Album: The Best Of RV
Label: Bittersweet Records
By: Brian Sidler
Former Music Writer - Chicago Music Magazine
World Premiere Event - Release date for MySpace: 28 JULY 2006
Recording Engineer on All Songs except Bues Messiah;
Stewart Long of Red Planet Studios
Mixing and Mastering Engineer on All Songs Jim Reeves of Reeves Audio
Recording Engineer on Blues Messiah; Jim Reeves of Reeves Audio
Producer on All Songs; Jim Reeves
Executve Producer All Songs; Steve G. Arvey
Movie Music Licensing done through; The Management Firm/Los Angeles, CA
Chicago, IL One of the most difficult things that we've been asked to do back here at Bittersweet Records is to write the column for our next release, The Best Of RV. That's because we are stymied as to how to put Steve Arvey into words which would accurately describe one of the most consummate Showmen we know of in the world.
Here's the questions. How do you describe a man who has undergone as many career and recording transformations as there are hues of colors in a rainbow? Another thing that became difficult to answer was; what in heck's name were we going to release on the first EP? The choices were really tough decisions because everything is so strong and we loved all of it!
RV glides through styles of playing Rock & Roll like an albatross over a moonlit beach...and that's to say, it's effortless. He just spreads his wings, catches a breeze, sails around and hangs a left up, out and...bye bye.
Quite literally, hundred's of thousands of fans and audience attendees covering a career which spans about three decades, have witnessed this man's magnetism, guts and strength. And...one of the things that strikes us as being the most truthful about the RV musical experience, is that Steve's music has most always been more of a live experience than anything else, even though he has several albums to his credit.
RV's always performing somewhere in the world. You name a place...he can probably tell you a story about it. Ok, so he hasn't been quite everywhere but he sure has a lot of stories from a whole mess of his globe trottings, and many of 'em are as knee-slappin' funny, as they are bizarre or to hear RV tell 'em. Who else would have a "Chinese Food Delivery Of The Month" as a featured link on a website? Well, it beats us.
The measure of a musical talent in many cases is not how fast they rise or how high they climb, it is how long they endure and what that endurance speaks of and to. The essence of living a life dedicated to music is not an intellectual pursuit as much as it is a comittment of heart and meaning-ness. That is because people in the audience do not listen to music with their heads they feel it in their hearts.
Fortune seldom smiles the same way twice.
Fortune has smiled on the RV in many ways. He's loved by many all over the world. Fans, friends and colleagues in the industry have all heaped mounds of praise on him for all the work he's done. He holds the all time record for being booked seven years consecutively on the Best Buy Music Stage as a performer during the World Reknown Annual Chicago Blues Festival. But, ya see...
The Blues had a baby and they called it Rock & Roll.
RV is a Rock Artist that has made a good living for himself playing the blues all over the world. But it's a misnomer to bag him solidly there. It's also hard to remove his name from the all time American Blues Artist lineup...the reason is because of the immense amount of work he's done in the genre. He's played with Bo Didley. He's played with Sam Lay. In fact the lineup of Blues Greats that RV has played with would make Eric Clapton proud to be counted on the same list! Heres some of 'em: Jr. Wells, Eddie Clearwater, Sugar Blue, Big Jack Johnson, Hubert Sumlin, Jimmy Rogers, Big Smokey Smothers, Homesick James, Andrew Brown, Lefty Dizz, Big Moose Walker, BB Big Voice Odum, Detroit Jr., Lovie Lee, Carey Bell, Sam Carr, Frank Frost, Lester Davenport, Eddie Taylor, Abb Locke, Hip Linkchain, Sammy Lawhorn, Sammy Fender and many others that we don't have the space to dedicate here in this article. To see a sterling example of this Blues College Schooling click on this link...you'll see, it's irrefutable!
He's gigged as a sideman to these Legends as a drummer, a bass player and guitarist. That's pretty impressive in and of itself. But it doesn't explain all of who the man is. It does go a good ways in explaining though, why his brand of rock & roll sounds this way...and yet, still, not all of it.
