Steve Nieve Previews New York Summer Shows

Steve Nieve is the longtime keyboard player for Elvis Costello and his various bands. He discusses his career and relationship with Costello, and previews a string of summer concerts in our area this summer, performing alongside singer and percussionist Kessada.

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with me. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, we'll take you to Staten Island as part of our Summer in the City series. Get ready to call in and shout out your favorite things to do there. We'll also hear live music, a live performance from the Brazilian musician Liniker, and we'll have a preview of a new documentary about Billy Joel that drops on HBO tomorrow. That's the plan. Let's get this started with more music from Steve Nieve and Kessada.

[music]

Alison Stewart: My next guest is the guy you have to thank for the buoyant keys on this track.

[music]

Alison Stewart: Nope. The other track. Oliver's Army track.

[MUSIC - Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Oliver's Army]

Alison Stewart: There you go. [laughs] And on this one.

[MUSIC - Elvis Costello & The Attractions: High Fidelity]

Alison Stewart: You'll understand, Steve. We got a new audio system going on in the studio, as you can imagine.

Steve Nieve: [inaudible 00:01:46]

Alison Stewart: Steve Nieve's a Rock and Roll hall of Fame inductee and a longtime member of Elvis Costello's bands The Attraction and The Imposter. He's also an accomplished session musician, recording with songs with Madness, Squeeze, David Bowie, and other rock stars. Now he's embarking on a series of shows along the East Coast with a more recent collaborator, percussionist and singer Kessada. The two will be performing tonight at PAC NYC, great stage, and on Shelter Island at Chez Marie, and Staten Island at Hamilton Park House over the weekend. They're both with me now in studio. Welcome to WNYC.

Steve Nieve: Thank you for having us here. We're very excited to be talking live on air. That's amazing.

Kessada: It's awesome.

Alison Stewart: It is amazing. How did this mini tour start, Steve?

Steve Nieve: Well, it all began, actually, during the pandemic when everybody couldn't go anywhere. We started a thing called The Immobile Tour. Basically, over a course of time, we gave 100 performances from our living room.

Alison Stewart: Oh my.

Steve Nieve: Me, Kessada, and my partner, Muriel, who's our emcee. [chuckles] It was 100 completely different shows, but now what we're doing is bringing that to the real stage. It's kind of weird for some people who were used to seeing us on their computer screens-

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Steve Nieve: - to see us [chuckles] in real real.

Alison Stewart: Kessada, what did you learn about this man as a musician playing with him during COVID?

Kessada: Well, the crazy thing is that Steve is a genius when it comes to any instrument that you put in front of him, so there is a level that you've got to be at when you're playing with Steve. He has this profound mentorship and kindness in him when it comes to communicating his love for music and everything, so you always feel, especially when you're a vocalist, that's every time I say this, it feels like lying on top of silk when he plays for you on the keyboard, because you feel supported and accompanied by what he brings to the sonic things that we do.

When we were doing The Immobile Tour backstage, the interesting thing is I had no mic. We were doing it literally straight from Facebook and Instagram. We were always looking at each other, and there was a lot of communion when we were playing together. There was this background and forth, and even if there were mistakes, it was part of the show. It just helps you grow as a musician.

Alison Stewart: When I hear the word silk, I think luxurious-

Kessada: Exactly. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: - kind of.

Steve Nieve: Well, also, what was great about it was the community that we built doing that, and these wonderful people have kept with us. In fact, the tour that we're about to do, we're playing some very unusual places. One is, for example, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. That's the oldest continuously operating museum in the US of A. We are playing there primarily because someone on The Immobile Tour audience lives in Salem and went and spoke to the people of the museum, and the whole thing developed from that.

It's the same with the show tonight. It's someone that watched our shows and has moved us to be there. We have constructed now a rather eclectic series of concerts that I call the Wild East Tour, but it's called the About Love Tour. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: That's interesting. What did you learn about your fans through the pandemic, through playing to them through a computer?

