Trailer Park Rangers are: David T. Carter, Chip Trombley, Oliver Meissner, Peter Jungschaffer, Richard D. Miller, Steven W. Bazeley
Influences
Steven W. Bazeley, Sydney Bazeley, Harry Thompson, Gladys Thompson, Susan Mellows, Stella Atkins, Malcolm James Bulcock M.B.E., Dr John Bertalot, Dave Brown, Steve Gibbons, Alan Jones, Christopher Putnam, John Fenstermaker, Elton John, Sting, Bach, Mozart, Eleanor Davis, Strauss, Edward Elgar, George Shearing, Gershwin, Scott Joplin, Oscar Peterson, Rogers & Hammerstein, Gilbert & Sullivan, Kate Bush, Cyndi Lauper, Joanna Lumley, Gary Malkin, Byron Katie, Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, James Cagney, Burt Lancaster, Clint Eastwood, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Woody Allen, Keith Allen, Wendy DeMos, Richard D. Miller, David T. Carter, Trailer Park Rangers, Exmoor, Lancashire.
Sounds Like
Steven W. Bazeley, Bach, Elton John, Sting, Trailer Park Rangers.
Steven W. Bazeley, Keyboard Player for Trailer Park Rangers.... I was born on May 26th, 1956 in Burnley Lancashire England. In 1963 at age six, at the insistence of my grandmother, Gladys H. Thompson, I joined Habergham All Saints Church choir in Burnley and began my musical career. I studied sight reading and singing with Malcolm James Bulcock, then the Organist and choir master, now retired, and a member of the British Empire, a life-long friend. Around that time, a mentor of Malcolms, Doctor John Bertalot, then the Organist and choir master of Blackburn Cathedral was kind enough to offer me a position with his highly polished and professional choristers. At the Cathedral, I sang solo before a huge congregation, which would have been quite over whelming for me had it not been for the guidance, support and ultimate faith I had in both Malcolm and John, their amazing energy and musicianship, also the many friends made in both places at that time. I later received a letter of commendation for that performance, which I still have to this day, and was invited the following year to attend Rosall School of Church Music in the town of Fleetwood. I was a bit of a wayward boy even at that age. Most of my time was spent drifting off into my own private world where I might find enough silence to hear the music in my own head, or at least as it turned out, my re-interpretation of the music I was exposed to. What I heard in my head during those early days was quite primitive, musically speaking, but inspiring none the less, sometimes enough to induce my favorite dream of becoming the next incarnation of Bach. Nobody laughed when I told them this, which I found most disconcerting. Those early years between six and sixteen were the most influential for me. Out of them came a halfway decent singer, church organist and composition of my first original piece of music (Passacaglia in B minor) which I performed for the B.B.C. and they played on local radio. This piece was a huge task for me but I was determined to complete it, so every night after school I would walk down to the church and sit at the organ with my pencil and manuscript, lost in a world of magic, oblivious to the world outside. Every hour the church bell would clang, and I would cringe because the sound of it was not in tune with my piece. I cursed at it for distracting me, and I swear sometimes I could hear God laughing. Often I would arrive home after midnight, having sprinted through a pitch black grave yard, to find a sandwich and some milk on the table, left there by a very tolerant mother who understood my eccentricities, probably because my Grand- father, Harry, was the same way. An unrewarded genius, she called him. Unfortunately my Grandfather died when I was six, so I never really knew him. I always felt his spirit though, his humor, his laughter, and his wisdom. By age 16, I had already left school, having failed all my exams. I was highly amused by this, because they knew I wasn't stupid, even though my school report showed nothing but incompetence on every level. I would constantly irritate my teachers by telling them I wanted to be a farmer when I grew up, and that there needed to be some changes in the education system because no consideration was ever given to a person who wanted to learn how to milk a cow and plough a field. My English teacher, Joe Green, who called me "Sam", (because he knew a butcher named Sam Bazeley), saw right through my silliness and howled with laughter at every opportunity. I liked him so much that I decided to excel in English, so in one year I went from 31st place in a class of 32 to 2nd place. After that, he showed such disappointment in me because I didn't make 1st place, I lost all respect for him and so the following year I resumed my position at the bottom of the list. Such was, and still is, my rebellious nature. Needless to say this highly amused my mother, who rewarded me with apple pie custard and cream. The thorn in my side was always that my parents were divorced when I was six, and so, my Father, who lived hundreds of miles away in Winsford Somerset, was becoming a stranger to me. I wanted to be with him so much that I left Burnley when I was 16 and began a new life as the farmer I always dreamed of becoming. My father taught me so much about nature and the earth, how to be free, strong and tough. He taught