By: Rick Landers
Steve Postell – Photo credit: Rob Shanahan
What can be better than performing music you love with some of the top musicians in the world, who are also some of your best friends?
That’s a place guitarist, singer-songwriter extraordinaire, Steve Postell, finds himself with the new super group, The Immediate Family. Steve’s on board with the likes of Danny Kortchmar (guitar/vocals), Waddy Wachtel (guitar/vocals), the iconic percussionist, Russ Kunkel, and bass master, Leland Sklar, who all got hit up like all musicians when the world-wide pandemic forced the cancellation of live music performances.
Their music legacies include performing and writing with such luminaries as, Linda Ronstadt, Stevie Nicks, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King, Warren Zevon, Bryan Ferry, Keith Richards, Don Henley, Tracy Chapman, the Bee Gees, Dan Fogelberg, and thousands more, literally.
The Immediate Family quickly regrouped and migrated their focus their music to emphasize on-line performances to entertain and introduce themselves with some of the classics they played in sessions, co-wrote, or performed on major tours, along with brand new songs that have the Immediate Family stamp on them. Using emerging technologies, they have gained a large and growing audience of old and new fans on their social media sites.
They launched as the The Immediate Family on Quarto Valley Records and have been making waves in the world of music by stamping out live streams of many of the hits they’d worked on in years past, and new songs they’ve recently written.
Working virtually, the group has loaded up with such classics like “Werewolves of London” (Co-written by Waddy); “Running on Empty” (Co-written by Danny); “Tender is the Night” (Co-written by Russ) and more, as well as have been offering up new tunes, including their own “New Twist”.
Steve Postell’s work alone is staggering.
From his days studying at the fine Mannes College of Music (NYC), Steve’s amassed a legacy of musical contributions anyone would be proud of, and collaborations with some of the finest musicians in the world. Not only was Steve a member of the group Pure Prairie League, he’s also an acclaimed singer-songwriter, composer and highly respected and sought after producer.
Notably, he’s worked alongside such legends as David Crosby, Robben Ford, Eric Johnson, Jennifer Warnes and many, many more. And on his current The Immediate Family project with Danny, Waddy, Russ and Lee, he nails down vocals, giving his own style and nuance to both classic hits, as well as new songs recently debuted by The Immediate Family.
Another impressive and interesting aspect of Postell’s work are projects in the dramatic arts, where he’s performed in Broadway shows such as “The Man of La Mancha” and “Evita”; as well as the off-Broadway musical, “Fallen Angel”. His work in this arena is extensive, with his music used as scores in film and television, and commercial work for AT&T, Pontiac, Dupont and many more. Dig in more at his Renegade Music Group website to better grasp the breadth and depth of his talents and hard work, that includes managing Pier Street Sound.
Steve’s also offered up guitar lessons and production support for music instruction apps (iPad), made for the ON THE PATH Series, where you’ll also find lessons from his friends, Eric Johnson, Robben Ford, Ravi Shankar, Richard Thompson, Jackson Browne, David Crosby and other world-class musicians.
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Rick: Before you went to the New school… [Pauses]
Steve Postell: I went to Mannes College of Music. At the time, the only two music schools in New York that actually taught classical guitar were Mannes and Manhattan. Julliard still did not consider it a legitimate instrument. And, of course, now they have a wonderful program.
Mannes and Manhattan eventually joined forces, and it’s now one school. At the time, they were separate. There was a really nice robust classical guitar program there.
Rick: Quite a few well-known people have gone there. Burt Bacharach, I think, went there. I think Larry Coryell went there.
Steve Postell: I think so. Yeah. It was a great school. Although it was strictly classical. Again, things were just so regimented back then. And now, everyone teaches everything. But, then I had to go out of the school to get any kind of other training.
Rick: Did you start with folk or rock n’ roll, and then you move to classical? What was your progression?
