Austin, TX-based singer, songwriter, guitarist and harmonica player Steve Power – who's been described as "Dave Edmunds meets The Fabulous Thunderbirds on the way to see Led Zeppelin" by CBS TV – displays a potent roots musical mix on his latest album, Power Lines. Produced by Ron D’Argenio and released on Power's One Man and His Dog Records, it features seven Power originals – about which Texas songwriting legend Billy Joe Shaver told him, "You’ve got good songs. I mean really good songs" – and seven well-chosen covers by writers like Texas icons Guy Clark & Rodney Crowell (on a number they co-wrote) and Steven Fromholz as well as esteemed soul music songwriter Dan Penn, among other notables.
Power started singing and playing harmonica and guitar with bands in his youth in his native California. He made his first recordings after moving to the U.K. and settling in Wales – a two-track EP by his band Lincoln and The Continentals "House of the Rising Sun" (done bluegrass style) b/w...
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Austin, TX-based singer, songwriter, guitarist and harmonica player Steve Power – who's been described as "Dave Edmunds meets The Fabulous Thunderbirds on the way to see Led Zeppelin" by CBS TV – displays a potent roots musical mix on his latest album, Power Lines. Produced by Ron D’Argenio and released on Power's One Man and His Dog Records, it features seven Power originals – about which Texas songwriting legend Billy Joe Shaver told him, "You’ve got good songs. I mean really good songs" – and seven well-chosen covers by writers like Texas icons Guy Clark & Rodney Crowell (on a number they co-wrote) and Steven Fromholz as well as esteemed soul music songwriter Dan Penn, among other notables.
Power started singing and playing harmonica and guitar with bands in his youth in his native California. He made his first recordings after moving to the U.K. and settling in Wales – a two-track EP by his band Lincoln and The Continentals "House of the Rising Sun" (done bluegrass style) b/w a new country take on Louis Prima's "Jump, Jive an' Wail" (that preceded Brian Setzer's Grammy-winning revival of the classic by many years). Next he led what was the hottest rocking blues'n'roots combo on the Wales and Western England pub circuit, Sting Like a Bee, whose 1990 self-titled album launched them to cult hero status in Europe. After a move to Holland, he conceived a Blues Brothers theatre act, Cotton & Morganfield, that played major stages, festivals and events across the Continent (and got the thumbs up from Elwood Blues via Dan Ackroyd).
His first album under his own name as a singer-songwriter, The Journey, produced by former Edmunds bassist John David, was hailed as "an elegant collection of pure atmospheric moments" and "so good that it is totally a treasured possession" by Belgium's Rootstime. A number of its tracks enjoyed Top 5 success on European roots and alternative country charts. As Americana UK observes, he can "turn his hand vocally to any type of music from rock to blues to gospel to ballads – and manages the transition between these different genres with the greatest of ease."
Since arriving in the Texas capital in 2003, has established himself as a solid and versatile musical presence on the world-renowned Austin scene. He has issued two EPs Nothing On The Radio and Somewhere in Texas, cut in collaboration with former Joe Ely band axeman and Texas musical legend Jesse "Guitar" Taylor, and– and in 2013 his second solo singer-songwriter album, The Austin Chronicles featuring several Texas music legends.
Now the aptly-named Power Lines transmits the lessons learned in decades of living music, telling more stories than Sherezade and a sure sense of how to make music that captures the ear of anyone that loves a well-crafted song, performed by world class players and sung by a guy who knows what he’s doing.
One Man and His Dog Records
512-680-4446
info@stevepowertx.com
