Inspirational Trips and the Art of Illusion
Muirsical Conversation With Steve Hill
Muirsical Conversation With Steve Hill
Photo by Scott Doubt
Canadian musician Steve Hill has, over the last decade, made a multiple Maple & Juno award winning name for himself as a one-man-blues-rock-band via multi-instrumentation solo shows, three acclaimed Solo Recordings albums and a live release that captured the essence and energy of his performances.
More lately however a pseudo-cinematic side of Steve Hill was heard on 2020’s Desert Trip, an acoustic/ Californian country influenced album inspired by the Desert Trip Festival of 2016, following which Hill rented a camper van to criss-cross California, camping (and writing) in the natural wilds of places such as Death Valley, Big Sur and Yosemite.
A Deluxe Edition of Desert Trip was made available in 2021 then, in 2022, came Dear Illusion, Steve Hill’s best and most all-encompassing work to date.
Some three years in the making, Dear Illusion reinforces Steve Hill’s blues-rock credentials in the company of a horn section and, on six of the songs, noted groove drummer Wayne Proctor (who also mixed and mastered the album).
The album also spawned a limited edition Dear Illusion comic book (an art-form & collectable love of Steve Hill’s), yet another facet of what turned out to be quite the 2022 for Steve Hill Hill, a year that was very product positive but, also, by year's end, very challenging personally.
All of which can be gleaned from the following in-depth interview with the highly engaging musician, starting with a return to 2016 and the musical seeds that were sown for Steve Hill’s 'Desert Trip'…
Ross Muir: The story behind the Desert Trip album goes back to your time in California and attending the Desert Trip festival I believe?
Steve Hill: That’s pretty much it, yeah. That was back in 2016 when, as you mentioned, I went to the Desert Trip festival in Conchella, near Los Angeles.
That was an amazing experience – first night was the Stones, second night was Neil Young and Paul McCartney and the third night was The Who and Roger Waters. One hundred thousand people trippin’ in the desert! [laughs]
After the festival I went to Los Angeles to see my friend Johnny Pilgrim, who I’ve known for twenty years. Johnny is Canadian but he’s been living in LA since about 1980; he’s a good pal and every time I go to California I visit him and sleep on his couch!
The next day I went to see another friend of mine in Los Angeles, Nic Jodoin; he’s another Canadian but has been in California for around thirty years.
Nic has a studio in LA called Valentine Studio, which was started back in the sixties – in fact a bunch of people including the Beach Boys recorded tracks there – Studio A is like a time capsule to 1960, all the equipment and all the wiring; there’s nothing digital there, it’s an amazing space!
Studio B is 1970; there’s carpets on the wall and the main board, and all the tape machines, are from the seventies!
RM: I would absolutely love that.
SH: Yeah, I was blown away with the place. I thought "I’ve got to record here, but I don’t have anything to record!" [laughs]. That’s when I decided to write some stuff while I was in California.
So, I rented a van and went camping – but I’ve never been camping before, so I had to learn how to make a camp fire and all that stuff; I didn’t know how to do any of that.
RM: Learning on the fly, or rather on the drive…
SH: Well, I’ve been playing clubs since I was sixteen and was pro by the time I was eighteen, so that’s pretty much all I know! [laughs]
I even had to buy a guitar because originally I had just gone to California for the weekend and the festival; I ended up staying an extra month, basically.
That’s where I wrote Evening Star, Rain, Days and a few other ones; after three weeks of camping and songwriting I went back to Nic’s studio and recorded some tracks, but the only one that I kept from those recordings is I Won’t, which is Johnny Pilgrim’s tune – I just changed the music around a bit but it’s his song, and his lyrics.
More lately however a pseudo-cinematic side of Steve Hill was heard on 2020’s Desert Trip, an acoustic/ Californian country influenced album inspired by the Desert Trip Festival of 2016, following which Hill rented a camper van to criss-cross California, camping (and writing) in the natural wilds of places such as Death Valley, Big Sur and Yosemite.
A Deluxe Edition of Desert Trip was made available in 2021 then, in 2022, came Dear Illusion, Steve Hill’s best and most all-encompassing work to date.
Some three years in the making, Dear Illusion reinforces Steve Hill’s blues-rock credentials in the company of a horn section and, on six of the songs, noted groove drummer Wayne Proctor (who also mixed and mastered the album).
The album also spawned a limited edition Dear Illusion comic book (an art-form & collectable love of Steve Hill’s), yet another facet of what turned out to be quite the 2022 for Steve Hill Hill, a year that was very product positive but, also, by year's end, very challenging personally.
All of which can be gleaned from the following in-depth interview with the highly engaging musician, starting with a return to 2016 and the musical seeds that were sown for Steve Hill’s 'Desert Trip'…
Ross Muir: The story behind the Desert Trip album goes back to your time in California and attending the Desert Trip festival I believe?
