Steve Smith –Recording Artist/Songwriter/Composer

I started my little musical life in 1992, when I auditioned for a local South London band called ‘Higher Ground’. I joined the band as a percussionist, but when the lead singer, a local respected DJ Andy Nichols, left the band I stepped up to the microphone for the very first time! We build up such a large following that it caught the attention of the legendary Paul Weller, who asked us to open up for him at his Crystal Palace Bowl concert in the summer of 1997. This was the highest point for the band, and shortly after we split. I had always kept up my percussion playing while in Higher Ground, and I played live gigs all over the world for famous club nights such as Ministry of Sound, Pacha and Manumission. I carried on my session playing and played for successful dance artists such as Evolution and Shiva. By the winter of 1998 I was spending every weekend playing out at clubs so I could spend my weekdays learning the craft of song writing. After some unsuccessful attempts of bagging a Record deal, I decided to grab everything I own and drive from London to Ibiza. Amongst all the madness that this place can offer, I found it a very inspiring place to write. I came home that summer with many songs and ideas, and after a writing session with a friend of mine, a song called ‘Days go by’ was finished.

Around that time I had bumped into an old DJ friend from the club-scene called Paul Harris, who was buzzing about a guy that he’d been working with. This turned out to be Ben Harris (no relation) and we made plans to meet in the studio in following week. Two days later, Dirty Vegas was born!!
We signed to Parlophone Records shortly after and set about recording our first album.

As proud as we we’re of the finished Album, what lay ahead was a huge surprise to all of us. Advertising giants ‘Deutsch LA’ played the song ‘Days go by’ to their client, Mitsubishi and they loved what they heard. The song was picked for a new campaign and US radio stations were getting calls for the track. Upon its US release June 4, 2002 the Album landed at No.7 on the Billboard Album chart.  It went on to sell close to a million records worldwide.

Following the release of the album, Dirty Vegas toured the four corners of the globe, developing a reputation as a powerful and entertaining live act. In a rollercoaster 2 years, the band headlined their own worldwide tour, supported such like-minded artists as Moby and Groove Armada, stole the show at a number of international festivals, including Coachella, V Festival, Roskilde and Fuji Rock.

In 2003, we we’re nominated for 3 Grammy Award’s and managed to win the best of the bunch, "Best Dance Single." recorded an acoustic version of the Beatles classic ‘With a little help from my Friends’ for the last ever episode of ‘Friends’, performed an unforgettable live version of ‘Days go by/One nation under a groove’ with the legendary Bootsy Collins, won a ‘Playboy’ magazine award and shot a video with Supermodel Helena Christensen.

In 2004 we released our second Album, ’One’ Recorded in London, Cornwall, and Scotland, we wanted the album to be more organic than our first record. The first single ‘Walk into the Sun’ set the dancefloors on fire and UK radio station XFM playlisted the track for 8 weeks. But some felt that the experimental sound was too far from the first album. Songs such as, ‘Given you everything’ and ‘Human Love’ are some of the most favourite songs I’ve ever been part of. The Album wasn’t as much a commercial success as the first one, and the record company were worried about releasing a second single. This atmosphere caused both Paul and Ben to leave the band, but after all that we had done I felt that there was still a future for the band.

May 2005, saw us perform our last concert together at the Shepherds Bush Empire, and what a night!! Truly one of the most amazing gigs I have ever done! I started to feel unsettled in London, and decided to get away for a while. Over the summer of ‘05, I released a track called ‘Loving you more’ with Legendary House DJ Steve Mac that was a huge track of the summer. And in August I performed the track live from my spiritual home, Ibiza for Radio 1’s 10th anniversary.
In late 2005 I took my girlfriend and daughter to a friends wedding on the South Shore of Massachusetts, and while there, fell in love with the place and felt very inspired!

So we packed up our belongings and headed to the USA, with no band and few contacts in Massachusetts I figured it would all work out? In early 2006 we arrived to a very cold winter and an even colder house! But this got the juices flowing and I started to write songs again, but like a few years before when I was living in Ibiza, I had no one to write for but myself. I started to work with a local Musician/Producer called Gene Williams who encouraged me to get the songs down and try and use the ‘Club’ background that I had with the traditional songwriting I have always wanted to do. I scored the music to a fantastic film called ‘Boys and Girls guide to Getting Down’ and wrote the song for the opening title sequence for the Fox TV show ‘Standoff’ which was nominated for an Emmy. When Gene and myself started to work on a track called ‘This Town’ I said I wanted it to sound like Bruce Springsteen and Martin Hannett ‘do ecstasy’ in the studio. But I was looking for a guitarist that would understand Northern England in the early 80’s as much as ‘Small Faces’ and ‘Thin Lizzy’. That person was Anthony Saffery from the band Cornershop, and he lived in Cambridge Mass, I got his number though a friend of mine and we met for coffee and talked about music, living away from the UK etc. Then I gave him the CD of some of the songs that we’re to be on ‘This Town’. He called later that night and said he loved the songs and would be up for playing on them. After further listening and talking about the way the songs should be presented, Anthony suggested we try recording at a legendary studio in Boston called ‘Camp Street’ (formerly Fort Apache Studios) where The Pixies, The Lemonheads and many other great rock/indie bands from the area had worked. We started recording the album in May 2007 and many great musicians seemed to be around or interested to play on the songs. When it came to ‘This Town’ we had this beautiful long intro that I imagined a ‘strong spoken voice’ speaking about life and learning from mistakes etc. From my house music background I would of gone searching for ‘samples’ of speeches, but a chance meeting between Anthony’s wife and actor John Savage (Deer Hunter/Hair) in a Cambridge store, led to her asking him to come and record some spoken word. He came to Camp St and I asked him questions about his life and well as advice about his career. The result was an inspirational speech gilded the spirit and subject matter of the song together. After this, the great musicians kept coming, Claudia Gonson from the fantastic Magnetic Fields came to sing backing vocals on ‘Comedown Queen’, Rob Swift from the X-ecutioners played some futuristic scratching on the final track of the album, ‘That Town’. Terry Barber, a counter-tenor for the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed a stunning aria on ‘This Town’. But for me the most poignant performance on the record was from Jay Ungar, the lead fiddle player from James Horner’s score for the film ‘Legends of the Fall’. The score to this film was my late father’s favourite classical piece of music, so when I approached Jay after one of his performances in a local church and told him of a song that I had written about my father, he agreed to play on the song. So with the Album now complete, I hope to head out and play some shows and continue to write music to stop myself from going insane!

TO BE CONTINUED!........