Steven Lee Ebert

https://soundcloud.com/steve-ebert-1/big-silver-bird

Guitarist and singer-songwriter Steve Ebert knows exactly what it’s like to live 20 feet from stardom. Like the subjects of the documentary bearing that title, he’s spent much of his life sharing recording studios and stages with idols including Neil Young, the Bee Gees’ Maurice and Robin Gibb, Phil Collins, the Wailers, Weather Report bassist Jaco Pastorius, John Lee Hooker, Jesse Colin Young and a long list of others. He’s played cards with Tennessee Williams. He became tight with Young’s legendary producer, David Briggs. The Beach Boys recorded a song inspired by a bar his dad owned in the Florida Keys (“Kokomo”). Oh, and he also trained marine mammals, served as drug-addiction counselor and managed crews installing glistening glass on skyscrapers. But in all his decades of pursuing gigs, musical and otherwise, in Florida, Los Angeles, Nashville, Austin and elsewhere, Ebert had never released an album of his own — until now. If Dreams Were Horses, recorded in Austin with producer Bradley Kopp (Eliza Gilkyson, Jimmie Dale Gilmore) and several stellar sidemen, took time to realize because, well, Ebert was so busy accumulating the experiences he chronicles, he simply needed to wait till the right moment to share them. Carrying influences from Stonesy blues to honky-tonk country, If Dreams Were Horses is perhaps best characterized as Americana with a Western lean. Hints of wistfulness permeate Ebert’s gentle tenor as he reflects about women he’s loved and memories he holds (including a few wild ones — all of which he swears are true). Several tracks are about or inspired by the love of his life, his childhood sweetheart. He wrote the title tune in the 1980s, when he had no idea where she was but couldn’t get her out of his mind. “All the Good Ones are Taken,” one of the album’s prettiest tracks, is about someone he met who reminded him of his long-ago love. Ebert would wed three times before reuniting with her; he wrote “Home at Last” the day after the phone conversation that reignited their romance. He also celebrates love in “Diamonds” and “Time.” The gorgeous picking on the latter is by Kopp, who handled the album’s acoustic guitar work while Ebert concentrated on electric. That song also contains lovely fiddle by Richard Bowden, who played on several songs — except “All the Good Ones are Taken.” That track’s sweet, plaintive playing is by Gene Elders, George Strait’s longtime fiddler. Elders also was slated to contribute mandolin to a few tracks, but passed away before he could. The title-track mandolin is by Tommy Joe Hill, with whom Ebert had played in Hill’s Florida band, Texas Crude. The lovely piano is by David Webb, who played keyboards throughout — except for the Hammond B3 fills on “American Music.” Those are by Robyn Robins, of Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band. Drummer Kevin Hall and bassist Glenn Fukunaga comprise the album’s rhythm section. Together, they help Ebert shift seamlessly from ballads to the “kinda country, kinda rock ‘n’ roll” of “American Music” to the honky-tonk of “Too Blue to be True” — which Ebert wrote for Sweethearts of the Rodeo (they loved it, but didn’t get to record it). Then there’s “Harley Honey,” a blues rocker about his third wife — “an actual Harley honey,” Ebert says — that could become an anthem for Harley-riding women and the men who love them. Growing up in St. Louis, Mo., Ebert’s music-loving parents exposed him to everything from Beethoven and Brubeck to the Everly Brothers, Nat “King” Cole and Johnny Cash. Like his dad, Ebert played trumpet in his school band. But when he heard the opening riff on Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman,” his love affair with guitar began. He never developed a love for touring, however, and turned down invitations from Jimmy Cliff and Harold Melvin, among others. “I was never really interested in touring,” Ebert says. “I loved writing, recording and producing.” That’s how he wound up recording with Stevie Ray Vaughan’s band, Double Trouble; he hired them to play on an album he produced for singer Michelle Mayfield. He still loves creating — and is already looking forward to recording his next album. Says Ebert: “I feel like I’m ready to write my best songs.”