stevedeasy.com
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biography
| This Pittsburgh-born Detroit singer/songwriter is a classically trained, intelligent and serious acoustic folk musician with a wicked sense of humor and an almost Zen-like stage presence. Although Deasy’s lyric- writing has been compared to both Harry Chapin and Michael Peter Smith, the influence of some of his early band days playing jazz, rock, funk, fusion and classical piano adds an intoxicating blend of complexity to his stripped down folk sound. Deasy’s songs cover a great range His 2005 CD release Courage includes earthy story songs that you might expect from a performer who cut his acoustic teeth touring East Coast local folk circuits when music legends Bob Dylan, Dave VanRonk, Phil Ochs and others were defining the national scene. The song “In the Court of Judge Martone,” is a modern-day folk ballad taken straight from the police blotter of small-town Michigan. The cut “Lawyer Man” is folk with a twist and an obscure cult favorite. It has earned the strange distinction of being the most requested song on A3radio.com’s comedy channel. “I’m Getting Old but I Still Dig Rock and Roll” is an audience favorite that lulls the unsuspecting listener with a nostalgic reunion theme turned twisted senior citizen Blues Brother sound track. No ordinary transaction is safe from Deasy who turns a UPS delivery and a cliché-ridden “Dear John” letter into modern-day cultural artifact folk songs. “Packing Slip” and “That’s all she wrote” turn everyday life into a story, with sweet vocals and imaginative arrangements by Pittsburgh producer Buddy Hall. Deasy’s lyrics shift, from the entertaining and the unconventional, walking a labyrinth to a central core of truth that demands attention. In his yet to be released “On Ice” a beer cooler takes the listener down a trail to an unexpected spiritual transformation. In the title track from the CD Courage, a tongue-in-cheek conversation with St. Peter at the Gate and a gig at a seedy hotel bar somehow become a refrain to live an authentic life. Deeply observant and lyrical, Deasy can be serious, bordering on transcendent. His ideas from songs come from ordinary life, from people he’s met and even from literature. In “Pathway to Heaven” he wrote a song based on a poem by Nora Sinnett, an eight year old who was living in an upstairs flat two blocks from where the 1967 Detroit Riots began, and saw something beyond her decaying neighborhood. In “The Gatekeeper” an epic Kafkaesque conversation between a man and his own worst enemy has the effect of imploring listeners to examine how we spend our time, and our lives. Maybe Deasy states his intentions in “Nothing”: "Once I thought I’d own the world I’d rise to save the day But it would be a far greater thing To touch one single soul With the stories that I play (Courage)" That's just what Steve aims to do. |