Steve Postell: I was very fortunate that my first teacher when I was eight taught me everything. He played everything, and he taught everything. So it always seemed very integrated to me. First I learned to read, sing, chords, folk music, rock n’ roll, classical. It was all part of my life.
Rick: What year was that, when you were eight?
Steve Postell: Ha! That would have been around ’64, I think. ’64, ’65, somewhere in there.
Rick: Okay. Just when the Beatles were coming in.
Steve Postell: Yeah, exactly. So, I was already playing their songs.
Rick: Were your parents interested in music, or did they influence you at all? I guess they were supportive if you took lessons at eight years old.
Steve Postell: Yeah. Very supportive. Not musicians. My mother was a music lover and eventually, later in life got a piano. But, she is an artist. She’s a painter. She had a very vast and eclectic music record library, which I had access to.
I was listening to every kind of music in this record collection on my own little record player that I’d taken into my room. And also, growing up in that era in New York City, if you had parents who were motivated towards the cultural world, was the performing arts, so I was seeing concerts since I was five years old. Five years old, I saw Segovia and I saw Montoya and I saw Ravi Shankar. I saw Nureyev in his prime. They were very generous in sharing and exposing me and my sister to culture, and the music made a big impression on me, obviously.
Rick: Yeah. Did you eventually hang out in Greenwich Village?
Steve Postell: I practically lived there. I had a weekly. Bleecker Street was just club, club, restaurant, store, club, club. It was all music. I played all those clubs. The Bitter End, the Back Fence, and Folk City. Well, Folk City wasn’t on Bleecker Street. And Red Lion. Every week, every Thursday night from 10:00 to 1:00. And a place called Preachers. Yeah, you just played. You went down there, and you played.
Rick: Yeah. It was almost like Laurel Canyon, but it was the East Coast. You had Richie Havens, Tim Buckley, and all those guys, right?
Steve Postell: At the Village Gate, I literally sat in front of Tim Buckley, at his feet and watched him play a concert.
Rick: Really? What a voice he had. His range was just incredible, I thought.
Steve Postell: Yeah. It was a beautiful time too. If you wanted to be a musician, it didn’t get much better than that.
Steve Postell: That’s cool.
Rick: Yeah. Buzz Feiten, he was at the school, too, but that was ’69 or ’70. Is that when you were there?
Steve Postell: I was there in ’77, I think I went there. When I got to L.A., I had a studio with Steve Feronne, who’s a drummer for The Heartbreakers and Clapton and many other people. And a great Grammy award-winning engineer named John Jones. The three of us had a studio, and we did a lot of production, a lot of different stuff. Buzzy came in. He was interested in recording and having us produce. So, I met him there, and we started to work together.
Rick: You’ve also worked on Broadway with Evita and The Man of La Mancha. What role did you play in that? I mean, were you strictly a musician, or were you in the production? Or neither one of those?
Steve Postell: Most of the shows, I was just in the pit. But, there were a couple shows; like Man of La Mancha always has a part where the guitar player, there’s two guitar players in the score. One of them stays in the pit, and one of them dresses up in a costume and jumps back and forth from the pit to the stage. And that’s the part that I would play in that show. So, occasionally I’d be in a show where I was on stage. But, always playing. Always playing.
Rick: Were you part of developing the score to any of those?
Steve Postell: Yeah. I wrote a musical called Fallen Angel. I wrote music with it, and a guy named Billy Boesky wrote the play. That starred Corey Glover from Living Color, he was our lead singer in the company.
I arranged a bunch of shows where I created my own part. And then other shows like Evita where I would play someone, I just learned the book. And Man of La Mancha, I just learned what the book was, and played the book.
Rick: What do you mean you played the book? You already had the score written out for you?
Steve Postell: Yeah, yeah. Those shows have a score that’s been … and you would go and there would be a … there’s records, and you can listen to records, see what people played. Between reading the score and listening to what had been played before, you would recreate it.
