On the day Steve was born, Percy Mayfield recorded his classic Please Send Me Someone to Love. Soon after, the airwaves were filled with Jerry Lee Lewis, Lloyd Price, Fats Domino, and Sam Cooke; Steve's future influences.

He sang in choruses and through saxaphones and clarinets at schools in New York City suburbs, and in Detroit. Steve lived in the Motor City for a year and a half, at the peak of Motown's incredible success. Cooley High was 9 miles from Hitsville, USA.

His horizons were expanded in '72, when during a port call to Hong Kong, he got his first guitar and taught himself to play in the fan rooms of the USS Long Beach. He performed in community light opera for years while living in Los Angeles.

Steve's movin' and groovin' to seminal roots music was enabled in a big way at the intimate and ledgendary Tordado Alley in Wheaton, MD; Johnny Clyde Copeland, Luther Alison, Maria Muldaur, the Holmes Brothers, and Son Seals were a few of the greats who performed there. Steve says "I crave the gospel-fueled hope that's abundantly offered in their, and others', music." His dream since has been to make music that spreads that hope.