Steven Flynn is a Northwest composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist. Playing piano, Hammond organ, and keyboards, he appears with the rock/rhythm-and -blues/Americana bands Jr Cadillac, The Honky Tonkers, The John Stephan Band, Alice Stuart and the Formerlys, Tiny Giants, The Jet City Fliers, and others. He also plays solo, singing and playing Blues, Boogie, New Orleans-style piano.
Steven also plays the ney, an ancient Middle-Eastern flute, and the harmonium in various contexts which often include whirling, sufi dancing, mystical poetry, and other wildness. In the compositions on his solo CDs Rapture Rumi and Welcome To the Dance, ancient and modern musical elements combine to produce exotic soundscapes and musical narratives that ignite and inspire the imagination.
Greetings!
I'm delighted to tell you that I've recorded a series of lessons in how to play Boogie Woogie and Blues piano for an excellent online piano-teaching outfit, PIANOGROOVE. If you're looking to learn these styles, or Jazz, Brazilian, and many more, check it out. The piano training resources they offer are extensive, their online learning system works great, the cost for what you get is very reasonable. Please check out my lessons for Boogie Woogie and Blues and lots of other excellent piano teaching on PIANOGROOVE.
Up until COVID hit, I was playing with several bands across a wide swath of music. The Honky Tonkers were playing old-school West Coast Country and Western Swing one Sunday a month at Seattle's iconic Little Red Hen for country dancers and drinkers. Ron Bailey & the Tangents, were rockin' the house at Hale's Ales Taproom and at the Old Edison Inn. I was also playing solo shows at various venues.
I look forward to the return of live music, playing for live dancers. In the meantime, here's a rockin' show Ron W. Bailey & The Tangents safely recorded last Fall for you all to enjoy... The Tangets, Live in Georgetown. Be well, keep on dancing'!
This summer, Jr. Cadillac hopes to celebrate our 50th year of rockin' the Northwest and the world, a celebration that was cancelled last summer, but we very much hope to bring safely to you, in some form, this summer, in the new-and-improved 2021!! We're booked go play a birthday party bash at The Triple Door on Saturday, August 14, 2021. Other shows that were scheduled for Summer 2020 are being tentatively rescheduled for Summer 2021. Stay tunes, we'll let you know. Nothin' Could Be Lackin' When You're Out There Cadillacin'! See you on the dance floor... sooner or later!
Look:
Listen: Drop Down Daddy, Alice Stuart & the Formerlys, live at the Triple Door, Seattle, 21 November 2007.
Listen: Here's Steve's presentation on The Sacred and the Profane at the Seattle Interfaith Community Church on Sunday April 6, 2008. It's got music, poetry, stories, even dancing. 1 hour (it will stream and should start playing very soon, depending on your connection speed)
And now, about that music...
Music, like all art, stretches people beyond what they normally experience as personal boundaries; affords us expanded perspectives, insights, emotions; moves us both out of ourselves and deeper into ourselves.
I play all kinds of music, from 13th century sacred music of the Ottoman Empire to jumpin’, wailin’ Rock ‘n’ Roll and Rhythm ‘n’ Blues from deep down in New Orleans. Writing music and playing for people have been at the center of my life for more than thirty years. I’ve played many, many nights for wild revelers in barrooms, dancing, merry-making, teetering on the edge of chaos. I’ve also played often for people immersed in prayer, in deep meditative states, for the whirling dervishes, for sufi zikrs, for gospel singing; intentionally creating certain states using specific music. While technique and the trappings are different, there is a strong connection, a place where the music’s intention and function are really much the same.
From the sacred to the profane, from those drunk with God to those drunk with alcohol, from the sad lonely person seeking solitary solace in music to the jubilant person seeking to celebrate in community, from the blues singer to the gospel choir... there is a fundamental way in which music touches and effects people in all these situations: music opens, expands, creates connections to other people, other feelings, other levels of experience. Paradoxically, music is an intensely personal, solitary experience, which at the same time helps us to transcend our aloneness, to break out of our smallness, to help us see the larger picture.
An incredible diversity of music exists in the world, and every individual piece of it resonates with someone. For every human on the face of the earth, there is a music that will touch and ignite their soul; that will give them a sense of connection, a feeling of the joy within sorrow, and of the sorrow within the joy of life. In this function of encompassing all of humanity, of imbuing us all with feeling and life beyond a sense of ourselves, all music is sacred, and the acts of both creating and experiencing music are sacred acts. I don't mean serious or religious or even "spiritual"; I mean filled with the deepness of life, of our experience as humans on this planet, and the ability to transmit some piece of that depth.
Music cuts a wide swath, encompasses and embraces all humanity by its very variety, by the breadth and depth that it offers. There is a beautiful Rumi poem:
Notice how each particle moves.
Notice how everyone has just arrived here from a journey.
Notice how each wants a different food.
Notice how the stars vanish as the sun comes up,
and how all streams stream toward the ocean.
Look at the chefs preparing special plates for everyone, according to what they need.
Look at this cup that can hold an ocean.
Look at those who see the face.
Look through Sham's eyes into the water that is entirely jewels.
From its bounty, music prepares special plates for each of us, according to what we need, and all the streams of music flow from and back to the Ocean, the deep well of creativity within the breadth of humanity. I have been blessed to play in the taverns and to play in the temples, to play for revelers and to play for mourners, to play for meditation and to play for rowdy revelry, to play harmonium and play Hammond; to play Turkish classical music on the ney to accompany whirling dervishes and to play boogie-woogie piano to accompany Chuck Berry. I’m very grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to experience the power of music in action across a broad spectrum of humanity. And I’m not done yet! I hope you’ll find something that moves you in the music presented on this site, or out at one of my live shows. Enjoy!
Steve