Steve Poltz At McCabe's

He said he was richer than Elon Musk, that he wouldn't trade places with him for all that money, and I believed him!

Used to be you were on a major label or you weren't. Either you were a player or you weren't. Either you were national or local. Either you were a winner or a loser.

But that paradigm doesn't apply anymore.

The funny thing is it's the less well known, those flying beneath the radar, not charting in the Spotify Top 50, who are the winners today.

Like Kenneth Pattengale of the Milk Carton Kids.

We got in a deep conversation before the show. After their first tour, the Milk Carton Kids were 80k in debt. It's hard to start a band these days. Kenneth has sympathy for those coming up. He rose in the era of MySpace and Facebook, he doesn't know what acts do today.

But what struck me most about my conversation with Pattengale is he was a thinker, a student of the game, a veritable intellectual in a world where the lowest common denominator gets all the ink. This is the kind of conversation one never has with the business people, on the other side of the fence the focus is different, sure, money counts, but art does more, it's about life fulfillment. Kenneth said he'd beaten thyroid cancer and it changed his perspective. Now if he can produce records and go on the road a little less...

He's making his living in music. Never had a straight job. I'd call that a winner!

But Poltz's route has been a bit different. His band the Rugburns had a major label deal. As did Poltz solo. And Steve even cowrote a gigantic hit, Jewel's "You Were Meant For Me." And now? Poltz is an itinerant singer-songwriter, in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, the troubadours of yore, but with a much better sense of humor.

You don't look at your watch during a Steve Poltz show. You're riveted to the man and the stories and the music. There is no down time, your mind doesn't wander, even if you've never heard any of the songs before. Poltz is just that good.

It's the antithesis of the singing TV shows. It's about owning the stage, being an ENTERTAINER!

There's a lot more excitement in the comedy world today than there is in music. There are a zillion clubs, comedy owns social media, risks are being taken, everybody is flying without a net speaking their truth, whereas too often in music acts are playing to the Fortune 500, if they're playing to anybody at all.

How to not only grace the stage, but OWN the stage!

Poltz hits the ground running. Talking about if you have dinner with him he's going to get a song out of it. Songs are popping through Steve's brain all the time.

And although he's a nice guy, he sometimes reaches his limit, he blew off that neighbor in Nashville who kept asking for a pandemic number. And that old buddy from the wrestling team who kept sending him right wing memes. I hate the acts that thank God and their fans, who can never say a negative word in public, even though they sh*t all over people in private. Steve Poltz is just like you and me, except he's TALENTED!

Steve Poltz could be one of the biggest acts in the land, I'm surprised he isn't already, because once you've seen a Poltz show, you tell everybody about it, and you come back the next time.

Every song has a story. Like "Petrichor." Steve says he was thumbing through the dictionary and pointed to it with his eyes closed. What does it mean? It's the smell after the rain. Steve felt no one had ever written a song about petrichor before, that's for sure. Then he found out Phish had!

All these Poltz stories have equal twists. He talks about sitting in the booth with Bob Uecker in Milwaukee and being forced to go down to the field and be in the sausage race. He says to look it up on YouTube, I just did, it's there! Just when you think Steve is telling a tall tale, you find out he's not!

And boy does Poltz have stories. Like throwing Bruce Bochy's minibar out of the hotel window. Bochy bugged him for the $500-odd dollars for years to come.

And driving John Prine to the Disney Store, which was just next door, but Steve took him in his van towards the Mexican border, just for the hang.

And getting fired from Round Table Pizza for singing that the orders were ready.

Poltz has a lot of personality.

And he's not completely disconnected. He talked about being in a new PBS special honoring John Denver, he agreed to appear as long as he could sing "Grandma's Feather Bed," which he learned to play by dropping the needle on the vinyl, which ultimately caused a skip, and Steve talked about singing the skip to his sister and cracking her up, even in church! The funny thing is I was on a plane to Aspen back in 1970 and the in-house system played Donovan's "Atlantis," and in those days the cycle was short, you heard it three times on the way to Denver, and for years later, decades later, there'd be a moment of quiet and my sister Wendy would look me in the eye and sing HAIL ATLANTIS! I'm laughing just writing about it now.

This is not moon in June, Steve Poltz's stories and music are personal. He's genuine.

And he's hilarious.

He tells the audience this is the greatest show he's ever done, and to never come again, because he won't be this good. Most acts won't even joke about this!

And for the encores, the aforementioned Kenneth Pattengale came out to duet on a few numbers, including Jackson Browne's "These Days," although only that and the Denver number were covers, the rest of the material was original. And Pattengale picked so well, it put me in a trance, the two guitars duetting. This was as good as it gets. And I didn't expect it. It's these stolen moments that reach you, that make your life, not sitting in the stands with fifty thousand people as someone sings and dances to hard drive.

Yes, really, Pattengale was that good.

But the star of the show was Steve Poltz.

Honestly, he wore me out. By time the show was over, I was exhausted. I spent hours coming down before I could fall asleep, and I didn't sleep that well, because I had an EXPERIENCE!

Run, go see Steve Poltz whenever he's in your neighborhood. I guarantee you'll have a great time, I guarantee you'll be sold, and I can't say that about almost ANYBODY!


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