Steve Hill: That’s pretty much it, yeah. That was back in 2016 when, as you mentioned, I went to the Desert Trip festival in Conchella, near Los Angeles.
That was an amazing experience – first night was the Stones, second night was Neil Young and Paul McCartney and the third night was The Who and Roger Waters. One hundred thousand people trippin’ in the desert! [laughs]
After the festival I went to Los Angeles to see my friend Johnny Pilgrim, who I’ve known for twenty years. Johnny is Canadian but he’s been living in LA since about 1980; he’s a good pal and every time I go to California I visit him and sleep on his couch!
The next day I went to see another friend of mine in Los Angeles, Nic Jodoin; he’s another Canadian but has been in California for around thirty years.
Nic has a studio in LA called Valentine Studio, which was started back in the sixties – in fact a bunch of people including the Beach Boys recorded tracks there – Studio A is like a time capsule to 1960, all the equipment and all the wiring; there’s nothing digital there, it’s an amazing space!
Studio B is 1970; there’s carpets on the wall and the main board, and all the tape machines, are from the seventies!
RM: I would absolutely love that.
SH: Yeah, I was blown away with the place. I thought "I’ve got to record here, but I don’t have anything to record!" [laughs]. That’s when I decided to write some stuff while I was in California.
So, I rented a van and went camping – but I’ve never been camping before, so I had to learn how to make a camp fire and all that stuff; I didn’t know how to do any of that.
RM: Learning on the fly, or rather on the drive…
SH: Well, I’ve been playing clubs since I was sixteen and was pro by the time I was eighteen, so that’s pretty much all I know! [laughs]
I even had to buy a guitar because originally I had just gone to California for the weekend and the festival; I ended up staying an extra month, basically.
That’s where I wrote Evening Star, Rain, Days and a few other ones; after three weeks of camping and songwriting I went back to Nic’s studio and recorded some tracks, but the only one that I kept from those recordings is I Won’t, which is Johnny Pilgrim’s tune – I just changed the music around a bit but it’s his song, and his lyrics.
Then I came back to Canada, which was about two months before I went to Europe on a big tour with Wishbone Ash.
Now, I wanted to release an acoustic record but my agent at the time said "well, we’re about to release Solo Recordings Volume 3 in Europe so the timing isn’t right."
Then, when I was in the UK, I was talking to a record company but they wanted a live album so I put out a live album; that postponed the whole acoustic thing.
And, on top of that, I did a classical concerto with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra!
It took me nine months just to learn that; it was a contemporary piece of music but it was half an hour long and I’m not classically trained, at all – so that postponed a lot of things for me.
But once the concerto was done and those other albums had been released I started working on the songs again, as well as some others, some of which are on Dear Illusion – basically I was starting to work on a bunch of songs where some would appear on Desert Trip and some would appear on Dear Illusion.
RM: And I believe there was a version of Dear Illusion ready around the time Desert Trip was released?
SH: Yes, I had an album ready, fully mixed and mastered, when Covid hit, three years ago – I had just released a single and was about to release an album in April 2020 but decided not to release it because of Covid.
But during Covid I had been doing Facebook Live concerts from home, mostly playing acoustic; I had fifteen hundred to two thousand people every Friday night, so I did an acoustic playlist that I sold on Bandcamp, called the Acoustic Corona Playlist. From there I had the idea of doing an acoustic album of a few new songs and a few older songs, also to be called Acoustic Corona Playlist.
But then I did a photo-shoot where I had the Desert Trip tee shirt on; as I was looking through the photos I thought "Desert Trip would make a much better album than the Acoustic Corona Playlist!" [laughs]
So from there the album became Desert Trip, with the new songs I had and a bunch of other stuff that was unreleased – acoustic songs that I hadn’t released over the years, or had never finished.
I also had a couple of songs from an album of mine called Whiplash Love, that was released twelve years ago, but nobody really knows about it.
I found two different, fully mixed versions of those songs and they actually sounded better than the versions released on Whiplash Love!
And all of these songs seemed to just fit together, almost like a concept album of some kind; but no, it was just a bunch of tracks I had that I put together.
I then got a guy called Rob Cannon, a comic book artist, to do the album cover – Rob also did the Dear Illusion album cover. So, after years of trying to do Dear Illusion, Desert Trip came out instead, and It was actually one of the easiest ones to do!
RM: Given the Covid situation at the time, did you get a chance to promote or play songs from Desert Trip around its release?
SH: Yes, I played locally, in Quebec, with mostly acoustic shows.
But Desert Trip was perfect for that. I couldn’t tour with a crew – we weren’t allowed – so I could only tour by myself, but doing those acoustic shows was great because it was something that had been in the back of my mind for a long time.
I always wanted to do an acoustic record and finally it happened – and I got to do those acoustic shows!