me how to fight, how to drink beer and yes, how to milk a cow and plough a field. He was also very proud of my musical abilities, as was the local community, who sent a car for me every Sunday morning to ferry me to Exford Parish Church to play the organ for the service. The vicars wife, Mrs. Mudd, was always at my dads house on time, I was always in bed, suffering from a severe hangover. Saturday night in the Royal Oak, Winsford was always a wild one with Charlie Stevens the owner, the bar staff and all my drunken farmer mates. We were a tough bunch, young, fit and full of energy. Charlie would often bolt the doors at eleven, and we would all pile out of there, like the clowns we were, at dawn. During the summer months we would be up at 4:00 every morning, pitching bales of hay until sundown. There was always talk of Saturday night, the girls, the beer and the next barn dance. The pub became our outlet, and nothing could stop us from completely over indulging on every level. Some Sundays at the Church, the choir would have to sing the first few hymns without an organist, and Mrs. Mudd, God bless her, never once complained. On occasion, my Dad would wear his only suit, which he bought when he got married. He'd stand proudly near the back of the Church and sing his heart out, louder and about two beats ahead of anyone else in the entire building, and always with a huge smile on his face. Sadly, by the time I was 20, I was getting bored again. "Is this it for me?" I thought, “Maybe it's time to leave again”. It was, so I headed north, back to Lancashire. I didn't have a job, so after a brief stint as a night porter in a local hotel, I landed a job at Pollards Music Shop, in Burnley. It was there that I met Steve Gibbons, an extremely talented keyboard player and musician. He was working in the cabaret clubs, backing the acts on a Hammond C3 organ with a drummer named Jack-the-nose. I went to hear them play and I was blown away. When I learned that he was making my weekly wage in two nights, I picked his brain, learned my way around a Hammond and scored some gigs in the local clubs. Four years later, as a full time professional musician I landed a job at the Centre Spot nightclub, which was part of the Burnley Football Club, under the ownership of a guy named Danny Carr. Danny was a pretty funny guy. He had a job sweeping up in a paper factory, but then he won close to a million pounds on the football pools. So he invested all of it in his dream, which was to own a nightclub, and have only "class acts" on the bill. It was here that I met Derek Allen, Dave Brown, and Clive Kennedy. All pro musicians with lots of experience under their belts. Derek was the band leader and, I remember, he viewed me with much suspicion as I walked in the door for the first time. He spoke to me in short sentences, using no more than three or four words at a time, and then he would glare at me as if I was a being from another planet. I got his number after a while, and I realized that the two of us would have to drink until dawn, at least, before we would see eye to eye. This we did, and as I predicted, the ice broke and within a few days we were inseparable mates. During this time I met and worked with comedians Les Dawson, Tommy Cooper and Benny Hill. Within a year, Danny, the club owner went bust and resumed his job at the factory. So much for his investment principals. The four of us, with a view to avoiding starvation, and the much feared "day job", split for an audition with a cruise ship agent in St. Annes. We passed with flying colors, and dressed like waiters, we boxed up our gear and headed for Miami and a seven month cruise. In 1980 Miami was experiencing some kind of riot, "A bit like a Burnley football match" remarked Dave (the bass player), and when we got there cars were either upside down or on fire. None of us had a clue what it was all about. This was our first view of America, and it was strange sailing off into the sunset watching huge plumes of black smoke billowing up from the shore. It got better and it was, all in all, a remarkable experience. I met lots of very interesting people, played some great music, and learned how to live in an under-water closet. San Francisco had a major impact on me. When we first sailed under the Golden Gate, I was lying flat out on the top deck, recuperating from the night before. I heard an announcement from the captain and the next thing I saw was this amazing structure looming in the distance. At first it looked as if the ship could not possibly fit underneath the structure because it looked so low. I stood up and watched it approach. Suddenly as we sailed under, it appeared to shoot up in the air, towering above us like an alien space ship. The next thing was this view of the city, which appeared to me, as if in a dream. This place I'm coming back to, I thought, and I did one year later. I had met Jackie, my wife-to-be, in Alaska during this cruise, and we wrote endless letters to each other for about a year after the cruise ended. She came over to England, we married and I came back to Santa Rosa, California, to live. This was 1981 and for the first time I met Rick Miller, my best mate, now with our band Trailer Park Rangers. We hung out together, played music and among other things, recorded an album with Don