Seasick Steve - I Started Out With Nothin' and I Still Got Most Of It Left

Steve Wold’s story would make a great book. Born in post-war San Francisco, he ran away from home at 13, busked from 16, split much of his life between jail and sleeping under bridges before he moved to Norway, married a waitress, had a heart attack, recovered and, a couple of years ago, won the Mojo Breakthrough award well into his 60s. Now, I Started Out With Nothin’… sees him make the move onto a major label. Considering how he recorded his previous album, Dog House Music, in a kitchen using a knackered old 3-string guitar, one wonders how well his unpolished American hobo blues will translate having been recorded in a fancy English studio owned by one of the dudes out of The Darkness.

Thankfully, such slick surroundings didn’t affect his rough charm; and this is very much the same old Seasick Steve. He tells yarns, growls like Tom Waits and busks away on buzzy guitars. Okay, so a few showbiz mates turn up, but they all make valuable contributions. Happy Man features KT Tunstall on guitar and Ruby Turner’s soulful voice. Awesomely, Nick Cave and Grinderman show up on the Just Like a King, with Cave offering a typically menacing, witty vocal turn.

Such is the quality of I Started Out With Nothin’… that it proves Wold isn’t just appealing because of his intriguing back-story or through the novelty, these days, of him playing homemade, beat-up old guitars, but, quite simply, because he writes fantastic tunes and oozes personality.

Seasick Steve - Dog House Music

Here are a couple of album reviews that were printed in Drum Media:SEASICK STEVE
Dog House Music
Bronzerat/Inertia

If American troubadour Steve Wold, better known as Seasick Steve, looks like the kind of old hobo that sits busking outside the local train station it’s because that’s exactly who he is. Kicked out of home at the tender age of 13, this colourful character has spent more than his fair share of time over the past half a century sleeping on the streets or in various county jails. If anyone is qualified to sing the blues, it’s him.

His second album of droll, earthy blues, Dog House Music, sounds like it belongs in the Deep South sometime during the early half of last century, yet it still has recognisable reference points. For instance, as Fallen Off a Rock crescendos, Wold plays slide guitar like Jack White’s cool Dad. On Dog House Boogie he barks like Tom Waits and, not unlike Johnny Cash in his later recordings, his cracked yet warm vocal is that of a man who has really lived a life.

In a time when all music seems so contrived, it is refreshing that someone can create such raw beauty on an album that was recorded in mono in a kitchen in Norway on a shitty three-string guitar. Indeed, the intensely personal Dog House Music is such a compelling listen that it is little wonder Seasick Steve recently won the Mojo Best Breakthrough Act award. Not bad for a bloke in his sixties who used to literally have to sing for his supper.