STEVE WARNER

Steve Warner started out playing the drums with the Mornington Citizens Brass Band before switching to guitar after watching his brother and his mates playing on the beach in the evening during their summer holidays. The moment he had three chords under his belt he began writing songs and he’s been composing ever since. He played in a few bands as a teenager including Abacus, Sam Blank and the wonderfully titled Satan’s Slaves. These outfits were playing rock, pop and bubblegum music but his taste grew much broader than that. At home he was listening to Stravinsky, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Doc Watson, Miles Davis and a guitar playing mate, Sebastian Jorgensen, also turned him onto the spacious beauty of ancient Greek music. He was drawing influences from everywhere.

His parents had given him a reel-to-reel player as a kid, and he’d always enjoyed exploring the sounds he could create with it. By the time he started thinking about making a record he had dozens of compositions already filed on tape. Despite this though he never seemed to get around to starting the project until two close friends tied him to a start date in 1976 and held him to the promise. He took out a bank loan and applied for an Australia Council grant and with the money combined managed to record, mix, produce and then manufacture his own LP. The songs on Steve Warner were all recorded in Hobart with Nick Armstrong and Spectangle productions and the Tasmanian record label Candle handled the release.

In the last eighteen months he’s noticed a reawakening of interest in the recording. It’s begun commanding high prices online and people have begun getting in touch to find out how he plays certain parts or to see if there are any spare copies lying around his shed. It’s taken him a little by surprise, but then good music is always going to be good music and a new generation has discovered the rich layers of sound he wove together back in the late ‘70s in Hobart. The album was reissued on the Buttercup label in 2015. It was also reissued on the UK label Earth in the same year.

References

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rarecollections/holding-a-candle-to-steve-warner/5483968