Steve Louw’s been a fixture of the South African music scene since the mid 1970s, first travelling between folk clubs in his Volkswagen Kombi to perform originals and blues covers on his 12-string Ibanez.
By 1986 he’d recorded two albums with the band All Night Radio. The first was produced by The Kinks collaborator John Rollo, secured after impressing The E Street Band’s Little Steven with a cassette of live recordings. The second was produced by Kevin Shirley, whose CV now includes Joe Bonamassa, Iron Maiden, The Black Crowes, and Led Zeppelin.
Inevitably All Night Radio broke up. “It was just too much touring, too much in the Kombi, too much together, too much fast food,” he laughs in a Cape Town coffee shop just around the corner from the studio where they’d recorded that first LP.
Louw continued, debuting his new band Big Sky with 1990’s Shirley-produced Waiting For The Dawn. Its title track became an anthem of hope and reconciliation at a time of political transformation at the southern tip of Africa and paved the way for and an ongoing creative partnership with Shirley, several more albums, and multiple hit singles.
So when the ’70s folk singer Rodriguez toured South Africa for the first time, Big Sky was seen as a good fit to be his backing band in sold-out arenas across the country. “He was as surprised as us. When he came here he’d been working on a construction site and he didn’t have a guitar or anything. And when he landed here it was as if The Beatles had landed,” Louw remembers. “We bought him a guitar and went through the songs with him. I mean, what a thrill to be singing Sugarman in the studio with Rodriguez. I was thinking: ‘That’s the voice, I know that voice, and he’s right there next to you.’”
A few years later, in the very same rehearsal studio, Louw was brushing shoulders with Brian May and Dave Stewart, contributing to a song for the 46664 Nelson Mandela Aids benefit project. And when that song, Amandla, came to be performed in concert by an all-star lineup including Bono, The Edge, Roger Taylor, May, and Stewart, Louw found himself nestled between Anastacia and Beyoncé. “That was my two seconds of fame,” he chuckles.
But after 2008’s final Big Sky album, Louw went quiet. He kept writing and occasionally played live, although, without a record deal, no new material emerged. That is, until the surprise release of his debut solo international album Headlight Dreams in 2021.
What changed?
“It was basically Kevin who said I should make another album. He said: ‘Just come to Nashville with the songs and we’ll figure it out as we go along.’ So he had that faith in me and put everything together for me. He said: ‘Just book your ticket for a year’s time, and you’ve got a year. Get ready.’ So it was quite daunting.”
Almost as daunting was the approach to recording: just three days to record and mix 10 songs with musicians he’d never met, that they (and sometimes even Shirley) had never heard before, presented to them as voice and guitar iPhone recordings.
Louw’s initial trepidation — and the worldwide Covid-19 outbreak — notwithstanding, the resulting album was a creative triumph that, unlike some of Louw’s previous work, really connected with a global audience. Its success spurred him on. He’s already back with a new one: Thunder And Rain.
“Once I’d done Headlight Dreams, and also because of lockdown, I was really keen to get out and record again and have fun. And it was really the thing that kept me going in lockdown. It was a focus, like a beacon. I wrote a ton of songs, and it all worked out. We survived and saw each other again.”
The political turmoil of the outside world and the effects of the pandemic worked their way into some of the writing, including Thunder And Rain (sample lyric “I can’t understand the pain right now”) and The Road Fades From Sight. (“This could be the end and I want you at my side,” summarises Louw.)
“You face your mortality,” he says of those long, isolated months in 2020. “We were in this small, remote cabin in the Eastern Cape and had a guy come over to fix our internet and our burglar alarm. Three weeks later I found out he’d passed away, a 32-year-old guy, from Covid.”
And yet, Louw was also able to write plenty of songs filled with optimism — thanks to his surroundings.
“Being in nature is an optimistic place because it gives you a lot of perspective that we are all mortal. But it’s a beautiful mortality in nature, the balance of nature. So I think that gave me a sense of peace, of my place in nature. I think that’s a positive thing, the beautiful balance of the world that’s evolved from nothing to complex over billions of years.”
Nature, and humans’ engagement with it, has long been an inspiration for Louw: for every reference to a tree or a river in his songs, there’s mention of a train or a road.
“Trains and roads and walking are all metaphors of the journey of life, of the journey of the world,” he explains. “I have a motorcycle and I like to ride around for a month at a time, covering thousands of kilometres. I love the space. And I like to imagine the world just a few hundred years ago, when the pace of life was good.
“When the world stopped, when there were no flights, and no intercontinental travel, we suddenly realised all of this is a very new thing. If your children left home 100 years ago, you probably wouldn’t see them again unless you wanted to take a six-month journey, a dangerous journey that you might not survive. So all of that focuses you. Like my children weren’t here and I thought: ‘I’d really like to see them again.’
“It does take you away from taking everything for granted, where everything has become so comfortable.”
With more than 30 new songs written, the pandemic over, and the travel ban from South Africa lifted, Louw returned to Nashville in early 2022 to record what would become Thunder And Rain, using the same approach as on Headlight Dreams. But this time, he was filled with more confidence.
“Because you’re working so fast there’s not a lot of time for banter, so last time we were only just starting to get to know each other by the time the album was done. At the time, for them, they didn’t know who I was. I was just a friend of Kevin’s.
“I was like a ghost, so for them it was like making a record with a ghost. Now they could see what they did the last time had come out. So they were like: ‘Ah, OK. This guy exists.’”
That confidence and trust shines through on the new album. What’s unchanged though is how vividly Shirley captures the vibrancy of the performances. That’s something Louw’s always striven for in his own work, inspired by musicians he’s loved for decades: Led Zeppelin, Muddy Waters, Duane Eddy, Fats Domino, and The Rolling Stones.
“You could hear this could have been their last moment on earth,” he says of some of his favourite artists. “It came through the speakers so clearly: the performance, the energy. And I’ve always loved that kind of music and I’ve always gone for capturing a performance in the studio. Because that’s what music is — it’s always been a performance to other people. It’s being danced out, it’s being sung out.
“So I’ve never felt as energised by that other approach where you can build things by adding layers. I really don’t like overdubbing stuff, and thinking about it, and on and on and on, months and months of playing. If you can’t just say it, what’s the point?” he reasons.
“I also don’t have the luxury of that amount of time spent fiddling around. You’ve got to get it done. If the engineer knows how to record it, you’ve got to know how to play it, and the song’s got to be there and you must sing it. That’s it. What else is there? It’s the performance of a song. If he knows how to switch on a mic, press record, and get a sound, it’s up to you to perform the thing.”
Shirley, although able to wrangle the beast that is Iron Maiden with its three lead guitars, clearly gets Louw’s more minimalist approach. After all, they’ve worked together (on and off) for over 35 years. And, says Louw, their relationship has never been better.
“I trust him more now. I don’t second guess him as much.”
He laughs: “We’re both control freaks. That’s a problem. One of the control freaks has to stand back, so I’ve learned to stand back. But I won’t let him go too far, because I’m definitely of the less is more approach. He knows that, immediately.”
Built on such a strong creative collaboration, it’s safe to say that Louw is pleased with Thunder And Rain.
“I’m beyond thrilled. Kevin’s thrilled. The musicians are thrilled. It’s been such a positive thing for me. It’s nice to get the music out there. And streaming has been good for me. It puts me in contact with people in places where my stuff has never been released before. It’s a new way of bringing everyone together, so it’s all positive.”
Photo: Jacqui van Staden
- This article originally appeared on Louder Than War.
