002 - VocalScope: Steve Balsamo shares experiences of his voice from West End crucifixions to ancestral overtone healing to recording as a solo artist.
Born and raised in Swansea, UK, Steve started out singing in rock bands as a teenager before he came to the public's attention in the mid '90s by way of a beard, long hair and a loincloth - playing Jesus in a West End revival of Jesus Christ Superstar. Signing to Columbia Records soon after the messiah complex wore off, he was molded into a poppy/rocky/folky/country-ish artist - nothing like covering all the bases - and made an album, All I Am. "Despite the musical schizophrenia, he had a ton of fun travelling the world and writing lots of songs, and I even got to play live on legendary UK television's Top Of The Pops, and even made the charts." Steve formed a country rock band, The Storys, made 3 albums and toured the globe with the great and the good, including Santana, Celine Dion, Joe Cocker and Elton John, who declared their first album 'fantastic!'. He is part of an ongoing prog/electronica project with Rob Reed of Magenta called chimpanA. "The first album upset Q Magazine so much that they declared it was 'drowning in a sea of pretentiousness'. They'll be over the moon that our second album is nearly finished." More recently Steve made an Americana/Country album with Rosalie Deighton called Unfolding. In between these adventures, Steve got to write songs for lots of artists including Meatloaf, Slash, and Cliff Richard, worked with heroes Jon Lord of Deep Purple, Eric Woolfson of The Alan Parsons Project, and even gave a singing lesson to Robert Plant. Steve is currently recording a collection of old, new, borrowed and blue songs for a series of 4 EPs. "They've got a kind of Americana vibe, I guess because it's all I'm really listening to these days, and I think they are sounding really sweet. Words feature very heavily in this genre, and I'm really enjoying wrestling lyrics to the mat, and trying to really get inside the songs, digging deep to soul mine my truth right now. I'm probably the happiest musically I've ever been!" www.stevebalsamomusic.com @stevebalsamo Twitter and Facebook @stevebalsamomusic on Instagram