Tone Poems Live

Tone Poems Live the DVD maybe the only opportunity to watch a filmed recording of Steve Hunter doing his own material as a solo artist. Other than a couple of tunes on Night Of The Guitars in the 80's it is very unlikely to happen again.

It was recorded in LA in August 2013 and features bassist Tony Levin (Peter Gabriel, King Crimson), keyboardist Phil Aaberg (Elvin Bishop, Peter Gabriel) and drummer Alvino Bennett (Dave Mason, Robin Trower).

The four rehearsed over two days and recorded/filmed each of the 14 tracks twice on day three, with no overdubs added later.

Steve was contacted by Brian Brinkerhoff about the idea after Brian had pledged on the Manhattan Blues Kickstarter. Initially, Brian, who wanted to fund an arts project, thought it could be a solo performance by Steve, but Steve felt he needed a chordal structure to work with, harmony is what he loves to build on and melodies come from within chords.

“When we first started talking about it, I wasn’t crazy about the idea. But it evolved into something where we could record it live.”

Once Tony, Phil and Alvino were on board, Steve was very happy and was very happy with the end result. The majority of the tracks are from his solo material, with the rest in the form of covers, including Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Riviera Paradise and Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.

Not everything went smoothly during the recording. The studio set up in LA gave them a few challenges but everybody managed to keep it together. The two days prior to filming were pretty intense at times, monitor mixes were not working properly, keyboards were not getting patched correctly and tempers were getting a little frayed at the edges. But, on the day of filming, the band just settled in and focused totally on the music and the fun of being in one room together. A bit of magic was captured for posterity and Brian and Co Producer/Engineer Paul Lani made it happen.

Karen, Steve's wife had embellished a few of Steve's suits in the past and did one specifically for this DVD. She can embellish any black suit jacket along the same lines with a preferred color scheme, so contact her via deaconsongs@earthlink.net for more information and quote.

Steve used two of his Gretsch Custom Shop Guitars, the Blue and the Seafoam Green.

He put them through two Fender Twin 65 Reissue amps and used various pedals. Photo below.

The DVD has fourteen tracks , the CD has eleven tracks.