Rick: Yeah, okay. You mentioned Ravi Shankar. I saw him. It was 1971 at my university. I think he opened or he was the main act with Badfinger, if you remember them.
Steve Postell: Sure. I got to record him. A very close friend of his, who was 30 years his primary videographer named Allen Kozlowski, people kind of knew that things were winding down for Ravi, possibly. So, Allen wanted to film his last three shows, and he filmed it, a multi-camera shoot. One of them was 12 cameras. And I put a recorded 15-track virtual rig on stage, and it recorded those shows.
So, I got to hang out, be around Ravi. We went to his house for rehearsals for a week and then recorded all of that. An incredible experience.
Rick: So, your website says that you’re working on a documentary. Is that still current?
Steve Postell: That’s out. That came out. Well, there’s a documentary about The Immediate Family that we’re working on right now.
Rick: Yeah, I’m familiar with that. Okay.
Steve Postell: But, I scored a film that’s on Netflix now. It’s already been in the theaters. It’s called Dying to Know. It’s a documentary about Timothy Leary and Ram Dass. It’s a fascinating film. Robert Redford narrated it. That’s been out for maybe two years now. You can find it on Netflix.
Rick: I guess you like that kind of work.
Steve Postell: I do. Every aspect of what I do, which is many things, has its own world. And scoring is particularly interesting because you’re limited by the directorial say. From this moment, you’ve then got 47 seconds to make a musical statement that goes with this picture. I love writing out of song form, which is when I do a score. Or, I wrote a ballet a couple years ago and getting ready to start another one. I was going to do it, but now the COVID thing happened so they can’t perform it.
So the ballet, that is different. It has to be in counts of eight and has to be these movements at certain times. All of these different things that you do writing commercials, it’s got to be 30 seconds or 60 seconds. I like the confines of different assignments that might come my way.
Steve Postell: Oh, I always do.
Rick: Oh, you do?
Steve Postell: I do stuff with libraries. Every time I record a song, I make an instrumental version. I have a couple libraries where I send it to them, and then they can use it as they want.
It’s been around for a while now, but the movies and television industry got hip to the fact that they didn’t really have to pay a composer always big money to score the thing. And these libraries popped up. The library’s just full of music, and if you’re doing a TV show, you can just go through in the library’s catalog for a bluesy number. And then there’s hundreds of them. And if they pick yours, you get a check.
Yeah. No reason not to put my instrumental versions of my songs on those sites.
Rick: I’ve never actually heard of somebody who had done that, where they had basically two albums, right?
Steve Postell: I look at it that way. And then if you get a relationship with one of these library companies, they may want different versions of it. I’ll send them just a guitar part and the full mix and maybe a stripped-down mix, different aspects of it so that, let’s say somebody in a film uses that song. They might want it as a theme, and they might want just a guitar version of it for 20 seconds later in the song, something like that.
Rick: Oh. So you just send them a stem of the guitar?
Steve Postell: Yeah. The way a lot of them work is they’ll want three different versions of the song.
Rick: Oh, that’s interesting to know. You’re a producer, as well, right? You produce your own albums?
Steve Postell: Most of them now. Yeah. Roscoe Beck produced an album for my band, Little Blue. And that was great, but I really trust Roscoe. I feel like one of the reasons people don’t produce themselves is because you get too under the hood, so to speak.
And it’s good to have outside … I just do so much of this that I feel like I pretty much know what I want. I’m able to step back enough as an artist and kind of look at it. So, I have been self-producing, but I produce a lot of other records. I enjoy the processes. If I like the music, I will take one, I won’t take one. I won’t do that to anybody if I don’t like the music. I won’t do that to somebody.
Rick: When you’re mixing and you’re doing the engineering side of this, you ever find that you’ve made a mistake you keep, because it’s so good or it makes the sound maybe more realistic or maybe even live?
