Les Nuits: Seasick Steve

Seasick Steve, with his trademark long beard and casual baseball cap, is still wandering around. With his raw, ramshackle blues sound he launched one of the most extraordinary careers of the last decade. He’s seventy plus, but because he only tasted success when he was already pensionable, he feels there’s no time left to lose. You can hear this sense of urgency on his vibrant new album, Hubcap Music. It’s no surprise that Jack White, sonically his son, is on the guest list. John Paul Jones, “the dude from Led Zeppelin”, is omnipresent too, on gourd banjo, mandolin, and so on. He even plays the organ on “Coast Is Clear”, a love song Steve composed for his wife on his characteristic three-string trance wonder.

But next to hubcap, cigar box, and other cheap guitars, could that be the engine of your new tractor running on the new album?
Seasick Steve: Yes! But, it’s an old John Deere 4020 from 1965! I’ve got a few tractors now, but this 6-cylinder diesel is surely the biggest one.

We can see a picture of you posing next to it on your Facebook page.
Seasick Steve: Yes, I remember. My wife took that picture. John Deere is just the brand that’s everywhere where I grew up. Making this new album I just felt like recording whatever I wanted. I don’t got no time to fool around.

And the songs, do they keep on coming?
Seasick Steve: Sure, I had fifty years of practice: I can write songs till the cows come home. I don’t have no writer’s block. Writing has always been my therapy. In the past nobody was listening. I did it for myself, as a way to get it out. When I pick up my guitar, memories, often about life on the farm, come naturally.

Do you see this success at a later age as an advantage? As a young twenty something...
Seasick Steve: …I would have been dead by now. Oh yeah. If I would have had money a long time ago, I would have drank and drugged myself to death. I wasn’t smarter than any other kid, probably a lot worse.

You’re the oldest musician at most of the festivals you play now: what goes on in your head when the crowd starts yelling?
Seasick Steve: It’s a weird miracle, man. I just cannot believe they let us out there. But I was at the right time and place, opening this little window. People were hungry for something raw. On stage I could see the hunger in their eyes. It was timing, and my car came up.

You’re older than my dad, but his energy level is way lower than yours.
Seasick Steve: Mine was too. But success is the greatest medicine. I used to just sit and look out of the window. But while staring I already had this kind of fire inside me; it just didn’t have the chance to come out.

And now the girls go crazy.
Seasick Steve: They do, but I ain’t gonna be flying off for some young gal. Some of them girls tried: “Oh Steve, you want to come with me?” Excuse me? [Laughs] It’s a nice compliment, but I’m like a grandfather, and I consider myself very lucky being married to my wife for 31 years now.

10/5, 19.00, Koninklijk Circus/Cirque Royal

Les Nuits • 30/4 > 13/5, Botanique & Koninklijk Circus/Cirque Royal, www.botanique.be