Steve Nieve: Yes. Well, what we did learn about them was that they were very knowledgeable, not only about the music of Elvis Costello, who I play with a lot, but about all kinds of music. Quite often, this young man, Kessada, has got a completely different history of music than I have, and we would do songs that he suggested, and I was surprised at how many of our audience knew those songs and were completely into the idea. It was great. It was like a sharing experience, and it was really wonderful.

Alison Stewart: What was some of the music that you shared?

Kessada: Oh, okay. This is always a funny one. Steve comes with a catalog of legendary musicians, and I like to torture him with making him sing I Want It That Way from the Backstreet Boys or Believe from Cher. Okay, at this point, when we were playing like 100 shows, I think even more like 110 or something like this, we were trying to find some themes for the night. For example, the reason why we started playing Hackensack, which is a song that we love, is because we were doing a set on that night about towns in America. There were different themes. At one point, we had to go through some very strange pop catalog, which Steve is now very familiar with this. [laughs]

Steve Nieve: Yes, I think everyone was at a loss during the pandemic, and so, yes, we gave something to our audience watching, but they gave something to us, which was that we had this job to do each day. We had to put together a show, we had to get all the scores, we had to learn the songs, we had to rehearse, so it was great. It was a two-way thing, but it was really a good time.

Kessada: It was very symbiotic. They gave us a mission and a purpose during a time where there were no purpose for musicians. We had to stay in and be locked in. Having to work during the day, prepare the set, prepare the show, it gave us also something to do, and we're very thankful for that.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame musician Steve Nieve and his collaborator Kessada, who are performing around New York over the next couple of weeks. They'll be at PAC NYC tonight, Shelter Island tomorrow and Saturday, Staten Island on Sunday, and then back to Shelter Island on August 1st and August 2nd. You put these songs on a vinyl?

Steve Nieve: Yes. That's the other thing. The tour is about love, and we have a vinyl record that we've produced. The record is, I think, the favorite songs of The Immobile Tour crowd, and it was mastered, mixed completely by this young man who is also responsible of the artwork. He's completely-- I think it was a good learning thing for him to understand what a vinyl is, because people don't know about vinyls these days.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn about a vinyl?

Kessada: That the grain is the most important thing. The grain, the texture of this music, it feels like a bygone era that when you hear it for the first time with the scratches and everything, and it's probably the closest that you can feel from live music, like alive music. You can see turn. You can see the grooves inside the vinyl, and the feel of it is much warmer, much more-- I understand why the vinyl in an era of digital music is coming back, because people want to feel closer to the music and closer to what they listen to.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a song that's on the vinyl about love, April 5th. What can you tell me about April 5th before we hear it?

Steve Nieve: Well, I can tell you that we were looking at, actually, a writer called Mark Hollis from Talk Talk, and strangely, he has a song called April 5th. The reason he wrote this song, April 5th, was for the love of his wife, whose birthday was April the 5th. Then, I noticed that Elvis had composed a song with Rosanne Cash and Kris Kristofferson, and it was called April 5th. It was like, how did that coincidence occur? In fact, Elvis' song, they didn't know what to call the song, but the day that they recorded it was April the 5th, so that was why.

That was, I thought, a beautiful story. We learned the Mark Hollis song, and we also learned this song, and it's one of our favorite songs to do because it's like a conversation, and we sing it together, so yes.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to April 5th.

[MUSIC - Elvis Costello (with Rosanne Cash & Kris Kristofferson): April 5th]

Steve Nieve and Kessada: You want love

But it's never deep enough

You want life

But it's never long enough

You want peace

Like it's something you can buy

You want time

But you're content to watch it fly

I'm not afraid

And I refuse to be

I can't fall--

Alison Stewart: Rosanne Cash said that writing that song was like alchemy for her. Have you had that happen in your career, when you've written a song and you just know it's special?

Steve Nieve: I've written very few songs, actually, considering how long I've been doing music, and most of them I've written just by myself, but a few I've written with Elvis, and that's a sort of process where I've always been completely surprised as to what he invented over a piece of music that I gave to him. That's my experience of songwriting and collaboration really. Yes.

