Steve wynn musician biography sample

Steve Wynn Interview: A Working Musician

Photo by Guy Kokken

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Make It Right (Fire) isn’t your standard issue singer-songwriter record, even given the history of its creator, Steve Wynn, best known as the leader of legendary neo-psychedelic band The Dream Syndicate. Each song references, lyrically and/or aesthetically, something about Wynn’s past, moments in his life and sounds he dived into throughout his long career. Peppy album opener “Santa Monica” is named after the city and boulevard where he was born. The drum machine-addled, deadpanned “What Were You Expecting” and slinky slow burn “Cherry Avenue” loosely connect with a time in his life where he was no longer bright-eyed and idealistic, learning the rules of a cynical world. The jangly “You’re Halfway There” and proto-punk-funk of “Making Good On My Promises” soundtrack a perspective shift, where Wynn realizes that conquering antagonism can breed strength. “Scars, scars / I’ve got them pickled in a jar / Fables and warnings / I eat them for breakfast,” he cheekily sings. The album ends with a strummed, yet distorted track named after where Wynn lives today: “Roosevelt Avenue”. You can pick apart Wynn’s life and point to exact moments where these songs might have taken place, but Wynn would rather you do something else. “You can just put on Make It Right and use it as the catalyst to create your own life story, dig into your own past,” Wynn wrote in the album’s bio. “It belongs to you now. Let it tell your own tale while I tell mine.”

Really, if you want to know about Wynn’s past, just pick up I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True (Jawbone Press), his debut memoir, released in tandem with Make It Right. Though, according to Wynn, one is not needed to understand the other, it does make the exercise of not just breaking down Make It Right, but applying its lessons to your own life, a little easier. We might not all have grown up in Santa Monica, gone to a high school that

Summer 1984. I've got the back lounge of this tour bus all to myself, partly because I'm the lead singer but more likely because it means the rest of the band won't have to deal with me for the rest of the day. Just two years earlier I was flunking out at UCLA, working the day shift in a record store, living out of my father's basement. Now I'm living the million-to-one reality of touring the country with my band, The Dream Syndicate, opening for up-and-coming rock darlings R.E.M., and making a big-budget sophomore album for A&M Records. I'm also untethered and unbound, drinking a fifth of Jim Beam every day, barely speaking to my best friend and guitarist, and looking for trouble in all the wrong places. How did I get from there to here? And how do I get out? Stick around and find out. I'll be here, dreaming my dream . . .

I Wouldn't Say It If It Wasn't True is a tale of writing songs and playing in bands as a conduit to a world its author could once have barely imagined--a world of major labels, luxury tour buses, and sold-out theaters, but also one of alcohol, drugs, and a low-level rock'n'roll Babylon.

Beginning with Wynn's childhood in California in the 60s and 70s, the book builds to a crescendo with the formation of the first incarnation of The Dream Syndicate in 1981 as an antidote to the prepackaged pop music of the era. It charts the highs and lows of the band's early years at the forefront of the Paisley Underground scene alongside Green On Red, Rain Parade, and The Bangles; the seismic impact of their debut album, The Days Of Wine And Roses; the spiraling chaos of the sessions for the follow-up, Medicine Show; the dissolution of the band's first line-up and the launch of a second phase of The Dream Syndicate with Out Of The Grey and Ghost Stories; and more, culminating with the release of the landmark live album Live At Raji's.

American musician

Musical artist

Steve Wynn (born February 21, 1960) is an American singer, musician and songwriter. He led the band The Dream Syndicate from 1981 to 1989 in Los Angeles, afterward began a solo career, and then reformed The Dream Syndicate in 2012.

Career

Growing up in Los Angeles

Wynn was born February 21, 1960, at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California. He played in his first band The Light Bulbs at age 9 and followed with another band Sudden Death Overtime a year later while attending Emerson Junior High School. He later attended University High School (Los Angeles) with classmates Darby Crash and Pat Smear who would later go on to form the Germs. He left Los Angeles to attend the University of California, Davis in 1977.

College Years in Davis, California

Before forming The Dream Syndicate, Wynn played guitar in the Davis-based band Suspects, whose members included vocalist Kendra Smith (with whom he later founded The Dream Syndicate), and Russ Tolman and Gavin Blair (who would form True West). In 1979, Suspects released a single, "Talking Loud" b/w "It's Up to You", and the band remained active through 1981.

After Suspects disbanded, Wynn formed the trio 15 Minutes with two members of Alternate Learning, bass player Carolyn O'Rourke and drummer Eric Landers. With 15 Minutes, Wynn wrote and produced the 1981 single "That's What You Always Say," b/w "Last Chance For You," which he engineered with Alternate Learning's frontman, Scott Miller. The A-side, "That's What You Always Say," was later performed by the Dream Syndicate.

The Dream Syndicate (1981–1989) (2012–present)

Main article: The Dream Syndicate

The Dream Syndicate's eponymous EP was released on Wynn's own label, Down There Records. They were signed a few months later to Slash Records where they made The Days of Wine and Roses, a record often cited as one of the cornerstones of both the Ind

FROM STEVE!

I've been fortunate enough to have a bunch of record release dates over the years-33 by my rough count--but as of Friday, August 30, I'll be a published author for the first time with the publication of my memoir "I Wouldn't Say It If It Wasn't True" on Jawbone Press. The book is my tale of growing up in LA, discovering music as a fan, songwriter and musician and then forming The Dream Syndicate. I detail the band's quick rise, the ensuing potholes and pitfalls and then the tenacious salvaging before breaking up in 1988. Plenty of friends and famous folks along the way. You can find the book wherever you like to shop-or signed and pers