Psychologist - Writer - MUSICIAN - Steve Bonham
Wide brimmed hat. Long dark coat. Guitar slung on back.
21 years on the road.
A 100,000 miles and half a thousand hotel rooms.
From the Berlin Wall to Atlas Mountains.
From Sahara Desert to the streets of Hong Kong:
A memory brewed in the long simmering soup of people and place.
A man who has learned to watch and to listen
to walk and talk in the ebb and flow of meeting and parting.
He is a chronicler of the human spirit in words. and music.
Anglo-Americana
So what is Anglo Americana?
It’s a name that is starting to crop up in various places. It was the title of an EP of ours a few years ago, it’s a hashtag on Instagram, Twitter and other social media and there are a growing number of Spotify playlists using it in their titles. I think for all of us using it is a bit of a flag of convenience.
What we are writing is not really country though some of them make us welcome , the Folkie Inquisition would be tut and prepare the fire, and anyway, although we play acoustic instruments we like to play them loud! If it doesn’t have an official definition, I can tell you what it means to me. And it’s what inspires me musically.
It’s the raw power of the story well told, about the extraordinary lives of ordinary folk, the idea that music and words are the tools that you use to survive like a sharp axe, a hammer or saw. It’s about the conversation that began when millions of us left these wet Atlantic isles and took a step into somebody else’s wilderness. Its timeless music that is always about the things that matter not some intellectual abstraction. It’s in English, a mongrel language, not regulated like French or German. English is the language of borrowing, thieving and inventing. It’s subversive thing, welcoming the stranger on our tongues and in our ears even to those whose prejudice and racism run deep.
Anglo-Americana is simple, the music of the misfits, the rebels, the chancers, the vagabonds. But also, those who stand hard and strong against the wind the rain and sun bidding the world to do its worst. In it the writer and the singer are always present. This is always his or her song whatever its story. There is intimacy and commitment and belief. I have said it before, It Is Moonshine Music basic ingredients and conjure up some fire. There are no rules except ‘be true’.
My favourite example of it at the moment is the EP ‘Skail’ by Mal McWatt. In three beautifully executed songs: The Crofter and the Cherokee; The Widow and the Cruel Sea; and Old World Rules and Empire Takes, he explores the experience of his fellow countrymen who emigrated to Southern Eastern States of the USA.
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