Steve Young Concert this Friday benefits WSLR

Renegade Picker Comes to Town

Steve Young has never fit comfortably into categories. He follows his own musical and spiritual quest, weaving together Southern roots with a wide experience of life, and creating new traditions in American music. Steve Young will perform in benefit for WSLR on Friday, May 2^nd at Holley Hall in the Beatrice Friedman Symphony Center. Local musician James Hawkins and his band Cold Harbor will open the show at 8pm. The concert is a benefit for WSLR-LP 96.5, Sarasota’s Community radio station. Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 at the door. Tickets can be purchased by calling (941) 894-6469 or through the website at www.wslr.org.

TUNE IN TO 96.5 FROM 4-5PM FRIDAY TO HEAR STEVE LIVE ON THE RADIO!

Young was born in Georgia and grew up in Alabama, Georgia and Texas in a family which moved frequently in search of work. By the time he had completed high school in Beaumont, Texas, he was playing guitar and writing songs which incorporated influences of folk, country, gospel, and blues musicians and people like Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and others.

Part Cherokee by birth, steeped in Baptist fundamentalism as a child, yet attracted to a Zen spirituality, the young man from the South with a nomadic spirit went on to create a unique form of American roots music with a truly global perspective.

Young’s live performances express the depth and power of his vision. He draws on his own songs, on Southern folk songs from varied traditions, on collaborations and on the best of contemporary songwriters such as J.D. Loudermilk, David Olney and others.

Through 12 albums and countless live performances, Steve Young’s music has remained fresh and aggressive, with a sense of deepening spirituality, and a consistent intellectual and artistic challenge, to himself and to his audience.

Many of the stars of the music industry have recorded Steve Young songs, and in some cases forged a career image around them. “Lonesome, Orn’ry & Mean,” for example, became the signature tune for ‘Outlaw’ Waylon Jennings. Hank Williams Jr.’s cover of “Montgomery In The Rain” remains a classic.

Certainly the most-covered Steve Young song of all is “Seven Bridges Road,” which has been recorded at various times by artists like Joan Baez, Rita Coolidge, Iain Matthews, the Eagles, Ricochet, and, most recently, Dolly Parton.

While Steve Young songs have brought commercial success to others, Young has never been close enough to the mainstream to sustain his occasional brushes with stardom. He has been unwilling to accept the loss of artistic control that the industry expects of its stars. And while Steve has lived in country music towns like Nashville and Austin, and his songs have had a strong impact on the direction of country music, he rejects the country label for himself. Young is in many ways a cultural dynamic in himself.

Steve continues to tour extensively in the U.S., Canada and Europe, as well as more distant portions of the globe. As a writer, recording artist and a live performer, he is an artist at the very peak of his powers — quite simply, not to be missed.

Posted in: WSLR Blog Updates

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