Steve Postell: Sure, yeah. You could say that all mistakes are something, that’s not a mistake. But, yeah, I think that’s why it’s good to not get really rigid in your process. Be open to things. I collect plug-ins. I’m just constantly buying them. And somebody says, “Why do you have 60 different compressors?” Well, they all sound a little different. They all work a little differently.
And so, when I jump on it and throw one on there, I don’t know what it’s going to do, if it’s a new one. It might do something slightly different than the other one does. That might inspire a different view of that instrument or the way it fits into the track.
Some people just say, “This is my plug-in. I use this compressor all the time. My guitar. And I use this EQ all the time.” I prefer experimenting. Just like grabbing a different guitar. They play differently.
Rick: Yeah. It sounds like you’re more inventive.
Steve Postell: I see the whole thing as a … It’s like a painter. You’ve got a canvas. You’ve got the paints. You’ve got the brushes. You’ve got the subject matter. And you’ve got all of those things, the surface. Are you using acrylic or oil? I kind of equate it to that. It’s all the colors. And the objective in the end is the finished painting. But, how you get there can be pretty different.
Rick: Yeah. When I say you guys, I mean the immediate family. I was watching you guys do “Somebody’s Baby”, the Jackson Browne song, on the video. What I was very impressed with was the way you actually did that. Because you changed it enough that it became yours. You had some different nuances in there vocally, which were pretty impressive, I thought. And they sounded good. I mean, they weren’t just thrown in there. They were very well done, I thought.
Steve Postell: I appreciate that. Look, when you’re singing a great song like that, especially if Danny co-wrote it, and Jackson’s a friend. I want to honor the song. But, I can’t sing Jackson Browne better than Jackson Browne.
Rick: Yeah. He is who he is.
Steve Postell: He is him. So, that version is for him. When I see people doing cover songs and they really mimic to the note the original, usually it’s kind of boring. I’d rather hear the real guy do it.
When I sing someone else’s song, I want me singing it, while still being respectful and true to what’s important in the song. We’ve cut it twice. We did it on the Danny Kartchmar & The Immediate Family record where Danny’s singing it. And Jackson heard it, and he was like, “Hey, that word’s wrong. You got to change that word.” It was important to him.
So, you’ve got to honor what’s important about the song. He was right, that there was a slightly different meaning. But, yeah, at this point with all of us, hopefully I play like me. I sing like me. If you want, I’m going to bring myself to anything that I do, just like Russ and Lee and Waddy and Danny. That’s what’s fun about hearing them play. It’s them.
Rick: Are you finding there are advantages to working virtually on tracks, as opposed to all you guys in the same room?
Steve Postell: Interesting. I don’t mind it, at all. I think with some people, it could be a disadvantage. The amount of recording that the five of us have done over the last 50 years is so vast that it’s a very comfortable environment. I don’t think I play that differently if we’re all together or not, because I just recorded so many times and so have they. It’s fun to all play together, and there’s a vibe.
But, there’s an advantage to both. The advantage of this way is I get to really hone in on my part. I get to really sink into it. I can do it as many times as I want. So, there’s advantages to both. But, because of the experience I think that we all have, I don’t think we’re suffering that much recording separately.
The Immediate Family (Left to Right): Steve Postell, Danny Kortchmar, Waddy Wachtel, Leland Sklar and Russ Kunkel.
Rick: Yeah. Russ told me that you guys are putting out a video a week.
Steve Postell: I would say every two weeks.
Rick: So, you guys are keeping pretty busy, I would think.
Steve Postell: Well, it’s been incredibly busy. We’re getting ready. Our single came out today. There’s a lot of stuff happening with the record company and the management and all that. But, then in two weeks, we’re doing a big online concert out of the coach house in San Juan Capistrano (California). It’s going to be a five or six-camera shoot. We’re going to play. And we’re going to do Santa Barbara. So, we’ll probably do once a month, a live concert online.
Rick: Oh, that should be fun.
