Quick Q and A with Stevie Coyle
 by Kathy S-B  ·  8 June 2009

Stevie Coyle is arguably one of the funniest fingerstyle guitarists known to humankind. The following interview is testament to this fact. Since his departure from the incredibly eclectic string band, the Waybacks, Stevie has been plying his trade as a solo performer — entertaining those lucky enough to be present with his amazing guitar skills and witty repartee. His brand new, hot off the press CD Ten-in-One is a concept album. According to a recent article in the Boston Globe, concept albums are “in” again so it seems that Stevie is right on track with this one. Find out more about Stevie Coyle on his website.

If you had to describe your music in five words or less, what would you say?

Arguably, I am the last person in the world who should attempt a description of this sort. Having said that maybe . . . “Runaway eclecticism?” That leaves three words to spare. Or maybe “Coffee klatch over acoustic guitar?” Dunno.

You’ve toured as part of a band (The Waybacks) and you’ve toured as a solo musician. It must be a drastic change for you. How are you adapting?

The adaptation was swift and certain and — as the young people say — all good. There is nothing about touring solo that doesn’t suit me to a T. Everything is so simple and sweet. Best of all is playing to roomfuls of people rather than to glaring walls of light from huge festival stages. The sense of contact is so important to me, and it was sorely missing from what had become a fairly steady diet of big shows.

Tell us about the recording of Ten-in-One. You’re calling it a “concept album.” What is the concept?

Ostensibly it’s about one fellow’s trip to the sideshow. I’m sure it’s about other things too, but I’m not certain what they are. At least, that is to say, I’m not sure what they will be for each listener. There is lots of room for interpretation. The album suggests much and dictates little, both musically and graphically

What I can say about it for sure is that when I started recording it very soon after my departure from The Waybacks, I thought I was making a nice polite instrumental fingerstyle guitar record. It very soon revealed itself to be something more akin to Sgt Pepper’s if I may flatter myself for just a moment by that comparison.

A truly wonderful cast of characters joined me in the recording of it. The cast includes:

Mike Marshall (David Grisman Darol Anger, Choro Famoso) on mandolin

Sam Bevan (Grisman, Joe Craven, Matt Flinner) on bass

Philip Aaberg (Windham Hill, Eugene Friesen) on accordion

Hank Roberts (Bill Frisell) on cello

Kit Walker (Kundalini Boombox, Airto Moreira) on keys and loops

Heidi Clare (AtAGallop, Reeltime Travelers) on fiddle

Dr. Robby Virus (Project Pimiento) on theremin

Marla Fibish (Three Mile Stone) on mandolin

Rich DePaolo (Ten Sleep) on electric guitar, mixing and mastering

Mike Phelan (Marley’s Ghost), Corinne West, Teresa Tudury, Misty Browning and Rachel Tree on vocals

Nick Weber, my old ringmaster from circus days, is The Voice of The Talker

Walter Strauss (Ten Sleep, The Had Cleaners, WS Trio) produced and plays guitar and sings

I play guitar, lap steel and sing.

There are 8 originals, one trad and 3 covers. Aren’t you glad you asked?

You have dabbled in comedic ventures as part of a folk-tribute parody band called The Foremen and as part of a comedy duo called the Reagan Brothers. Were most of your songs inspired by the politics of the day?

Actually, I made my living in stand-up for a while. This was back during The Great Comedy Scare of the mid-1980s, when just about everyplace had a microphone and some fake bricks for a backdrop. Both The Foremen and The Reagan Bros. were projects undertaken with my very dear friend Roy Zimmerman, who is a hugely prolific and deeply funny man. And neither of them were particularly political. In The Reagan Bros, we were just nakedly capitalizing on the name recognition of “Reagan.” Topically we were all over the map, and did only a smattering of political material. Our arguably-big hit was a song in response to Tipper Gore’s decency - in - music campaign that we called “Subliminal Message.” The lyrics to the chorus went “Worship the devil, take lots of drugs. Develop a wholesale disregard for all the fundamental principles of capitalism. And cuss . . . in . . . public!"

I love the fact that you actually worked for a circus for a while. Do you have any favorite stories about your time working under the big top?

Our little show was called The Royal Lichtenstein Circus and we played outdoors, whenever we could, or in foyers and gymnasiums, mostly at colleges and universities. We touted ourselves as “The World’s Smallest Complete Circus,” and even appeared in the Guinness Book Of World Records as such.

A favorite story? Well, I suppose one of the most memorable bits was having spent 3 months indoors — in Santa Barbara, CA, of all places, bikini capital of the west coast — training a housecat act. Even if I do say so myself, the act was beautiful when we hit the road: precision waltzes, balancing routines, jumping. Truly a sight to behold. But then 3 weeks into the tour, one of the two females just stopped having fun, so we left her — Williams was her name — with a nice family in Montana, and then a couple of weeks after that, the male started getting somewhat aggressive. I took him to a vet in South Dakota somewhere who emerged from the examination room to ask me if I’d had Guenther fixed — which I had, of course. “Well, he was packing one on you.” I didn’t know exactly what he meant by this turn of phrase, so he explained that this fellow was born with an undescended third testicle, which was now working overtime, apparently. So old Guenther got fixed again and came off the road to retire with yet another nice family, and I was the left with the one desperately cute kitty who did the least, behavior-wise. “Built for style, not for speed,” is how we described Gebel. The act swiftly became ten minutes of me trying to get this cat to do anything, and it was ultimately a much better act than anything I could have trained.