SO...
Let's break it down. What does explain RV and that sound he makes? To be sure it's very real. One could easily say, well lots of guys are real. That's not entirely so in most cases. What is meant by the term we use here...REAL...is a meaning that is expressed in the performance and the meaning that is felt by someone who's listening to it. In order to play the real blues any Bluesman will tell you, you have to live it. AND... Rock & Roll is only a stones throw way from the Blues...so in either case...realness is where it's at.
For over fifty years now, Rock has seen so many different expressions it's kind of like the many species of fish in the seven seas. They're all "fish" but they sound/look so different from each other. They all taste like fish but there are not so subtle differences as to the texture of the meat and the way it chews.
Listen to the way Steve sings on these numbers. For instance in Faith and Something To Lose he sounds like a cross between Howlin' Wolf and Elvin Lee from Ten Years After during that famous Woodstock performance caught on film. There's a grit that he's got which doesn't come from taking singing lessons...one can't be taught to sing that way...you either can or you can't. In these examples of RV's vocal stylings, we are thrown back to his days of playing with the Bluesmen of the legendary Maxwell Street in Chicago, (remember that street scene of John Lee Hooker in the movie The Blues Brothers?) where a greasy polish sausage smothered in onions was considered a good Sunday morning breakfast delicacy and buying a pair of shoes came in both varieties, new and used.
Both of these songs are a perfect blend of that amalgam which permeates these closely related genre's of writing and performance. Both of them absolutley show how great of a writer the RV man really is. We can only speculate as to how much more this man could produce if he only had the time to sit around and think about it, instead of gigging all over the world to stay in the chips. In our opinion at Bittersweet, one could find comparable examples of this but not better. The lustre of these productions are both superior in mix and execution and that originates from Steve's leadership in the studio, his sense of arrangement and the use of electric guitar sounds which he looks for in the players he employs. Also, the rythmn sections he put together in these tracks are precisely crafted for their feel. Who'd have thought they were a bunch of Australian lads...would you?
This is the great backup band of the Aussie outback, Pete Cornelius and The Devilles. We would be remiss in extending proper respect and credit, had we failed to mention this unit because as can be clearly heard, Cornelius is unrelentingly stellar in all of his lead fill work on Faith and Something To Lose. And we mean to tell you people, that is some wicked, badass guitar playing and one hellacious rythmn section, which is populated by, in this particular incarnation, Matt Neil on drums, (listen to that guy's foot, hihat and snare action) and Phil Wilson throwin' down some huge, Huge, HUGE... bottom. Damn... it doesn't get any better than that, friends.
As we've stated earlier in this article we really had a hard time trying to decide which songs we were going to release as the first EP here in the "Space." So we decided to show you the opposing sides of RV, as the best way to exemplify the diversity of this marvelous and colorful showman.
On the other side of Steve is the sensitivity of his musical expression and these statements, we thought, would best be served by the next two tunes in the lineup which you would hardly have thought could come from the same performer. Blues Messiah (lyrics by Dave Scott) and another tune that will be a Worldwide - Bittersweet Records Debut Event.
In Blues Messiah the man still retains his grist and grime vocal but renders a softer, soulful mourning that can only come from the anguish of having worn the clothes of "real" hardship. When one listens to this tune you can't help but feel RV's heart. The folk style picking on the guitar amplifies this to an even finer pitch of angst. Throw in the masterful northside Chicago Violinist, Ruby Harris, who does a terrific job of filling the space with just the right touch of drive and glide, in all the right places, and you get a tune that was a hit on Australian radio, which was the headpiece track released by John Ward President of Only Blues Music, that drove four successful nationwide Australian tours from 2002 through 2005 to critical acclaim.
Also, check out the way this tune shifts gears in the middle, coupled with the traditional bluegrass fiddling technique 
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Very cool songs here!!
Cheers from Japan!