Steve: No, that’s pretty much it. I have a very diverse set of skills and I just use them when the moments arise. It’s sort of a blessing and a curse.

Debbie: Why a curse?

Steve: Well, right now for example, I’ve decided to get serious about playing the piano.

Debbie: Really?

Steve: Yes, I’ve always written songs at the piano since I was a kids but I never had that many formal lessons and by the time I had lessons I was an adult and I wasn’t studying to read bass and treble clef, I was studying chords for jazz and pop stuff.

Debbie: Was this at UMass?

Steve: Yes, when I was at UMass, the only piano I had was picking up ideas from piano players. I’d hear someone in a practice room and I’d ask what they were doing. They’d say they were using a particular voicing. That’s how I learned my seventh voicings. Voicings that contain the seven, nine, thirteen and all that. So I was studying jazz and I wasn’t doing much pop music back then so I really skipped over triads. This was really, ultimately a bad thing. I learned all these seventh chord positions but then everytime I had to play triads, I was really uncomfortable.

Debbie: Do you accompany a lot with your students?

Steve: Yes I do, at Berklee. And I also do all my composing at the piano. But it has taken me so long to actually study the things that make you a legitimate piano player, because I did all these other things. I just never got to be as good at the piano as I wanted to be.

Debbie: Are you studying with a teacher now at Berklee?

Steve: I have been to a couple of piano teachers over the years and I remember all the things they had me do which I didn’t do.. . like scales. I’m doing Hanon religiously and scales. I’m practicing triads in all positions so I make sure that I’ve got that under my belt.

Debbie: People are going to think I paid you to say this!

Steve: No, no, I am really doing this. I’m going back to all of the basics and I am finding that in my accompanying and in my quest to play better solos, it’s the basics that make the difference in my ability to do things I’ve always wanted to do.

Debbie: Are you talking more about your physical agility?

Steve: Yes, but if you’ve already been doing harmony and you know how to build a chord and which tensions to use over those chords, and you don’t have the agility, then it’s kind of a waste. I always had this belief that if I use the knowledge that I have about chords, that the agility would just come from going over a song over and over again but it doesn’t. You have to do the arpeggios and scales - all the things that make your fingers able to play more quickly and to play without missing the notes.
I have also found that relaxing the hand was probably the most important thing you could do. I would quite often miss chords and not be accurate. Now I play everything as slowly as I can and make sure I have a relaxed hand. My goal is to be playing piano for myself in a year in front of people.

Debbie: How long have you been teaching at Berklee?

Steve: Almost seven years.

Debbie: You teach voice?

Steve: I teach private lessons. I have a pop/rock/country labs as well. I teach classes on singing in the studio too.

Debbie: Do you encourage your students to play the piano?

Steve: I absolutely do. But most of their skills are very low. But most of the students don’t get how important that is.

Debbie: You sing both jazz and pop music and you’ve recorded an album with the President of Atlantic records, Ahmet Ertegun. There’s a great video on your website! How did that come about?

Steve: It came out in summer of 1995. I was living in Los Angeles. I was pretty much ready to hang it up and a friend of mine was temping at a publishing company and she met a guy who said I should send him some of my tunes. So I did and he liked them and he sent them out to record companies. He did, and it went to Atlantic Records apparently and ended up in the wrong box with an A and R guy who was looking for songs for Bette Midler -oddly enough! It was totally inappropriate but he thought it was interesting and he liked it and he got back to them. Suddenly I was in a meeting with Ahmet Ertegun (President of Atlantic Records) which was totally bizarre and we made “Moons and Grooves”.

Debbie: What happened with that? Did it get airplay?