Steevi Bacon plays Premier Drums, no he doesn't, he plays Yamaha...but he could be persuaded....Discuss.

Steevi is the man behind the powerhouse drumkit which lends that stadium sound to even the smallest club gig. American to his fingertips? Well not quite. Steevi hails from a quiet backwater of South East Essex, but his family cover most of continental Europe. Favourite musical influences include early Deep Purple but exclude early Pink Floyd. He recalls being one of only two rockers at school and retains to this day his hair, his attitude and his first pair of skin-tight jeans. He has been much in demand for tours and record sessions whilst filling the drum chair with Blonde & Beyond, and we have had to fight against the hordes of local, national and international artistes wishing to steal him away! He is, however, his own man and takes care, as he puts it, not to spread himself too thin. You can check out the man's own website at the snappily titled steevi.com, but as he points out, the sloppy browser should take care when keying in the word "steevi" as the inadvertent addition of a final "e" could result in an unwanted visit to a site of extraordinary bestial depravity. Just thought we'd better mention it.

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Steevi loves his drumkit,

you will be unsurprised to learn and he's had it sometime now, gradually honing the setup to accommodate his highly personal playing style. Orthodox he is not. He is not proud of the fact that he has never had a drum lesson in his life, and freely admits that he has doubtless developed some bad habits along the way. He points out that some teachers of whom he has heard, insist on a back to rudiments approach, rather than working forward from the drummer's current plateau of achievement, and this he cannot get a handle on. So is he making life hard for himself? Probably. But what is life but a set of challenges? Hmm? Hmm? Drum teachers aside Steevi likes a bit of art, and agonised for, ooh, minutes, over what should adorn the front skin of his kick drum. He had had a stunning graphic airbrushed on there in the remote past, but, he says, he just outgrew it. "I thought it was the business at the time, all fire and lightning and tempests and raging wind. And then I got up one morning and looked at it and thought 'this is really cheesy!'" It had to go of course and in its place on a black ground sport three salamanders in tasteful and restrained white. All good rites-of-passage stuff we suppose. And yet, and yet... sometimes, when the man charges over the musical precipice known as "Detroit 442", or "Dreaming" one fancies that the ghosts of the above-mentioned fire, tempest and howling wind still stalk the land looking for vengeance. As they do. And why not? There's a lot of primeval soup in this drummer's bloodstream, and Blonde & Beyond are only too happy to dip their bread therein and suck greedily.

A big cat with a goat carcass

Despite all the frustrations of life on the road, Steevi still comes up smiling. "There's nothing quite like arriving in a strange town, finding a strange venue, getting in there, soundchecking and then doing a storming show to an appreciative crowd". He's getting plenty of opportunity with Blonde & Beyond who are selling out venues routinely and turning a standing crowd into a sea of wild dancers. "You know it's funny," he muses, "I'd never thought of myself as a dance orientated drummer, but with the Blondie repertoire it needs to be played from a body tempo point of view. Besides, Clem (Burke) is such a physical player, I mean he's all over that drumkit, really mauling it like a big cat with a goat carcass. So what I mean is the physicality gets across to the crowd, they can see me moving and they start moving themselves. The songs do the rest"

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"It's one of those unsolved mysteries

that electric musicians have had to come to accept as going with the territory. There cannot be a sound engineer in the country who does not feel he's doing his best. And yet the problems persist, year in year out. At the heart of it, of course, is the basic assumption that it's a matter of taste, all bands like different things, you can't please everybody, the equipment isn't up to it, one of the speakers has blown, the other power amp is being mended, the acoustics in here are dreadful, the sound changes totally when the people come in, there's a limiter on the sound system which cuts out at 95db, and blah and blah...".

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Here to be glimpsed...

is Steevi's automated mixer which he hopes to use 'live' in order to take his own drums/mic setup to each gig and thus control what comes back to him through his sidefill monitor. "Otherwise", he says, "it can be a bit hit and miss. You turn up to some gigs and the sound man is right on the case, gives you what you want and makes sure it stays there throughout the gig". The other side of the coin is only too familiar to seasoned road musicians. "The sound check is a fight for every inch of ground. Then when the band finally take the stage, the agreed soundcheck balance has disappeared as has most of the foldback level. No amount of stick waving improves matters. The dream is to have your own sound and take it with you, merely plugging the final mix into the stage box and thence to the main PA and monitors".

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It's one thing creating vintage sounds from vintage equipment and quite another capturing all of that flavour using today's digital media.

Blonde And Beyond recorded their versions of the historic Blondie hits at EMP Digital Studio, right here in Hadleigh, SE Essex. Mark Elliott, EMP's supremo, is the wizard behind the mixing console, and you can hear samples of his work with organ player Dave Dulac and other local writers on the website. The format is streaming audio, so there is no tedious waiting to download. Highly recommended.

Link to EMP site