RM: As you said yourself around the release of Desert Trip, by coming out much later than first anticipated the songs resonated even more, given what we were going through in 2020 personally, pandemic wise, and globally. The knock-on delay to Dear Illusion worked in your favour too as it became the perfect 25th Anniversary as a recording artist present to yourself, and your fans. Sometimes it is, truly, all in the timing.
SH: Yes, sometimes you just have to trust life, you know? When it’s not working for you that’s sometimes because the right timing is just not there – but it will, eventually, be there.
RM: Given how evocative and in some instances soul-baring many of the Desert Trip songs are, my guess is your Californian travels were deeply inspiring.
SH: Oh yeah. Some of the songs I wrote just after I came back from California. Make Believe I wrote the week after I came back; Steal The Light From You, on Dear Illusion, was written that same week – or at least the original version called Bigger Star was, it has changed over the years.
So, yes, it was inspiring. It’s funny, sometime you can go for a couple of years and it seems like nothing good comes out of you but then it just hits you and these songs just happen, like Make Believe – I started playing it and the song was there!
And the lyrics to that one? I didn’t know what they meant at the time but it’s about Covid, and we didn’t have Covid when I wrote it! [laughs]
Now, I wanted to release an acoustic record but my agent at the time said "well, we’re about to release Solo Recordings Volume 3 in Europe so the timing isn’t right."
Then, when I was in the UK, I was talking to a record company but they wanted a live album so I put out a live album; that postponed the whole acoustic thing.
And, on top of that, I did a classical concerto with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra!
It took me nine months just to learn that; it was a contemporary piece of music but it was half an hour long and I’m not classically trained, at all – so that postponed a lot of things for me.
But once the concerto was done and those other albums had been released I started working on the songs again, as well as some others, some of which are on Dear Illusion – basically I was starting to work on a bunch of songs where some would appear on Desert Trip and some would appear on Dear Illusion.
RM: And I believe there was a version of Dear Illusion ready around the time Desert Trip was released?
SH: Yes, I had an album ready, fully mixed and mastered, when Covid hit, three years ago – I had just released a single and was about to release an album in April 2020 but decided not to release it because of Covid.
But during Covid I had been doing Facebook Live concerts from home, mostly playing acoustic; I had fifteen hundred to two thousand people every Friday night, so I did an acoustic playlist that I sold on Bandcamp, called the Acoustic Corona Playlist. From there I had the idea of doing an acoustic album of a few new songs and a few older songs, also to be called Acoustic Corona Playlist.
But then I did a photo-shoot where I had the Desert Trip tee shirt on; as I was looking through the photos I thought "Desert Trip would make a much better album than the Acoustic Corona Playlist!" [laughs]
So from there the album became Desert Trip, with the new songs I had and a bunch of other stuff that was unreleased – acoustic songs that I hadn’t released over the years, or had never finished.
I also had a couple of songs from an album of mine called Whiplash Love, that was released twelve years ago, but nobody really knows about it.
I found two different, fully mixed versions of those songs and they actually sounded better than the versions released on Whiplash Love!
And all of these songs seemed to just fit together, almost like a concept album of some kind; but no, it was just a bunch of tracks I had that I put together.
I then got a guy called Rob Cannon, a comic book artist, to do the album cover – Rob also did the Dear Illusion album cover. So, after years of trying to do Dear Illusion, Desert Trip came out instead, and It was actually one of the easiest ones to do!
RM: Given the Covid situation at the time, did you get a chance to promote or play songs from Desert Trip around its release?
SH: Yes, I played locally, in Quebec, with mostly acoustic shows.
But Desert Trip was perfect for that. I couldn’t tour with a crew – we weren’t allowed – so I could only tour by myself, but doing those acoustic shows was great because it was something that had been in the back of my mind for a long time.
I always wanted to do an acoustic record and finally it happened – and I got to do those acoustic shows!
RM: As you said yourself around the release of Desert Trip, by coming out much later than first anticipated the songs resonated even more, given what we were going through in 2020 personally, pandemic wise, and globally. The knock-on delay to Dear Illusion worked in your favour too as it became the perfect 25th Anniversary as a recording artist present to yourself, and your fans. Sometimes it is, truly, all in the timing.
SH: Yes, sometimes you just have to trust life, you know? When it’s not working for you that’s sometimes because the right timing is just not there – but it will, eventually, be there.
RM: Given how evocative and in some instances soul-baring many of the Desert Trip songs are, my guess is your Californian travels were deeply inspiring.
SH: Oh yeah. Some of the songs I wrote just after I came back from California. Make Believe I wrote the week after I came back; Steal The Light From You, on Dear Illusion, was written that same week – or at least the original version called Bigger Star was, it has changed over the years.
