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To
the Jazz Record Mart's many mail-order customers, the voice over the
telephone of Steve Dawson is quite familiar. There is another group
of people who are also familiar with Steve's voice via his longtime
musical collaboration with his wife Diane Christiansen and their band
Dolly Varden.
Born in California, Steve was brought up listening to his father's
huge record collection which consisted "of rock like the Stones and
the Beatles and a lot of jazz.
"When I was 12, we moved to Idaho and I got a guitar," Steve explains
going on to state that "I'd always loved music. I'd pretended to play
along with records and stuff, like sing-a-long and play air guitar. I
took to the guitar immediately and spent tons of time learning to
play it. I was in a tiny little town and the band program was pretty
dorky. There weren't a lot of other musicians. So, it was me
basically just sitting in a room with songbooks or records just
trying to play along. I started writing songs right away. I did have
a high school band, but again the talent pool was pretty slim and I
didn't really know what I was doing. I was in a number of crappy
bands! "
After graduating high school, Steve attended the Berklee School of
Music in Boston to study jazz guitar stimulated by a teacher he had
in his senior year. "He was showing me fancy jazz chords and
reharmonization. Kenny Burrell was my guy! I loved Kenny Burrell and
I was into George Benson, his instrumental stuff, and Wes Montgomery
to a certain degree."
"The Beatles were always my band. I still love the Beatles. Country
music (in Idaho) was just always around me, but it was considered
really dorky. All of the kids really hated it, but it was everywhere
like if you went to some kind of public function in the park there
was always a country band playing and it was always a pretty good
one. I remember watching these guys out of the corner of my eyes and
thinking ´Wow, that's cool,' but not saying it because at that
age you can't be a geek, y'know! There was a radio station that just
played country...talk and country! I used to set the radio to wakeup
to it every morning, so it must have subliminally sunk in! This was
the late 70s and early 80s and country music was Mickey Gilley and
Kenny Rogers, but they were playing Johnny Cash and George Jones
mixed in with all of the `Urban Cowboy' stuff. I remember hearing Bob
Dylan, so they must have had some pretty hip DJs slipping this stuff
in."
While in college, Steve realized that studying to become a jazz
guitarist "wasn't what I was meant to do. After practicing for hours
I would just relax and sing a song and it just felt like home. I
realized that I should just be singing and writing songs. When I was
in Idaho, I was also listening to a lot of those singer/songwriter
kind of guys like Jackson Browne and Neil Young and there's a little
country in those guys." He began to jam and play out a bit with other
musicians as well as performing as a solo act. "In Boston there's a
pretty healthy folk music scene and I was into that. I had stopped
going to Berkley and knew that I had to get out of Boston because it
was so expensive to live there. This friend called me up and said
that Chicago's really affordable and that there're a lot of gigs to
be had, so I just moved out here."
Steve's relationship with the Jazz Record Mart began soon after his
move since "I was a customer from almost when I first moved to
Chicago. I used to go in there and buy blues records. I was always a
fan of gospel and soul music...it was sort of an offshoot of learning
jazz. I was sort of looking for other forms of black music and also
listening to blue-eyed soul singers' like Van Morrison," Steve
recalls, going on to explain that "I came to the decision after
playing a bunch of really crappy gigs, mostly as a solo, in places
where I would end up playing requests of cover songs for people that
were either drunk or completely indifferent and I started losing my
faith in playing music. Music has always been like an almost
spiritual thing to me. I didn't want it to become me sitting in a bar
singing cover songs. I decided that I wasn't going to make that the
way that I was going to make my living. If I was going to make it my
living, I was going to do it as doing my own songs and on my own
terms. In coming to that understanding I decided that I had to
have a job! I started out waiting tables, but could easily be billed
as 7he World's Worst All-Time Waiter'! It was a disaster! I used to
go over to the [Jazz] Record Mart and say to Ron [Bierma,
JRM's manager] if you ever have an opening, I'd love to work
here' and he'd say `Yeah, yeah! Great, great' and I did this about
three times and on about my 4th time of saying this he said `I need
to talk to you!' So he sat me down and we talked and he hired me.
That was in 1990 and I've been working there ever since
full-time!"
Immediately gigging in Chicago regularly at the Charleston Tavern
with fiddle player Tom Murray performing country music also helped
introduce Steve to his future wife, Diane. Diane began singing with
Steve and Tom who eventually added a bass player. And when a drummer
joined up "the Charleston basically told us to get the Hell out! You
guys are too big and too loud for this! We started to try and
eventually get real gigs at real clubs and eventually named the band
Stump the Host."
After adding an electric guitar player, Stump the Host became what
Steve jokingly describes "An organic progression from he
[Tom] and I standing in a window sill for a couple of years
singing folk songs to a country rock band."
Since Stump the Host was what Steve calls a ragtag bunch of guys,
trying to tour eventually led to the band's breakup. Being a buzz
band in Chicago worked as a catch-22 with offers and recognition
being a little more than the band members were prepared for. The band
released only one vinyl 45 RPM record on Minty Fresh before calling
it quits in 1993.
"Diane and I were always freaked out being called `country
musicians'. I guess that when people hear that two part harmony, they
think `Oh, that's country.' I know that the guitar player in that
band [Stump the Host] was super country, so that had a lot to
do with it. We kind of kicked things around for about a year and in
95 , the guys that are in Dolly Varden now started showing up. We've
had the same ensemble ever since!" Steve says going on to acknowledge
that "We've really gotten pretty tight. It's like a little extended
family now!"
Dolly Varden's first CD (Mouthful of Lies on the band's own
Mid-Fl label) came out in 1995 resulting in positive reviews and
touring. Major labels began sniffing around during what Steve
illustrates as the "Last round of that whole Chicago thing when the
major labels were looking for another Smashing Pumpkins" and the band
was soon signed to it's present label Evil Teen releasing The
Thrill of Gravity. The Dumbest Magnets was released in
2000 to glowing reviews as well as an international deal with Flying
Sparks in England.
The last two weeks of May, Steve and Diane toured Europe as a duo
promoting The Dumbest Magnets with a full-throttle band tour
slated there later this fall. With plans for a fourth Dolly Varden CD
in the works, the musical future looks bright indeed and Steve points
out that [JRM owner] Bob Koester is "really supportive. In
truth, my job is kind of the perfect job for me because I can totally
leave it behind when I leave there and come home and concentrate on
writing songs and the career of Dolly Varden and my life with Diane
and Eva (our daughter). It's flexible. I can take time off to tour
and record. I think in a way that Bob feels the same way about
music...that music is a high art, y'know, it's really an important
thing. My job at the Mart has been a great thing...it really
has."
- George Hansen
For information or to contact Steve regarding Dolly Varden, you
can log onto their web site at http://www.dollvvarden.com, e-mail him
at info@dollyvarden.com or utilize snail mail via PO Box
577084.
Despite genre classifications, Dolly Varden's CDs: Mouthful of
Lies, The Thrill of Gravity, and The Dumbest
Magnets are available at the Jazz Record Mart for $14.99
each.