Steve Postell: We’ve been very active even through this shut-down.
Rick: I saw that you had a concept band called Night Train Music Club. How did you come up with that concept? I think the only time I’ve heard something similar to that recently was Billy Morrison and Camp Freddy?
Steve Postell: I do know that. Yes.
Rick: How did you come up with the concept to pull in people. I guess they’re coming through town, right? Is that how you do it?
Steve Postell: Well, no. For 10 years, I had a band called Little Blue. It was four guys, sometimes five. And we toured, we played 230 gigs a year.
Rick: Wow, that’s a lot.
Steve Postell: It is a lot. We also were John Oates backup band. But, we all lived in the same town, and the personnel changed a little bit over time, but then solidified. That was our job. Those four guys playing these gigs.
When I moved to L.A., which was 2004, that band finally broke up after about 10 years. I started to want to have a band, but to play with the kind of people that I wanted to play with was pretty much impossible just to have a band of the same people that would play casually periodically. I got the idea, “I’ll be the band, and I’ll make a book full of songs.”
About 30 of them originals and 200 of them covers. “And I’ll see who’s around every time I get a gig.” So, it was more out of, “I want to play and I like playing with other people and I love playing with a band, but I’m never going to know when Leland Sklar or Alphonso Johnson or Steve Ferrone or any other people I played with … 70% of the time, they’re going to be on tour or at a gig.
By having four guys for each chair, I can always book this band. So, that’s how that came about, and it continues to be. I’ve only done two in the last year because Immediate Family just got busy. But, that’s how it evolved as something that I could go out there and book and play, and play and have fun and just play with different people. And everybody’s great, and everyone can handle the job.
Rick: What gear are you using on stage, and what are you using in the studio? And what do you noodle around with at home?
Steve Postell: Oh, man. I cheat on all my guitars all the time. I’m very promiscuous when it comes to guitars. It depends. Right now, I always have guitars around me. The last month, I have this beautiful cedar-top Rockbridge that they made for me. They’re out of Virginia, actually. Beautiful company. I’ve fallen in love with that guitars, it’s the one that’s sitting too, with me. It’s an acoustic.
Steve Postell and Waddy Wachtel with their Rockbridge guitars – Photo courtesy of Rockbridge Guitar Company.
Rick: Is it a dreadnaught or parlour style or?
Steve Postell: No, it’s a parlour. It’s small.
Rick: Like an L-OO Gibson type?
Steve Postell: Sort of, yeah. They call it the O model. Incredible, incredible instrument. That’s the one that’s getting a lot of air time. And then I have this G&L and a Paul Reed Smith. They’re sitting beside me for electrics.
So there are usually some guitars that are appealing to me at a given time that are just sitting around when I practice and work on stuff. In the studio, I have a lot of guitars. A lot.
Sometimes it’s obvious what a particular thing needs, and sometimes I’ve got to search. I’ll pull out four or five guitars until one of them speaks to me. And I’ve got 80 guitars, so it can take a while. But usually, I kind of know. Usually, I kind of go, “I think the 335 wants to be on this song.”
Rick: That’s funny. Yeah, I’ve got some vintage guitars, and so most of the time, I’m playing either a 1931 L-OO Gibson or a ’46 J-45. I guess it’s the spruce tops and the mahogany sides and backs, that sound really good for singer/songwriter type stuff.
Steve Postell: Yeah. But, there’s just so many. I’ve got an old herringbone D-28 Martin that sounds amazing. I’ve got an old Guild. Guitars are just … they have a voice. I like having lots of them. I like seeing how my ears and my hands respond to whatever instrument I put in my hands.
I also have a lot of amps. But, if I was on the desert island and could have one amp, it would be some sort of Fender amp.
Rick: A smaller one? A Vibrolux or a Twin or …
Steve Postell: Not a Twin.
Rick: Yeah. Twins are loud and heavy.