So, yes, it was inspiring. It’s funny, sometime you can go for a couple of years and it seems like nothing good comes out of you but then it just hits you and these songs just happen, like Make Believe – I started playing it and the song was there!
And the lyrics to that one? I didn’t know what they meant at the time but it’s about Covid, and we didn’t have Covid when I wrote it! [laughs]
RM: From Desert Trip to the all-encompassing Dear Illusion, which for me is your best album to date.
While there are darker shades lyrically – what ails us in the world today, the pandemic and lockdown periods – this is a very upbeat and positive album.
Keep It Together, for example, sounds like a nod to the pandemic blues but it's a very upbeat, Stonesy styled rock and roll song.
Was that generally upbeat vibe intentional?
SH: To be honest I didn’t think it would be upbeat, so I was surprised at the end when it was! [laughs]
I think a lot of that had to do with the order of the songs and, wow, that’s something that I can go crazy over!
Starting with All About The Love, followed by Keep it Together then Everything You Got, gave the album a very positive start; so then you can go to these darker places, but you’re in a positive vibe already.
And then there’s songs that nearly made the album but didn’t.
There was one song, for example, that was supposed to be on it but it gave a darker vibe to the whole thing; it was also a slow song, so that got replaced by She Gives Lessons in the Blues, which I had recorded a few year back and wasn’t originally supposed to be on the album.
The album ends on Until The Next Time, which is a song I really like; that’s actually one of the last songs I wrote for the album, that and So it Goes, which I wrote with Johnny Pilgrim.
That was all right in the middle of the pandemic. I was in my studio and basically it all felt horrible [laughs] so I wanted to write an upbeat song. I wrote to Johnny saying "send me lines that are synonyms of 'I’m feeling great'" and he came up with all of these different lines!
I wrote the chorus, it started coming together, and I wrote the whole thing in a day – in fact the vocal on that song is the vocal I recorded that same day.
It happened really quickly with So It Goes but others took years [laughs] – I had been working five or six years on Don’t Let the Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story and had about five or six different finished versions.
That song actually used to be eight or nine minutes long and at some point in its life had about ten verses!
It’s the prog rock song of the album [laughs]
RM: You beat me to the progressive punch because I was going to say it’s also one of the best songs you’ve written, primarily because of the great use of time changes and tempo-shifts.
You also have a great lyric, emphasised further on the great parody-video you did to accompany the song…
While there are darker shades lyrically – what ails us in the world today, the pandemic and lockdown periods – this is a very upbeat and positive album.
Keep It Together, for example, sounds like a nod to the pandemic blues but it's a very upbeat, Stonesy styled rock and roll song.
Was that generally upbeat vibe intentional?
SH: To be honest I didn’t think it would be upbeat, so I was surprised at the end when it was! [laughs]
I think a lot of that had to do with the order of the songs and, wow, that’s something that I can go crazy over!
Starting with All About The Love, followed by Keep it Together then Everything You Got, gave the album a very positive start; so then you can go to these darker places, but you’re in a positive vibe already.
And then there’s songs that nearly made the album but didn’t.
There was one song, for example, that was supposed to be on it but it gave a darker vibe to the whole thing; it was also a slow song, so that got replaced by She Gives Lessons in the Blues, which I had recorded a few year back and wasn’t originally supposed to be on the album.
The album ends on Until The Next Time, which is a song I really like; that’s actually one of the last songs I wrote for the album, that and So it Goes, which I wrote with Johnny Pilgrim.
That was all right in the middle of the pandemic. I was in my studio and basically it all felt horrible [laughs] so I wanted to write an upbeat song. I wrote to Johnny saying "send me lines that are synonyms of 'I’m feeling great'" and he came up with all of these different lines!
I wrote the chorus, it started coming together, and I wrote the whole thing in a day – in fact the vocal on that song is the vocal I recorded that same day.
It happened really quickly with So It Goes but others took years [laughs] – I had been working five or six years on Don’t Let the Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story and had about five or six different finished versions.
That song actually used to be eight or nine minutes long and at some point in its life had about ten verses!
It’s the prog rock song of the album [laughs]
RM: You beat me to the progressive punch because I was going to say it’s also one of the best songs you’ve written, primarily because of the great use of time changes and tempo-shifts.
You also have a great lyric, emphasised further on the great parody-video you did to accompany the song…
Photo by Scott Doubt
RM: I’m glad you mentioned So It Goes earlier because it’s just such a lovely short and sweet song, with the bonus of Johnny’s lyrical guidance. Johnny also provided the lyrics for Follow Your Heart?
SH: Yes, he did. Follow Your Heart was a song that I had first worked on years ago; in fact I came up with the chords about five years ago when I did a Christmas concert with my mom [laughs].
My mom’s in a choir, and they were part of a Christmas special; the guy who led the choir asked me if I’d come in and play guitar on a few tunes including one – I don’t remember what the song was called – that had a great chord change; that inspired me to write this song!