Geary at Arrow Recording studio in Santa Rosa. Married life was good at that time, and I was happy being a husband and playing music with the Phoenix band, of which the recently departed Keith Allan was a member. Keith, a brilliant guitarist and musician, from Petaluma, became one of my closest friends during that time. We even had a duo together called Party Of Two, which he organized and published all the fliers for, tastefully utilizing his own unique brand of wit and humor. It was one of the saddest days of my life when he died. I think the Phoenix band would have continued and eventually become majorly successful. We were all very talented, young and committed. Original, quality pop music was in the works, and we were gaining momentum at such a rate that touring was becoming inevitable. The fact that most of the band were married and planning a family didn't help matters. Slowly it was becoming evident that arriving home at dawn, following intense gigs and long drives home, was creating a degree of stress for all concerned. I knew I had to bale something, and I did. I baled music and the life of a musician for the sake of my marriage. This is where the big hole appeared in my life. I withdrew, distanced myself from my friends, built a recording studio in our garage and hunkered down. Those years were tough, and though a lot of experimenting took place I never once recorded a single song I liked. At one point I had in my possession five hundred ninety minute cassettes recorded on both sides in a huge box in our garage. I would play them for Jackie, but she had no real perspective, in other words she thought everything I did was brilliant. I loved her dearly and, looking back, it was unfair of me to expect her to validate my music or my choices. No one could. I knew even then it was up to me. I just couldn't deal with it at the time. It's a well known fact that musicians and artists can be either extremely introvert or extrovert. Some have the good fortune to be both at the same time. I was not one of them. I'm either out or in. This was my in time, and like a bear, I licked my wounds and fiercely guarded the entrance to my cave. Eventually I gave up the idea of playing music professionally, so it became my hobby. Everyday, alone, I played my piano, programmed my computer to keep the wolf from the door, and prayed for a way out. I was getting by, but eventually something had to give. For seventeen years our marriage lasted, and getting out of it was the hardest thing I ever did in my entire life. How it lasted so long is still a mystery to me and, though I have no regrets about leaving it, I'm thankful that to this day my ex and I still call ourselves friends and share the rights to our Jack Russell, Gilbert, who now lives high on the hog with a very pretty and successful lady. Part of my healing process took place over the next eight years. One summer morning, after a short ceremony at the dump, I tossed my cassettes in front of a huge tractor, watched it crush them into a million pieces and re-associated myself with the church, this time on a grander scale. I moved to Mill Valley, California and paid regular visits to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. It was there that I met and became friends with Allan Jones (the Dean), John Fenstermaker and Christopher Putnam (the organists.) This was 1996 and I had heard that a series of gospel plays were about to be rehearsed and performed at upcoming Sunday services. They were looking for actors and Dan Chummley, from the San Francisco mime troupe, had been enlisted to produce the plays. I had some acting experience during my school days. Joe Green my old English teacher had staged a few Shakespeare plays including Macbeth, though in Macbeth, he was not entirely delighted with my performance as the bloody child. I didn't have any lines, I was just required to sit on the stage with a bow and arrow in my hands and occasionally shoot at passing birds. I did this perfectly during rehearsal, as I recall, but during the performance I decided to improvise a little bit and mimic the fact that I actually hit one and it fell to earth with a thud. The other actors around me were speaking their lines and were obviously the centre of attention, so my part was purely ambient. I did not get that concept at the time, so when the audience began to giggle, I felt very special. With much glee I elaborated on my newly developed theme for about fifteen minutes, until the entire place was in an uproar. I walked off the stage, when the curtain fell, with a big grin on my face, only to find Joe foaming at the mouth. He clattered me around the ear and told me to get out. