first place, be it rock’n’roll, doo wop, blues or whatever. There is a rose-tinted nostalgia to it, a misalignment of time and place. Wrong time, wrong place. That mixed in with the inadvertent coming out of Seasick Steve is a potential powder keg whose repercussions are yet to play out. In the past he could cast his thoughts within a veneer of ugly, nostalgic and difficult times. When talking about his inspirations when writing songs, he said: “That it’s about something that happened to me; you’re digging up from your own mud. All my memories is like a train waiting to come into the station. It just has to be something real.” Trains, mud. Hoboseque metaphors, pretending to live the lifestyle he sings about.

Intriguingly, it’s all gone very quiet on the Seasick Steve front. No interviews, no press, no fanfare. It’s as if Keepin’ The Horse Between Me And The Ground doesn’t exist, except in the mind of Seasick Steve. In the minds of many punters and fans on comments sections, however, there seems to be a willingness to forget all that, and just enjoy the music. But for me, it isn’t that simple.
Jeff Hemmings