I worked on it for a while but I just couldn’t finish so put it aside; then about a year ago I was going through the hard drives – I have hard drives full of music here in my studio – and came upon that song, and it hit me that it had some potential, so I sent it to Johnny.
He liked it but he changed some the lyrics; basically he re-wrote the whole thing, which he did also for So It Goes. I had a lyric for that one but Johnny improved on those lyrics – the choruses are much the same but the verses became much better once Johnny started working on them.
Also, Follow you heart is the first song that I sent to Wayne Proctor.
RM: Perfect timing because I wanted to give mention to the part played by Wayne on the album.
How did you first get together?
SH: I first met Wayne about twelve years ago when he was playing with Oli Brown – we were playing a double bill up in Montreal and we had a jam at the end, which was fantastic!
Then, about five or six years ago, I was in Germany and doing another double bill, this time with Ben Poole, and there’s Wayne playing with Ben! So we have another jam and that was fantastic too! [laughs]
I also opened for King King back in 2018 when Wayne was playing with them.
I’ve always enjoyed his drumming – he knows how to play just behind the beat, in a way that not too many people can do any more.
We’re also friends on Facebook and once in a while he’ll message me to say "hey man, if you’ve got a track you want drums on send it to me."
So when I found Follow Your Heart I sent it over to him; I knew the song had potential but the drum track that I had recorded just wasn’t happening. Wayne sent it back and it was just perfect; his mix was great too.
Wayne ended up playing on six songs on Dear Illusion and mixing and mastering the record.
RM: Wayne has such a great ear; I’m pleased he‘s now getting a much recognition for his audio mixing and mastering skills as he is his talent behind a drum kit.
Returning to Johnny Pilgrim for a moment, we can’t not mention his starring role in the video for Everything You’ve Got, which caught just about everyone’s attention over here. It's a great song for starters but that video is so infectious; how can you not get up and start to dance like Johnny, or have a big grin on your face.
It also looks like you guys had some great, semi-improvised fun on the shoot…
SH: We did, yes! Johnny was staying at my place in Canada for a month last summer and at some point he was doing a dance; basically it was an imitation of a dance his girlfriend does. It was really hilarious!
Right then I got the idea for the video. I could actually see it, me in front of a white background trying to do a video while Johnny is up front just stealing my thunder, doing that dance! [laughs]
I had the idea one day and we filmed it two days later; and it’s one shot, just one camera.
We did about fifteen takes but the one we used is the very last take because usually, when I go on the rolling board thing, I don’t ever fall down, I can stay on that thing for hours – but on that take I very nearly fell of it and it was just perfect! [laughs]
Johnny of course also featured in the video for Don’t Let the Truth Get in The Way Of a Good Story.
I had the idea for that one also, but Johnny directed that one – Johnny is also a video director; in the eighties he worked with Metallica, KISS, Judas Priest, Bon Jovi – he’s even in a Bon Jovi video!
He also worked with Guns N' Roses, Poison and all the other hair and metal bands; he’s done ‘em all – he was the director for metal bands!
RM: That’s great. I never knew about Johnny's video director CV.
SH: Yeah, he started in the business because he went to California to go to UCLA film school – his first job was working for Alan Douglas, who at that time had access to Jimi Hendrix's unreleased tapes.
Johnny worked with Alan for years; Alan had all these tapes and Johnny’s first job was mixing and editing a Jimi Hendrix Experience performance in Miami.
Johnny actually has Jimi Hendrix's moccasins – I saw them and I touched them; it was like a spiritual experience; you can even see Hendrix's footprints. It's Johnny’s prized possession.
He's a very interesting character!
SH: Yes, he did. Follow Your Heart was a song that I had first worked on years ago; in fact I came up with the chords about five years ago when I did a Christmas concert with my mom [laughs].
My mom’s in a choir, and they were part of a Christmas special; the guy who led the choir asked me if I’d come in and play guitar on a few tunes including one – I don’t remember what the song was called – that had a great chord change; that inspired me to write this song!
I worked on it for a while but I just couldn’t finish so put it aside; then about a year ago I was going through the hard drives – I have hard drives full of music here in my studio – and came upon that song, and it hit me that it had some potential, so I sent it to Johnny.
He liked it but he changed some the lyrics; basically he re-wrote the whole thing, which he did also for So It Goes. I had a lyric for that one but Johnny improved on those lyrics – the choruses are much the same but the verses became much better once Johnny started working on them.
Also, Follow you heart is the first song that I sent to Wayne Proctor.
RM: Perfect timing because I wanted to give mention to the part played by Wayne on the album.
How did you first get together?
SH: I first met Wayne about twelve years ago when he was playing with Oli Brown – we were playing a double bill up in Montreal and we had a jam at the end, which was fantastic!
