Thursday, June 21, 2012

the Stepkids



The Stepkids are three singer/songwriters. “A lot of what excites us about this band is this band itself,” says bassist and keyboardist Dan Edinberg. “It’s not either of us; it’s about creating an entity where the entity itself is what’s important.” As a result, every song on the Stepkids self-titled debut album is written with equal input from each member.




“All three of us write and all three of us sing,” says Jeff Gitelman, who resigned from touring as Alicia Keys' guitarist to concentrate full-time on recording the Stepkids self-titled debut album. Drummer Tim Walsh continues, “There's an equal split in the creative process. Any lyric, any melody, any idea could have been done by any of us.”


 "The Stepkids are a three man band from Connecticut, with a sound that is Zydeco meets 70’s soft rock, but yet is so cool and fresh. Performing live, they sound fantastic and polished, making it hard to believe they’ve only been a band for two years. Visually they were all dressed in white, allowing themselves to be washed out into the images projected onto them and the screen behind them.
I got a chance to speak to the guitarist, Jeff Gitelman, after the show. What I noticed about him was his love of music. When I asked him to name some of his favorite musicians, he asked “which decade”. I said “Thirties” hoping to stump him. Jeff was quick off the mark with a list of performers. We went on to the 40’s, 50’s, and so on. He then said that he is a child of the 90’s and proceeded to drop the cherry on my sundae when he said he liked Damon Albarn and all the works he has done. Right on, Jeff. Right on."-discord and rhyme



This approach comes from more than a decade of musical experimentation and experience. Raised on the East Coast jazz and R&B circuit, individual band members went on to share stages with 50 Cent and Lauryn Hill, tour internationally with indie punk band Zox, score movies and commercials and produce solo albums.
The Stepkids groove is a fusion of punk and jazz, West African and 1960s folk, neo and classic soul, classic funk and 20th century classical. The band produce, engineer and record themselves on a reel-to-reel.
There’s no singular icon, no singular sound, and no singular way of making it happen for the Stepkids. It’s psychedelia for the 21st century, where the focus is on the whole.-Amazon




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