Alison Stewart: Have you ever had that experience in your young career, a song you really felt like it just came together?

Kessada: Yes. One time I was working with a Dutch producer, and there was this feeling where everything sort of clicked, like everything is aligned.

Alison Stewart: Yes, exactly.

Kessada: The words, they come super fast, and you're like, "Whoa, it's been 15 minutes and you've got the whole thing done." Yes, it's pretty miraculous when it happens, and it's extremely frustrating when it doesn't. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: That's hard when you run up against that brick wall.

Kessada: Yes.

Steve Nieve: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What do you do to get through a brick wall musically?

Steve Nieve: What do I do? I sometimes listen to other people's music. I love it when I discover a music I didn't know about before, because immediately, that's giving me ideas about things I might do. I don't know.

Alison Stewart: What do you do when you hit the brick wall, Kessada?

Kessada: The beautiful thing about living in Paris is that the city, because of how old it is and how vibrant also it is, going for a walk has always helped me get out of that brick wall. I just go for a walk and I go to Saint Germain or I go into all those really great places in Paris, and suddenly, seeing the faces, seeing the people in the terraces and everything, it clicks, and it gives you new things to get inspired by.

Alison Stewart: I like walking in Paris just because I like walking in Paris.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: My guests are Steve Nieve and Kessada. They are performing around our area tonight at PAC NYC. We're listening to songs from their vinyl About Love. This is a Fountains of Wayne cover, we talked about it earlier, Hackensack. What brought you to Hackensack?

Steve Nieve: Well, it's a good question. We keep thinking that we need to actually set our GPS for Hackensack.

[laughter]

Kessada: We need to go there once, actually.

Steve Nieve: We do need to drive through it.

Kessada: Yes. The funny thing is, when we were talking earlier about discovering pop songs, we were doing that show about American towns, and so we saw that cover, but I actually initially knew it from the Katy Perry cover because she did a really great rendition of it. After, we decided, "Oh, that's such a beautiful classic." It feels like a classic song, and we started playing it. People at The Immobile Tour backstage were so happy about this song. A lot of them knew it, actually.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen. This is Hackensack.

[MUSIC - Fountains of Wayne: Hackensack]

Steve Nieve and Kessada: I used to know you when we were young

You were in all my dreams

We sat together in period one

Fridays at 8:15

Now I see your face in the strangest places

Movies and magazines

I saw you talkin' to Christopher Walken

On my TV screen

But I will wait for you

As long as I need to

And if you ever get back to Hackensack

I'll be here for you

Alison Stewart: So many of these songs are stripped down. They're just piano. When you're performing a song, what do you get out of these gentler approaches, these stripped-down renditions?

Steve Nieve: I think one thing is this is a collaboration between this young man and this old man, and-

Kessada: Stop it.

Steve Nieve: - one of the things about it is that his music is much more--

Kessada: Rambunctious. [laughs]

Steve Nieve: Yes, and so [crosstalk]--

Alison Stewart: I've seen videos. Yes, I've seen them.

Steve Nieve: There is a kind of compromise being made on one side, and a bit one-sided. I was thinking that maybe for the follow up to this 2025 tour, when we do the 2026 tour, we will have to go towards the slightly more aggressive approach, which is not a problem for me, actually.

Kessada: He's a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. I mean, I'm not teaching him rock and roll, he's teaching me. The thing about what you said, which is interesting, is that when you listen to the vinyl, the thing that we wanted to keep is all the sound of the cracking wood and the sound of the piano and everything. It's literally like when we were playing online, this feeling of being able to hear all of the imperfections of the room where we recorded, the chair that's creaking, the floorboards. We wanted to keep that, to have this authenticity of it.

Steve Nieve: Yes, it seems my piano stool had a loose leg.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Well, there is a song called Passionate Fight.

Kessada: [sighs].

Alison Stewart: Ohh. Why did you say ooh?

