By Sarah French. Photo Credit: Scott Doubt.
Acclaimed singer-songwriter Steve Hill celebrates his 25th year as a recording artist with the release of Dear Illusion on November 11th, 2022. Three years in the making, the album is, without a doubt, a step up for the artist, both in terms of maturity and execution, and his best production to date.
Known over the last ten years as a one-man band, on Dear Illusion, the multi-instrumentalist shares the spotlight with a horn section, The Devil Horns, as well as 7-time UK Blues Awards Drummer of the Year Mr. Wayne Proctor (A.A. Williams, Oli Brown, King King, Ben Poole). Mr. Proctor also mixed and mastered the upcoming record.
The first single taken from the album, "Everything You Got", released Friday September 23rd, is available to stream/download from https://ffm.to/sheyg.
The new single is accompanied by a music video which can be viewed on YouTube starting on Wednesday September 21st.
About the album, Mr. Hill said: "I had a version finished right before the pandemic started. It was slated for release in April 2020. There was no point in releasing it then, so I decided to wait. The sad context of the pandemic resulted in additional time for me to offer my fans the album I’m sure will meet their expectations for my 25th anniversary as recording artist. I am very proud of the work, and ultimately the final results we were collectively able to achieve with the album, which ended up reflecting both maturity and introspection. Overall, I feel like the album as a whole is telling that no matter what happens, you should give it everything you got and move on, be the best person you can be, and no matter what, the sun will rise again. Don’t dwell on suffering, and don’t forget about it, either. Even treat misfortune as a friend, slap it on the back and say “Thanks for teaching me”.
Widely considered as one of Canada’s most prolific guitarists, Steve Hill has consistently delivered wildly ambitious performances and albums. Heralded wherever he goes, the guitarist, singer, drummer, harmonica player, songwriter and accomplished producer is a musical force to be reckoned with.
Further to the facts that Steve has won a JUNO award, played concertos with Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphonic Orchestra, won enough Blues awards to fill a bathtub and walked the boards of too many stages to count throughout his 30-year career, when you stop and start listening to his music, you know you’re listening to the real deal.
Already playing the bar circuit at the age of 16, Steve turned pro two years later when he joined the Bob Harrisson Blues Band. He left after two years to pursue a solo career. His first album was released in 1997, and lead to Real Blues magazine proclaiming: "Steve Hill is for my money the best young Blues guitarist on the North American scene today."
He spent the next fifteen years touring across Canada and Europe, releasing albums with different line-ups, until he became a one-man band in 2012. Following the success of his JUNO nominated Solo Recordings Volume 1, which also won at the International Blues Challenge in 2013, Solo Recordings Volume 2 won the JUNO Award and seven Maple Blues Awards in 2014-2015. It was followed by Solo Recordings Volume 3 in 2016 which has had close to six million streams on Spotify so far. In 2018, he released The One-Man Blues Rock Band. The live album shows an artist at the top of his game. It comes to no surprise why the Montreal Gazette has referred to Steve Hill as “the meanest guitar player in Canada.”
A guitar stylist with a wide musical vocabulary, he has performed over 2,500 concerts in many configurations. For the past 10 years, he has toured extensively throughout Canada and Europe supporting his critically acclaimed Solo Recordings albums trilogy and his one-man band show. When it comes to one-man bands, Steve Hill has no limits. Anything goes. He is the true exponent of a one-man band. Steve performs standing up while singing and playing guitar, his feet playing bass drum, snare drum and with a drum stick fused to the head of his trusty guitar to hit the hi-hats and a cymbal. Leading Germany’s Guitar Magazine proclaimed Steve as being "the most spectacular one-man band on the planet".
Over the years, he has shared the stage with many of his heroes, including Ray Charles, B.B. King, Hubert Sumlin, Jimmie Vaughan and ZZ Top, to name a few, and has played at some of Canada’s biggest music festivals. With 12 albums of original songs to his name, he has explored everything from Rock, Country, Folk, Metal, Jazz, while continuing to fuse it all with his first love, the Blues.
Website: www.stevehillmusic.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/stevehillmusic
Twitter: twitter.com/stevehill
Instagram: www.instagram.com/stevehillmusic
Comments