Steve Postell: Well, it’s loud and heavy. To get it to break up like Stevie Ray Vaughan did, you literally go deaf in 10 minutes. I don’t find it that useful of an amp. I remember on one my records, I think it was on actually “3:45 Coming Through”. Rob (Robben Ford) came in and I said , “Here’s a bunch of amps, bunch of pedals, what do you want?”
And he said, “Let me try that Twin.” Which I was really surprised, because he usually plays a Super (Reverb) or something. But, it was a studio, so we put it in the isolation and he turned the thing up to eight and got an unbelievable sound out of the thing! Which you can hear on the solo in “3:45” really good. There’s no pedals.
That’s what a Twin sounds like with one of the best players that ever played guitar, of course. Humbucker pickups and turned way up. But, the amount of time you’re going to be able to do that is really limited. I like some of them new. I like their Hot Rod Deluxes. I think that’s a wonderful amp.
Rick: I haven’t played with one of those yet.
Steve Postell: The Deluxe is a little more beefy. The Deluxe’s are great. The Princetons are great. The Vibroverbs are great. The Bassmans are great. The Hot Rod DeVile. I can get a good sound, because I’m a pedal guy. I do use pedals. If I want a nice punchy, but cleanish sound, I’ll supply the overdrive from the pedal.
Blues Cubes that Roland makes are pretty phenomenal. They’re non-tube amps that sound fantastic. Of course, they’re half the weight or less. Very, very versatile. Danny and I both have them, and they have four power settings. Smaller room, five watts. Biggest room, 80. So, they’re doing a great job with those. But for recording, I generally go back to Fenders. I’ve got the Deluxe here in the studio that Danny played on Tapestry.
Rick: Oh, really? That’s cool.
Steve Postell: Yeah. And you just can’t beat that sound, as far as I’m concerned.
Steve Postell: You can’t hire it as a studio. I have to be the producer. It’s not a studio like, it’s for my projects. I’m always in there. I always had a studio outside the house. And when I bought this house and had enough real estate here to actually make a real studio, I built the studio. Where we record, we do a lot of the over dubs here. I’ve done many records start to finish here. I have a nice ’68 Ludwig drum kit that I keep mic’d up. And it sounds great.
Rick: On the upcoming album that’s coming up in the fall, I think Danny said it’s coming out in the fall or maybe early next year. Is that right?
Steve Postell: Yeah. What they might do, it depends on the Coronavirus and all that. It’s supposed to come out in the fall. If things are still kind of shut down in terms of touring and so on, I think we might release an EP in the fall.
Rick: Yeah. A lot of people are putting out singles now.
Steve Postell: Right. Well, we’re doing that now. We have a single now and another single coming out early October. And then an EP, and then at some point, the 14 song CD will come out. That’s on Quarto Valley Records.
Rick: Are you singing on most of the songs?
Steve Postell: No, we split it up. We only have three singers, and it’s pretty much a third, a third, a third. Pretty much.
Rick: You, Danny, and Waddy, right?
Steve Postell: Yep, yeah. It works out great. It’s a lot of fun. I think it’s fun for the audiences, because we all sing very differently.
Rick: What other projects do you have going since you’re in isolation now?
Steve Postell: I’ve always got stuff. Danny and I are working on the Carole King-James Taylor Troubadour Reunion Tour DVD, so we’re working on getting that ready. I’m editing a book on tape from a Hindu scholar named Lorin Roche. I just finished … actually, it just came out … a wonderful singer named Jodi Siegel, her record … I just got that finished and out. I just finished an on-line book of poetry by a poet named, Ken McCloud with my music mixed in. He’s 60. I’ve always got a lot of different things happening. There’s a children’s record with a woman named Mary Arden that I’m working on. So, I keep busy. I always keep busy.
Rick: Sounds like it. Do you have any other hobbies, or are you mainly focused on music?