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why he was so unhappy. Anyway, I was determined to do a better job this time so, I applied, was accepted and invited to the first rehearsal at Grace. Dan Chummley, the producer was the most amazing to me. He was so brilliant, that I was constantly in awe of him and couldn't do anything, except gawk. One night I asked Dan if I could provide the music for the plays with my newly acquired Kurzweil keyboard. This was my way of saying goodbye to my acting career. He agreed and, though the sight of an electronic keyboard was quite horrendous to the purists around me, I assembled some sampled harps, flutes, horns, oboes and cellos and gave them instant confidence in my keyboard and abilities as a musician. The following weeks were glorious, and by the time we moved our first play from the rehearsal hall into the Cathedral, for a dress rehearsal, magic was once again occurring. This process was becoming all too familiar to me as a pattern in my life. Music and the church would always get me through anything, though I would not say I'm a religious person. I like the idea of Jesus, but Buddha ranks high on my list also. Anything organized I tend to be suspicious of. That's just the way I am. I don't fight it anymore. Following the Grand Finale, during which Christopher Putnam kindly performed my first organ composition (Passacaglia in B minor), I left on a high and moved to Sebastopol California, where I found a beautiful place on Barnett Valley Road, on twenty acres of land, that reminded me, very much, of England. It was time to brood again, also to make some money as a contract computer programmer for such companies as SBC, Gap and Chiron corporation. I hated the jobs but $90 an hour was hard to refuse. When I had saved enough money I quit and fell into my typical depressive state. I wallowed in it, enjoying the disruption, the self loathing and sadness that enveloped me like an English winter. My thoughts were always that I didn't belong anywhere. That everything in life was pointless, except for music and someone to share my life with. One of which I had, the other totally elusive. I wished, at times, that I was still married and had a family, but somehow, I knew that was not meant to be. I had a mission here on earth. What the hell was it, and when would it happen? And then one day I did my laundry at the local launderette, well, after all, it was October, and who should I bump into but a guy who I hadn't seen in twenty five years. His laundry spun next to mine, as well our futures might. His name, of course, was Rick Miller. He was living alone in a water tower on highway 116. How fitting. We hugged as my cell phone rang. "Your leash is ringing", he quipped as I answered it for the last time. It was Jeannine, my recently acquired girlfriend from Colorado. She wanted to announce that I was not a suitable partner for her and she was about to leave for another state. "Any particular one", I asked. The phone went dead, as did my last ounce of enthusiasm for the relationship. "Rick, show me your place, lets drink and talk." What came next was almost funny. Rick told me that there was someone from Australia that I should meet. His name was Dave and he was a brilliant composer. Right, I thought, it's all down hill from here. I first met Dave at the Underwood Bar & Bistro, in Graton, and Rick was right. At first sight, this man shook my hand, then stood approximately one inch from my nose and in his broad, Australian accent said, "Hello hello, and who the fuck are you then"? I didn't answer because I thought I might have to plant him. It didn't happen, but what did was the realization that I had, again, found a kindred spirit. Not only that, but here, before me, was a spirit with a plan, inside a man with a mule enough head to see his vision through, to the end. His name was David T. Carter from the infamous Trailer Park Rangers. He saw right through me, instantly, and knew my problem. I knew his too. He needed a stellar musician and a recording engineer with a recording studio. I needed a friend and someone, or something, to hold on to. It didn't come out immediately, but Dave had heard some of my earlier recordings from Rick, of my sappy love songs, that sounded like Lionel Riche meets Barry Manilow with Elton John at the piano. He found them repulsive, and had remarked to Rick that I was the last person on earth he should meet. I like a man that speaks the truth, but Jesus Christ, I'm glad he didn't say that at our first meeting. I'm sure David will be delighted to learn that the body of my work is now many hundreds of feet underground. Only a few surviving relatives exist. The months that followed were hilarious and intense. We laughed, played, recorded and fought like dogs over the music. Out of it all came three inseparable friends and nearly four new albums of recorded music. Music that hopefully will soon make it's mark ..... stay tuned !
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey returns to the Bay Area for 3 shows this week!
Wed. 6/17 - Elbo Room - SF,CA
Thurs. 6/18 - Starry Plough - Berkeley,CA
Fri. 6/19 - Starry Plough - Berkeley,CA (w/Antioquia!)
JFJO just released their new studio album 'Winterwood' as a FREE DOWNLOAD! Download it now, then go see JFJO live at Yoshi's Oakland tomorrow (Feb.12th) and at The Hopmonk in Sebastapol on Fri. the 13th!
Get Winterwood now at WWW. JFJO. COM!
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Just stoping by to say HI. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in day to day life we forget our friends. So I'm trying to let everyone of my friends know how much they mean to me. Thanks so much for for being my friend. Ed
Hey Steve,
Just wanted to say how much I love "Lady Eleanor"! Magically romantic, and just as beautiful as the woman it was written for. Glad I get to witness another facet of your myriad of styles. Definitely a cinematic composition.
Rick
