August 5, 2009

LOS ANGELES -- Steven Neal Wagner is classic singer-songwriter stuff (think Paul Simon or Jackson Browne): literate, melodic, down-to-earth. The kind of disc you would play to relax, reflect and even rock a little. But beware...

"I have had women with runny mascara come up to me in clubs where I played, having had their love life nailed to the wall. I recall one girl telling me bitterly that the song made her feel like throwing up. So, I decided to stop playing it for awhile," chuckles Wagner about "One of the Two," which is one of the songs on the CD. With a melody reminiscent of "Eleanor Rigby" and interwoven with cello and violin, Wagner tersely tells the tale of one half of a couple that is more in love than the other. "That song was written about my conduct with a former girlfriend, who unfortunately happened to be in the audience the first time I played the song in public. It got a huge, satisfying ovation from all but one audience member...who ran out of the room crying."

Far from being an utter cad, Wagner is a commemorator of the small but important moments in life: "I try not to write strictly autobiography because I don't think my life has been all that interesting. No matter how deeply I might go into something from my life, it still has to be interesting to the listener. So as a songwriter, sometimes I find I have to dress up the truth in more appealing clothes, so to speak." The song "Driveways," also on the new CD, is a case in point. Whether every line in this Eagles-ish song is factual to Wagner's life or not is unimportant. What matters is that audiences old and young seem to respond to it. "The set-up of the song--two guys, friends-of-a-friend, after everyone else has left town for college or after college...you're sort of in a holding pattern with what you'll do with your life--that much is true but that's about all I am gonna say about it except that the character 'Danny' in the song is an actual person named Danny. And we're still friends, too."

On "Traveling in an Old Car," Wagner takes us down the road 10, 20, 30 or more years (depending on how long you've been around) to our carefree younger days when our pockets were "full of time to spend" and lamenting into the rear-view mirror that his new car will never be fast enough to take him back to those days. It's quite a ride and features some nice, smooth-highway finger-style acoustic guitar.

"The Quietest Part of the Day," which closes the disc, was co-written by Wagner and award-winning songwriter-recording artist Harriet Schock (whose "That Ain't No Way To Treat A Lady" was a gold and platinum record for Helen Reddy). Over a chord progression and strings reminiscent of Pachelbel's Canon, Wagner softly salutes a moment that most of world rarely experiences: "I was walking around with that idea or that title for a number of years before I actually sat down and wrote anything. It came from a time in my late-20s, a day when I had been up 24 hours straight. I was unemployed, coasting through life, writing songs...I had to catch a Greyhound early the next morning to go cross country and pick up a car and my brother was going to take me down to the bus terminal in L.A. I had been partying with friends and it got to be 2am. I figured, 'Why go home and sleep? I gotta be back here in a few hours anyway.' So I just stayed up, drove around for a while, got to his house about two hours early and just milled around his neighborhood. Simple as it sounds, I was very affected by the stillness of the city. No cars moving on the streets. No airplanes in the sky. The environment is lit in a unique, almost purple-grey light at that wee hour. It's otherworldly."

Though it clocks in at under 20 minutes, Steven Neal Wagner is nonetheless musically and lyrically substantial. He'll take you places. He'll bring you back. What more can you ask for from a singer-songwriter? Steven Neal Wagner is available via www.stevennealwagner.com