Then, about five or six years ago, I was in Germany and doing another double bill, this time with Ben Poole, and there’s Wayne playing with Ben! So we have another jam and that was fantastic too! [laughs]
I also opened for King King back in 2018 when Wayne was playing with them.
I’ve always enjoyed his drumming – he knows how to play just behind the beat, in a way that not too many people can do any more.
We’re also friends on Facebook and once in a while he’ll message me to say "hey man, if you’ve got a track you want drums on send it to me."
So when I found Follow Your Heart I sent it over to him; I knew the song had potential but the drum track that I had recorded just wasn’t happening. Wayne sent it back and it was just perfect; his mix was great too.
Wayne ended up playing on six songs on Dear Illusion and mixing and mastering the record.
RM: Wayne has such a great ear; I’m pleased he‘s now getting a much recognition for his audio mixing and mastering skills as he is his talent behind a drum kit.
Returning to Johnny Pilgrim for a moment, we can’t not mention his starring role in the video for Everything You’ve Got, which caught just about everyone’s attention over here. It's a great song for starters but that video is so infectious; how can you not get up and start to dance like Johnny, or have a big grin on your face.
It also looks like you guys had some great, semi-improvised fun on the shoot…
SH: We did, yes! Johnny was staying at my place in Canada for a month last summer and at some point he was doing a dance; basically it was an imitation of a dance his girlfriend does. It was really hilarious!
Right then I got the idea for the video. I could actually see it, me in front of a white background trying to do a video while Johnny is up front just stealing my thunder, doing that dance! [laughs]
I had the idea one day and we filmed it two days later; and it’s one shot, just one camera.
We did about fifteen takes but the one we used is the very last take because usually, when I go on the rolling board thing, I don’t ever fall down, I can stay on that thing for hours – but on that take I very nearly fell of it and it was just perfect! [laughs]
Johnny of course also featured in the video for Don’t Let the Truth Get in The Way Of a Good Story.
I had the idea for that one also, but Johnny directed that one – Johnny is also a video director; in the eighties he worked with Metallica, KISS, Judas Priest, Bon Jovi – he’s even in a Bon Jovi video!
He also worked with Guns N' Roses, Poison and all the other hair and metal bands; he’s done ‘em all – he was the director for metal bands!
RM: That’s great. I never knew about Johnny's video director CV.
SH: Yeah, he started in the business because he went to California to go to UCLA film school – his first job was working for Alan Douglas, who at that time had access to Jimi Hendrix's unreleased tapes.
Johnny worked with Alan for years; Alan had all these tapes and Johnny’s first job was mixing and editing a Jimi Hendrix Experience performance in Miami.
Johnny actually has Jimi Hendrix's moccasins – I saw them and I touched them; it was like a spiritual experience; you can even see Hendrix's footprints. It's Johnny’s prized possession.
He's a very interesting character!
RM: From one artistic visual medium – video – to another – the comic book.
Supporting Dear Illusion the album is Dear Illusion the comic book. I know you are a comic book geek and aficionado of the art form, which is great because so am I – albeit I’m more of a Batman-geek.
I’d love to hear the background to how the comic book came about...
SH: Well, first of all, there’s another guy in the two videos we’ve talked about and his name is Kevin Roditeli.
Kevin has been a comic book publisher for a long time and is co-founder of Whatnot Publishing.
Whatnot is an app that runs auctions and it’s become huge – there was an article in Forbes about these guys!
I met Kevin five years ago when he was working in a comic book store, but he’s been working for my record company now for two years; we also bought a bar in my home town!
Kevin is friends with Rob Cannon – Kevin and Rob worked together on a comic book series called Freak Snow and Rob is also part of Whatnot, so that’s how I got in touch with Rob about doing a comic book.
I'm a huge comic book geek, as you said. I spend between three to five hundred dollars a month on comics – that’s new comics, the new releases – but I have collections going back years.
My prize possession is Amazing Spider-Man #14, the first appearance of Green Goblin. I also have every issue of Amazing Spider-Man between #30 and #400 but I like to collect first appearances – I’m into the classics.
My favourite comic to read is, actually, Batman; I read everything that comes out about Batman but I don’t collect it because, as you know, that’s an eighty plus years thing over so many different publications; that would really take a lot of money to collect! [laughs]. I do have some special issues here and there, though.
RM: I have rare, special, first appearance, classic and collectible Batman comics from the forties through to the present day. It's a relatively small collection, about two comic book bins worth, but – and you will immediately understand and appreciate this Steve – collectively, they are worth far more than the car I’m currently driving [laughter].
I take it you’re very happy with what Rob did for you, and what he brought to the art table?
SH: Oh totally. Rob did the artwork for the Desert Trip album and it was so much better than what I had in mind; he had that thing in there with the Fibonacci sequence, and other stuff.