Kessada: It's a beautiful piece that Steve and Elvis wrote together speaking about a song that you guys co-wrote, and I love it because it reminds me of those Broadway shows where you are super emphatic and quite theatrical, music that I really love to perform.

Alison Stewart: Well, let's hear it. This is Passionate Fight.

[MUSIC - Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve: Passionate Fight]

Steve Nieve and Kessada: Obscure the late afternoon with a drape

Don't let him follow her latest escape

Or the fanfare of taxis that needlessly played

As a forty watt bulb burns a hole in the shade

Then they got into a passionate fight

Now she's lost in the shadows thrown over at twilight

At the Empire Hotel they first came face to face

Pieces would fall off all over the place

And there in the debris they'd laugh and recline

Tell me my dear are you more or less mine

Then they got into a passionate fight

Alison Stewart: I feel like I was into a waltz a little bit. It's got a kind of a vibe about it.

Steve Nieve: Yes, it's kind of probably inspired a little bit by Scott Walker, but probably, actually, I wrote the music when I first met my partner Muriel, and it didn't go like that. It was much more romantic in feeling. Then, after Mr. Costello put those fabulous words to it, I found different ways to arrange the piece, and it slowly developed, and now it's developing further, accompanying Mr. Kessada, who sings it beautifully.

Alison Stewart: At the end, there's a little bit of French at the end of the song.

Steve Nieve: Well, I think that-

Alison Stewart: Isn't there?

Steve Nieve: - the music is inspired by a French woman and being in France. Do you speak in French in the song? I don't think you do.

Alison Stewart: Or somebody does in the background.

Kessada: Oh, okay. It's Muriel who actually says a few words of-- She was there during the recording, and so there was this instant reaction of if she liked the take or if she didn't like the take so we knew if there was the take that we needed to keep, so [chuckles] we decided to keep [unintelligible 00:21:46].

Steve Nieve: We decided to keep the reaction of Muriel as well.

Alison Stewart: Muriel's your mom. Yes?

Kessada: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Okay, so it's important what she says.

Kessada: Yes, of course. Mothers are always right.

Alison Stewart: The song that I did a double take and I hit twice was Country Roads. Tell me about putting Country Roads, the John Denver song, on this release.

Kessada: Okay. That was actually my idea because I love that song. It was such a joy to play it with you, Steve. Do you have any [crosstalk]--

Steve Nieve: Well, I. I think as this album came together very easily, the title About Love seemed very urgent at this present time and all sorts of things. It quickly developed that there was a sort of white side and a black side. There was a dark side and a light side. We had this really deep kind of rapport with Elvis' song Country Darkness. Then, when he said, "I want to do Country Roads,"-- and it was a popular song on The Immobile Tour, wasn't it? Everybody loves that song. It just seemed like a good idea to juxtapose those two things.

Kessada: When you listen also to a lot of covers from this song from John Denver, they're always very rhythmic. There is always this jumping aspect. We wanted to have something where there is this melancholy of the road that you are yearning to go back on, and so the vibe that you're getting is really more-- It's more solemn. I really love that song.

Alison Stewart: I have been speaking with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame musician Steve Nieve and his collaborator Kessada, who are performing around New York over the next couple of weeks. They'll be at PAC NYC tonight, Shelter Island tomorrow and Saturday, Staten Island on Sunday, and then back on Shelter Island on August 1st and 2nd. I'm very glad that you come to visit us in our studios.

Kessada: It was awesome.

Steve Nieve: It was so great to be able to talk to you. By the way, anyone can wander into the PAC tonight.

Kessada: It's a free show.

Alison Stewart: It's a great space. It's a great space.

Steve Nieve: If you're in New York and you want to come hear

what we're up to, please come down.

Kessada: There's no storm if--

Steve Nieve: Yes, exactly.

Alison Stewart: Let's go out on Country Roads.

[MUSIC - John Denver: Take Me Home, Country Roads]

Steve Nieve and Kessada: Almost Heaven, West Virginia

Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River

Life is old there, older than the trees

Younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze

Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong