Steven Gene Wold is an American blues musician. He plays mostly personalized guitars and sings, usually about his early life. He has played with Son House, John Lee Hooker, Joni Mitchell, Albert King and Albert King’s band the Tremens. In 2000, he gave his age as 50, though later publicity implied that he was older.
About Seasick Steve in brief
Steven Gene Wold is an American blues musician. He plays mostly personalized guitars and sings, usually about his early life. Wold was born in Oakland, California, as Steven Gene Leach, though his biographer suggests that he may have been adopted as a baby. He claimed to have lived rough and on the road in Tennessee, Mississippi and elsewhere, until at least the late 1960s. In 2000, he gave his age as 50, though later publicity implied that he was older. He took the surname Wold in the early 1980s, from that of his second wife. He has played with Son House, John Lee Hooker, Joni Mitchell, Albert King and Albert King’s band the Tremens. He left California in 1972 and moved to Paris, France, where he busked the Métro. In 1976, he worked with French producer Lee Hallyday and fronted the disco group Crystal Grass Up. He appeared on two Crystal Grass albums released by Philips Records in France, around this time. He also worked in the 1970s in Hawaii and worked as a session musician and studio engineer, as well as in occasional manual jobs. In the mid-2000s, he first became successful in the UK, in the mid to late 1990s. His commercial breakthrough was at the end of 2006, when he released the album Seasick Steve. He now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Victoria Johnson, and their two sons. He is married to his third wife, who he has been married to for 25 years.
In 2016, an unauthorized biography by Matthew Wright presented evidence that parts of Wold’s backstory might have been exaggerated. He attended the Monterey Pop Festival, regularly saw bands such as The Grateful Dead perform in the area, and became acquainted with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. In about 1969, he toured clubs in the region as a backing musician with Lightnin’ Hopkins. In 1970, he became the bass player in an innovative band, Shanti, who performed a fusion of Indian and rock music. Other band members included Zakir Hussain and Aashish Khan, and all the band members were adherents of Transcendental Meditation. In liner notes for a 2015 reissue of Shanti’s only album, writer Richie Unterberger states that \”bassist Steve Leach has reinvented himself as blues musician SeasickSteve\”, and his participation in Shanti was confirmed by Seattle band Tremens in 1972. In 2008, he was quoted as saying: ‘I came down here as a young feller looking for the blues, but I didn’t find them…. Wasn’t in Clarksdale but an hour before a big, old redneck policeman ran me right out of town again. That was how it was back then, and there were some places hereabouts you just didn’t go if you were a hobo.’ He also claimed that as a child he was taught to play the guitar by K. C. Douglas, who worked at his grandfather’s garage.
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This page is based on the article Seasick Steve published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 03, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