I really loved what he did with that cover, so he was the obvious choice for Dear Illusion – he then came up with such an amazing cover for Dear Illusion that we both said "OK, we gotta do a comic book!"
And the timing was right – he had the time to do it so we could be ready for the release of the album.
I just let him go with it and he really got it – in fact in the press release for Dear Illusion, where I’m being quoted talking about the album? That’s actually Rob! [laughs]
Rob wrote that stuff and I’m thinking "Jesus, he understands this album better than myself!" [laughter]
I couldn’t see the whole picture, because I was way too close to it, but he had this vison about the album and it really made sense! So, when it came time to write the comic, I just said to him "go ahead and write the story you think the album is about."
And I really do feel like the message is there, but in a science fiction setting so it’s completely different, but visually stunning – it has this style to it, and Rob found a way to put Desert Trip and Dear Illusion within the framework.
RM: Yes, it’s the best of both album worlds.
To put my comic book hat back on for a moment, Rob’s experimental-come-psychedelic style and chosen colour palette perfectly suit the Desert Trip landscapes; they act as a backdrop to a science fiction story that cleverly references Dear Illusion song themes.
In summation, given the quality of Dear Illusion and how well the comic book turned out, 2022 turned out to be a good year to celebrate your twenty-fifth year as a recording artist.
SH: 2022 was quite the year for me. I worked non-stop until late in the year when I had a car crash where I should have been killed. I was coming back from a show and five minutes from getting to my place I fell asleep at the wheel and had a really bad accident; the car was a total wreck but I got out of it with nothing but a few scratches. The police and everybody who arrived at the scene said it was a miracle.
For the next twenty-four hours I was going around thinking "I’m the luckiest guy on earth!"
Then, the very next day, my father died unexpectedly. That’s when I decided to take a break.
RM: That’s a truly awful forty-eight hours for anyone to go through and have to process; I’m so sorry you had to go through that.
SH: And that’s not all. I told you earlier I’m a bar owner? A guy went missing, after being in my bar, just a week after my accident. I was stuck in a media frenzy because some people said he had been beaten up in my bar, or that some people had put a drug in his drink, which was a complete lie!
So, I’m stuck in the middle of all this because I’m the spokesperson for the bar and this is right after my accident, and right after my father had died!
Thing have settled down now – they still haven’t found the guy but they are saying he just went home, which is in South America – but it was a big thing at the time.
Prior to that I had basically worked for a year without having a day off – it was six or seven days a week of being a musician and a one-man band, a record label owner and a bar manager. It was a lot to take care of.
But, before my father died, we built a studio in my house and there’s also going to be a web series, which will come out this year.
But, yes, last year I did a comic book, I released an album, bought a bar and built a studio – and my dad got to see all of that. I sent the video of Don’t Let the Truth Get in the Way Of a Good Story to my mom the night before my father died and he found it hilarious; that was probably the last time he laughed.
But I know he was proud and he got to see all the things I had done before he died – and life goes on, as he would say.
Supporting Dear Illusion the album is Dear Illusion the comic book. I know you are a comic book geek and aficionado of the art form, which is great because so am I – albeit I’m more of a Batman-geek.
I’d love to hear the background to how the comic book came about...
SH: Well, first of all, there’s another guy in the two videos we’ve talked about and his name is Kevin Roditeli.
Kevin has been a comic book publisher for a long time and is co-founder of Whatnot Publishing.
Whatnot is an app that runs auctions and it’s become huge – there was an article in Forbes about these guys!
I met Kevin five years ago when he was working in a comic book store, but he’s been working for my record company now for two years; we also bought a bar in my home town!
Kevin is friends with Rob Cannon – Kevin and Rob worked together on a comic book series called Freak Snow and Rob is also part of Whatnot, so that’s how I got in touch with Rob about doing a comic book.
I'm a huge comic book geek, as you said. I spend between three to five hundred dollars a month on comics – that’s new comics, the new releases – but I have collections going back years.
My prize possession is Amazing Spider-Man #14, the first appearance of Green Goblin. I also have every issue of Amazing Spider-Man between #30 and #400 but I like to collect first appearances – I’m into the classics.
My favourite comic to read is, actually, Batman; I read everything that comes out about Batman but I don’t collect it because, as you know, that’s an eighty plus years thing over so many different publications; that would really take a lot of money to collect! [laughs]. I do have some special issues here and there, though.
RM: I have rare, special, first appearance, classic and collectible Batman comics from the forties through to the present day. It's a relatively small collection, about two comic book bins worth, but – and you will immediately understand and appreciate this Steve – collectively, they are worth far more than the car I’m currently driving [laughter].
I take it you’re very happy with what Rob did for you, and what he brought to the art table?
SH: Oh totally. Rob did the artwork for the Desert Trip album and it was so much better than what I had in mind; he had that thing in there with the Fibonacci sequence, and other stuff.
