A road song: a song of longing to get back from solitude, back home. Risking it all on a dangerous all-night drive, the driver has to keep going, has to get to love. Written from the point of view of a sleep-deprived vagabond, we are in his netherworld, reaching out for love.
Steve Louw
A 1964 Epiphone Casino guitar gave me the gift of this song. The intro riff played high on the neck, sounding ‘Beatlesque’, led me to the chord changes and chorus.
A song of endings and beginning of solace in solitude, of joy in the future, of hope, resilience, and anticipation for the future.
Steve Louw
I had old traditional Country songs, like “Long Black Veil” in mind when I wrote, “I’ll be Back”.
It’s essentially an acoustic song in its structure, story, and heart, but recorded in the context of drums and electric guitar, with a great Hammond solo by Kevin McKendree.
The acoustic guitar riff, doubled with Doug Lancio’s great mandolin playing, is the song’s beating heart and sets up the verse, the chorus, and the narrative.
I think of “I’ll be Back” as a modern folk song. Its story of the triangle of deceived husband, star-crossed lovers, and murder is one that keeps playing out through centuries.
The acoustic instrumentation sets the backdrop for the song, one of dusty plains, small-town intrigue, and broken love.
Steve Louw
EXTRACT FROM BIOGRAPHY
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Louw celebrates the restorative, nourishing love on “Mother, Don’t Go,” an insightful, insistent tune graced by guitar wizard Joe Bonamassa, who brings out the song’s incandescent spirit as he intertwines his playing with that of Doug Lancio, a guitarist who has just entered Louw’s orbit.
In 2020 I had been in my home on our farm for more than six months when I made the trip to Cape Town. I had been playing the only guitar that I had with me, an old acoustic. In town, I traded with my buddy, Willem Moller, for a beautiful 1964 Epiphone Casino.
Steve Louw
When I got home, I took the Casino out of its case, and the first thing I played on it was the riff on “Mother, Don’t Go”. The riff took me to the lyric, to the beauty of a mother’s love. It’s a simple song, and its simplicity celebrates the joy and longing for unconditional, selfless love.
Written from the point of view of what we face in the aftermath of the last two years, the character in the song walks the line between right and wrong, unsure where that line is drawn and the consequences of following a moral imperative.
We are all making our way and, on our journey, trying to surpass the physical and spiritual roadblocks we encounter with grace and love for ourselves and our fellow travellers.
Steve Louw, September 2022
My grandfather was a railroadman and in the 1930s my father rode trains looking for work. To me, trains symbolise our attempts to bend nature to our will – and we’re seeing that trying to do that will never work. Silence will always return to the plains, the wind will blow, tracks will crumble and the earth will breathe again. This song has the wide open plains in it; dry cracked earth and a broken land.
The song builds from a driving acoustic guitar and hypnotic bassline to a haunting guitar solo by Rob. The production brings out the relentlessness of the song and of what we inflict on our planet.
Steve Louw
I like the opening line: “I’d rather walk than drive another mile with you.” Two people who can’t figure out if they love or hate each other, or both . . . It’s different to all the other songs but the in-your-face vocal, acoustic guitar riff and weird time signature sucks you into their personal mayhem.
I only had the “get out of my heart” line when I started writing this song, singing along to power chords and a Bo Diddley-type beat, and later wrote the verses. I thought of the song as a rocker and a cry in the dark. We played it that way live and it went down well but I felt the song was too linear for the lyric and I put it aside.
About a week before going into the studio I tried playing and singing the chorus in a different time signature and suddenly the song took on the mood of the lyric, which is pretty dark – and the story came into stark relief. Once we got the time signature nailed down in the studio I found I could sing the lyrics with the space it needed. I love the sound of the vocal.
Steve Louw
I once took a long canoe trip down the Colorado River, through the Grand Canyon and out again. It was a very spacy spiritual place and it felt like I was on a journey to the middle of the earth. I wrote this after the trip. On one level the song is about the river trip and the journey deep inside the raw power and beating heart of nature, but it also reflects on time, our time on Earth, how we experience it, and how the bonds of deep personal relationships with our fellow travellers nurture our souls. I played the acoustic guitar using a few African-style riffs and the band picked up on that feel. Guitarist Rob McNelley contributed beautiful slide guitar.
Steve Louw
In January last year, Joe Bonamassa, his band and I went to Abbey Road Studios in London to make an album, that was to become Royal Tea. After we finished tracking the album I went to Nashville to make a record with my long time friend from South Africa, Steve Louw. It was in the middle of this that I realized we’d forgotten to do a guitar solo on the title track of Joe’s album. So I called Joe (he was on tour, in Florida at the time and he said he could stop by the studio in Nashville on his way to Chicago. Which he did, in his big luxury tour bus. He walked into the studio carrying his fender amp and one guitar and we did the solo, that you now hear on his album. As I was in the middle of recording Steve Louw‘s album, Steve asked if Joe’d be interested in playing a solo on one of his tracks. Steve had been very accommodating and just let us use his studio time, and Joe commented “well I suppose there’s no such thing as a free lunch” He then played a blinding one-take guitar solo on this wonderful track of Steve’s called “Wind in your Hair” Enjoy it!
Kevin Shirley on Facebook, April 2021
Steve’s new album called Headlight Dreams is out on May 7.
Go and follow him on Instagram and check out his site http://headlightdreams.com
We wanted to do a road trip movie which takes you into a world of freedom, beauty and wide open spaces.
We also wanted the images to relate back to the chorus lyric
“ When I look down the road
I see you standing there
With the sunlight on your face
And the wind in your hair”and to capture the feeling of love and longing on the road ahead, the sense of wonder not knowing where the road leads, or what is waiting up around the bend.
Steve Louw
Recorded live at The Little Theatre, Cape Town in 2008, Big Sky presents Heart & Soul features hit tracks from previous albums as well as unreleased material. Heart & Soul features an acoustic set with slide guitar, harmonica, tea chest bass, percussion, double bass and mandolin, then the band unleashes a full-tilt rocking electric electric set culminating in a blues jam of ferocious power.
Strange Room is a “S’Effrican in New York” thing with a reference to Sting, singing about Russians and trees, and all he’s got is a one-way ticket and a case of anti-freeze. Truly terrific
Michael Cross
The title, somewhat anthemic track, refers to the South African situation and includes the lines: “People suffer for so long now … We’re still waiting for the dawn / For the sea to wash the sins from our sands.” Good stuff.
Glynis O’Hara, The Star TONIGHT!
Recorded live at The Little Theatre, Cape Town in 2008, Big Sky presents Heart & Soul features hit tracks from previous albums as well as unreleased material. Heart & Soul features an acoustic set with slide guitar, harmonica, tea chest bass, percussion, double bass and mandolin, then the band unleashes a full-tilt rocking electric electric set culminating in a blues jam of ferocious power.
Recorded live at The Little Theatre, Cape Town in 2008, Big Sky presents Heart & Soul features hit tracks from previous albums as well as unreleased material. Heart & Soul features an acoustic set with slide guitar, harmonica, tea chest bass, percussion, double bass and mandolin, then the band unleashes a full-tilt rocking electric electric set culminating in a blues jam of ferocious power.
Steve Louw 