Steve Azar

For singer-songwriter Steve Azar, making music is a compulsion. “I love playing now as much as I did the first time I ever performed,” says the man known for such top country hits as “I Don’t Have to Be Me (‘Til Monday)” and “Waitin’ on Joe.” “At the end of the day, I want to make music. I love to write. I can’t wait to record. I still just love it, love it, love it. What is wrong with me? I’m addicted!” During the past few years, Steve has been on a creative rampage. From his outpouring of songs has come his latest CD, Slide on Over Here. The come-on title refers both to the romance in some of the tunes and to the fact that the record is full of slide-guitar licks. “Every note on this record is honest,” says Steve. “When you see us live now, we sound exactly like our records. As I did on my last record, Indianola, I played a lot of guitar on this album. And so much of it comes straight out of my personality.” “Moo La Moo,” the collection’s rollicking first single, is a light-hearted look at money troubles. TV’s Gary Valentine, from King of Queens, co-stars in the song’s video. In it, he invented a “Moo La Moo” dance, which has recently become the subject of a second clip, a dance-instruction video. “This album obviously has some serious stuff,” comments Steve. “But it also has a lighter, fun side. I didn’t put this single out because of the economy. I just thought it was time to show a more loosened-up, less-serious side of me.” Slide on Over Here, does, indeed have its somber moments. “I’ll Find Me” is haunting, lost and lonely. “Apart at the Seams” is broken and shuddering. The piano ballad “Beautiful Regret” is wistful and aching. On the other hand, the groove-soaked “Sinkin’ or Swimmin’ (With You)” has wry, rapid-fire lyrics in its steady-pulsing tempo. The shuffling, softly sung bopper “Startin’ Today” offers hope amid sadness, and the airy, open, uplifting “Hard Road” finds reassurance despite tough times. The album is the most emotionally complex one the artist has ever crafted. Steve yearns for his Mississippi homeland in the horn-punctuated “Sweet Delta Chains.” The gently loping “Let Go of the Rope” contains wise advice. The atmospheric “Take Your Time” is sung to a girl who’s in a hurry to become a woman. The sweetly melodic “Sunshine” is as pretty a love song as Steve has ever sung. “All I Need” is a power ballad that begs a lover for a second chance. “Back to Memphis” beckons with tenderness. “This record was highly influenced by my 2006-2007 tour with Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band,” Steve adds. “Following our set, I would watch his show, just absorbing Bob and the band, and the feeling I got really helped define a true direction for this new album.” Steve Azar is unusual among his peers in that he can entertain audiences as a solo performer with a guitar, in a small three-piece combo or with a full band. He is also distinctive in that he can enthrall a wide variety of audiences. During the past two years, he has opened shows not only for Bob Seger, but Carrie Underwood, Tim McGraw, Hootie & The Blowfish, Montgomery Gentry and a wide variety of other artists. “I do the same show, that’s the weird thing. I can play for Brad Paisley’s crowd or Bob Seger’s. Even headlining at all those Delta blues festivals, I do the same songs, the same show. There’s no adaptation at all. I just seem to feel comfortable in any circumstance. It’s that Mississippi ‘thang.’ Whatever it is, we’ve got it. We fit in everywhere and I think that’s pretty cool.” “Steve Azar rocked the house on our last tour,” raves Bob Seger. “He’s a great guy and a great performer.” Their tour together was ranked at No. 1 by the concert-industry publication Pollstar. A reviewer in the Columbus Dispatch wrote, “Azar has the inflections and rhythms of a young Bob Dylan, and he shifts deftly between acoustic and electric guitars. He passed the crucial test for an opening act: He held the attention of people who had never heard of him.” If you don’t catch Steve Azar in concert this year, you might see him on television. He is co-starring on The Golf Channel’s series, Playing Lessons. The magazine Golf Digest ranks him as one the top-five golfing musicians, alongside his fellow country entertainers Rudy Gatlin, Marty Roe (Diamond Rio) and Vince Gill, plus saxophonist Kenny G. “On Playing Lessons they team up a celebrity amateur, me, with a PGA professional. They put me with Kenny Perry, which after the way he played at the Rider Cup -- that was fantastic. I didn’t know him before. But the thing about golf is that by the time you’re done playing 18 holes together, you know the person. The show was great to do. Golf is a sport with tournaments that allow people to spend money and help charities. That’s how I have come to meet so many great friends. It’s been a big help in my career.” In the past, he has staged golf tournaments to benefit his Steve Azar St. Cecelia Foundation. The organization aids charitable organizations in the Mississippi Delta as well as Nashville. Its priority is Catholic organizations that help sick, disadvantaged or abused children. Steve’s four-day annual “Magnolia” celebrity event highlights the arts, music and food that define Delta blues culture. During any given year, Steve also conducts toy, clothing and food drives and puts on fund-raising shows for his Foundation. The next-to-youngest in a family of five children, Steve Azar had music in him from an early age. Home was little Greenville, Mississippi, where his father owned the state’s first liquor store.Tutored by local blues musicians, Steve began writing songs when he was just 10 years old. That led him to develop as a guitarist. He had his first Nashville recording session when he was 14. The teenager’s early tunes were strong enough for Buddy Killen and Donna Hilley of Tree Publishing to encourage him. One of the songs, “Livin’ Life to its Fullest,” was performed by its young composer on Danny Thomas’s national telethon for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. While still in high school, he made two more trips to Music Row. Azar was chomping at the bit to make music full time, but his parents insisted he go to college. Still, life at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi rapidly became one gig after another for the Steve Azar Band. By the time he graduated with a business-management degree, he was playing 200 shows a year and touring with two 28-foot trucks and 10 men on the payroll. Azar was a regional headliner who played the Delta’s biggest clubs and festivals, including the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans. Mississippi native Faith Hill remembers being at his shows as a fan in the front row. Steve Azar moved to Nashville in 1993. By the end of his second day in Music City, he was offered three song-publishing contracts. Getting a recording contract took longer. After signing with Mercury Records, Steve released what he considers to be his first “real” album, 2001’s Waitin’ on Joe. Its breakout single “I Don’t Have to Be Me (‘Til Monday)” has been played more than three million times on the radio to date. Azar made headlines again when Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman agreed to guest star in the chart- topping 2002 video for “Waitin’ on Joe.” Steve Azar worked so hard to promote his first hits that he developed vocal problems in 2003 and underwent surgery in 2004. In 2005, he again hit the popularity charts with his Mercury single “Doin’ It Right.” In 2006, he formed his own independent label and hit the charts in 2006 with the rocking “You Don’t Know a Thing.” The song also appeared on his acclaimed 2008 CD Indianola. That collection took him back to his Mississippi roots and included “You’re My Life” as another Steve Azar radio single. The Indianola CD subsequently reached No. 1 on XM Radio’s “Country Outlaw” channel. During the past year, Steve has reorganized his business, forming a new team, expanding his office staff, signing with Sanctuary Artist Management and created a new imprint for his music, Ride Records. Slide on Over Here and “Moo La Moo” are the company’s first products. “There’s nothing that’s not completely honest on this record,” says Steve. “When you write, engineer, play all sorts of instruments and be involved in all aspects from beginning to end on a project like this, I believe you are baring it all. I think I’ve learned that you are always having a conversation with your audience. What do you want to say? What inflections will you use? Everything about that conversation has got to be downright honest. It really does.”