Steve Postell: I work out, and I like to read. I play music. A couple times a year, I’ll go skiing. Every once in a while, I’ll play some tennis. No. I’m pretty satisfied being surrounded my music.
Rick: Yeah. Hard not to be, I would think. So, for musicians who are just starting out in the business and they’re trying to have some type of business strategy, what about business strategies? What lessons learned have you gained over the years that you think you’d like to impart to maybe some young kids who are just starting out in the business?
Steve Postell: Well, I will tell you that it’s so dramatically different now. When we started out, and by we, I mean anyone my age and older, all the guys in the band and me. Basically, if you were good and you weren’t a total jerk, you would work. That was it. It was really survival of the fittest.
If you could play and people liked being around you at least a little bit, there was stuff to do. You were going to play on records or something. And there was stuff to be done. And, there were all those little clubs, and we got paid every night, amazingly. Now you pay to play some local clubs.
Today, the odds of being an artist, writing your own music, getting paid to play is so low, unfortunately, sadly. Unless you’re in a total either rap or pop genre, unless you’re going for dance music it’s highly unlikely you’re going to make it. Sadly, that you’re actually going to make a living doing it. It doesn’t mean you should stop doing it.
My advice to people is two things. Be fucking great. Every day, try to make yourself better than the day before. Every day. That’s always going to be the most important thing. More than anything else. But, the second thing is I think unless you’re one of those really rare, special, unique individual voices, learn a bunch of stuff.
Don’t just be good at one thing. Learn how to produce or play sessions or arrange, or record. Make yourself a little bit more valuable to other people who are also playing music.
Rick: Yeah. I guess it helps to network. Well, what about attitude? Because you mentioned earlier, I think, you don’t want to be a jerk either, right?
Steve Postell: Why does The Immediate Family work? Number one, the playing is superb and the musicianship is out of this world. Number two, we like being together. Socially, on the road, on Zoom. We like it a lot. That’s why it’s family. That’s what it feels like. We’re best friends.
And so when you’re interacting, this is not enough work where being a jerk or being difficult is going to cut it. I’ve worked with some people … I have a studio and I do sessions all the time. I make records, and I produce stuff. And there’s a couple people I know, super talented. And they came in one time, and they were difficult. The client wasn’t happy.
Why would I ever hire them again? I wouldn’t. No reason to. There’s plenty of great people who have a wonderful attitude. So, that’s important. Be helpful. Be someone people want to be around. Show up on time, always. Show up knowing the song if you’re supposed to have learned it.
Rick: The old Boy Scout, “Be prepared.”
Steve Postell: Be a professional. Show people that you’re a professional. Have your equipment together. It’s so difficult to make a living as an artist in 2020. You’ve got to have everything going in your favor. You got to be prepared. You got to be good. You’ve got to be on time. You’ve got to get back to people. You’ve got to be responsive. It’s a way different kind of thing than when I started. You were almost expected to be a flaky guy or girl.
The Immediate Family – (Left to Right) Russ Kunkel; Leland Sklar; Steve Postell; Danny Kortchmar; and Waddy Wachtel.
Rick: You’ve been in the business for over 50 years now, right?
Steve Postell: I have. That’s right. Well, no. No, no, no.
Rick: I don’t want to age you. (Chuckles)
Steve Postell: No. They have been. I have been in the business for over 40 years.
Rick: You’re still having fun, right?
Steve Postell: More than ever. I like music more than I ever did before. It’s not that I don’t work hard, but it’s not the same kind of struggle. It’s that much more enjoyable, because I can kind of realize some of what I hear in my head a little bit easier. I love it. I absolutely love it.
Rick: When you look back, you’re proud of what you’ve done?
Steve Postell: Yeah. Yes. I look back, and I go, “Hey, 40 years. I’ve never had a job. I’ve played with so many wonderful people and all over the world. And I’ve gotten to travel. I can’t complain. It’s been a very colorful and rewarding way to live!”