I really loved what he did with that cover, so he was the obvious choice for Dear Illusion – he then came up with such an amazing cover for Dear Illusion that we both said "OK, we gotta do a comic book!"
And the timing was right – he had the time to do it so we could be ready for the release of the album.
I just let him go with it and he really got it – in fact in the press release for Dear Illusion, where I’m being quoted talking about the album? That’s actually Rob! [laughs]
Rob wrote that stuff and I’m thinking "Jesus, he understands this album better than myself!" [laughter]
I couldn’t see the whole picture, because I was way too close to it, but he had this vison about the album and it really made sense! So, when it came time to write the comic, I just said to him "go ahead and write the story you think the album is about."
And I really do feel like the message is there, but in a science fiction setting so it’s completely different, but visually stunning – it has this style to it, and Rob found a way to put Desert Trip and Dear Illusion within the framework.
RM: Yes, it’s the best of both album worlds.
To put my comic book hat back on for a moment, Rob’s experimental-come-psychedelic style and chosen colour palette perfectly suit the Desert Trip landscapes; they act as a backdrop to a science fiction story that cleverly references Dear Illusion song themes.
In summation, given the quality of Dear Illusion and how well the comic book turned out, 2022 turned out to be a good year to celebrate your twenty-fifth year as a recording artist.
SH: 2022 was quite the year for me. I worked non-stop until late in the year when I had a car crash where I should have been killed. I was coming back from a show and five minutes from getting to my place I fell asleep at the wheel and had a really bad accident; the car was a total wreck but I got out of it with nothing but a few scratches. The police and everybody who arrived at the scene said it was a miracle.
For the next twenty-four hours I was going around thinking "I’m the luckiest guy on earth!"
Then, the very next day, my father died unexpectedly. That’s when I decided to take a break.
RM: That’s a truly awful forty-eight hours for anyone to go through and have to process; I’m so sorry you had to go through that.
SH: And that’s not all. I told you earlier I’m a bar owner? A guy went missing, after being in my bar, just a week after my accident. I was stuck in a media frenzy because some people said he had been beaten up in my bar, or that some people had put a drug in his drink, which was a complete lie!
So, I’m stuck in the middle of all this because I’m the spokesperson for the bar and this is right after my accident, and right after my father had died!
Thing have settled down now – they still haven’t found the guy but they are saying he just went home, which is in South America – but it was a big thing at the time.
Prior to that I had basically worked for a year without having a day off – it was six or seven days a week of being a musician and a one-man band, a record label owner and a bar manager. It was a lot to take care of.
But, before my father died, we built a studio in my house and there’s also going to be a web series, which will come out this year.
But, yes, last year I did a comic book, I released an album, bought a bar and built a studio – and my dad got to see all of that. I sent the video of Don’t Let the Truth Get in the Way Of a Good Story to my mom the night before my father died and he found it hilarious; that was probably the last time he laughed.
But I know he was proud and he got to see all the things I had done before he died – and life goes on, as he would say.
Photo by Szymon Goralczyk
RM: It does, but it doesn’t lessen the loss, for which my sincerest condolences.
But what a lovely and poignant closing chapter to your relationship with your father where you did, quite literally, give him a last laugh before he passed. He would indeed be immensely proud.
Thanks for spending time with FabricationsHQ, Steve, it’s been a pleasure.
SH: Thank you so much, it's been nice talking to you my friend – Happy New Year to everyone over in the UK!
Ross Muir
Muirsical Conversation With Steve Hill
January 2023
Dear Illusion is available worldwide from https://ffm.to/dearillusion and the official store
Physical copies of the Dear Illusion comic book are available here
The digital edition of the Dear Illusion comic book is available here
Official website: https://www.stevehillmusic.com/
Steve Hill's bandcamp page (full digital catalogue available): https://stevehillmusic.bandcamp.com/
Photo Credits: Scott Doubt (top & middle image); Szymon Goralczyk (bottom image)
But what a lovely and poignant closing chapter to your relationship with your father where you did, quite literally, give him a last laugh before he passed. He would indeed be immensely proud.
Thanks for spending time with FabricationsHQ, Steve, it’s been a pleasure.
SH: Thank you so much, it's been nice talking to you my friend – Happy New Year to everyone over in the UK!
Ross Muir
Muirsical Conversation With Steve Hill
January 2023
Dear Illusion is available worldwide from https://ffm.to/dearillusion and the official store
Physical copies of the Dear Illusion comic book are available here
The digital edition of the Dear Illusion comic book is available here
Official website: https://www.stevehillmusic.com/
Steve Hill's bandcamp page (full digital catalogue available): https://stevehillmusic.bandcamp.com/
Photo Credits: Scott Doubt (top & middle image); Szymon Goralczyk (bottom image)