Steve Arvey: Soul Man.

Steve Arvey plays the Great Northern Hotel in Byron Bay on Friday, the Laurel Bank Hall in Toowoomba on Saturday, the Island boat cruise on Sunday and the Forest Café, Mt Tamborine on February 5.

Hailing from Chicago, singer/songwriter/guitarist Steve Arvey has the blues credentials. He’s a regular performer at Buddy Guy’s Legends. He’s played with the likes of Frank Frost, Hubert Sumlin, Junior Wells and Bo Diddley among others. He’s made the bill of the Chicago Blues Festival and the Big Wheel Blues Fest on the Isle of Man more than once. Now he’s touring Australia, releasing his fifth album, Soul Of A Man, while he’s here.

Steve describes his music as being very deeply based in the blues, yet the term is insufficient to cover the considerable variety of his sounds. He also derives much from other roots music forms.

“When I play at home I have four different projects. I do my solo acoustic stuff. Then I form a duo with Kraig Kenning. There’s a band called Westside Heat that I’ve had since 1981 that’s more Chicago rock blues, harmonica, guitar, bass and drums. Then I have another band called Steve Arvey & The Outsiders which is more of a R&B and jazz group. Chicago is a very big town. You’ve got to have a lot of different applications.”

Soul of Man was recorded from the time just after the September 11 disaster until the end of February. In style and format, it’s very similar to Steve’s previous album, It’s a Fine Line. 

“I produced it with Jim Reeves in Chicago. Jim Reeves is a master producer who has worked with everybody from John Lennon, Manhattan Transfer, Greg Allman, ZZ Top. He’s got a lot of gold albums. He was a great engineer and a great producer. He has a lot of respect with the band. When you record, you always have a lot of egos. People don’t want to be told what to do. He’s basically very good at telling everyone to go ahead, why don’t you do this? Even myself, he puts me in my place too.”

About half the songs on Soul of a Man are original, penned by Arvey.

‘There’s a lot of old country blues stuff that I remade to my own thing. Some traditional arrangements. I just have a little riff or a saying, somebody says something and then I go ahead and put it on my little recorder, then I go back later on when I have time and when I want to get down to it, I take all the melodies, riffs, sayings, sometimes lyrics come into my head, then I start putting it all together. I have a lot of tapes. I tape all my shows in the States, and just say we come up with a riff or something and there’s a good idea musically, then we go back to it.’