A wild and heart-breaking ride down the highway of love

10 MP3 Songs
COUNTRY: Alt-Country, COUNTRY: Americana

Show all album songs: Blue Moon Diner Songs


Details:
Growing up in the rural South, Steve March was surrounded by music. When March lived in east Tennessee, âhis neighbors relaxed on their front porches in the evenings singing songs of life, love and loss,â according to a newspaper article announcing his debut album Blue Moon Diner. âLazily strumming their guitars and banjos,â the writer continued, âthese southern serenaders provided a soundtrack for Marchâs early years. For the young boy coming of age in the mountains, music was more than entertainment. It was a way of life.â
Marchâs early years were characterized by restlessness and a yearning, due in part to his being raised by a single mother, a newspaperwoman who moved often. By the time he had graduated from high school, in Ahoskie, N.C., he had attended a dozen schools.
âMy mother bought me an old piano when I was five,â he recalls. âAnd a guitar and harmonica a few years later. And I started playing them earlyâthey were a way of keeping me out of trouble.â
He has lived in a dozen towns and cities, from New Orleans to Niagara Falls. These early experiences helped shape the songs on his first album with its themes of loss and the often painful search for both love and faith.
His debut CD was produced by nationally known producer Wes Lachot and Robert Donnan, a Chapel Hill based writer. Lachot and Donnan assembled a talented band to play on the album, including Clyde Mattocks on pedal steel, bassist Jack Campbell, fiddler Dave McKnight and according player Chris Frank of the Red Clay Ramblers. Emma Davis, lead singer for the Raleigh based band, âBig Mama E and the Coolâ provided background vocals on such songs as âBuilt for Love, and âEnd of the Line.â
Lachot describes Marchâs songs as being âraw and earthy with very refined lyrics. Musically, they are almost folk melodies,â he said. âThey remind me of the early songs of Bob Dylan.â
âEach song (on the album) is a gem,â said co-producer Donnan. âListening to the album from start to finish you hear every song move the mood into new territory.â
In addition to writing and singing, March writes novels and short stories. His novella, Armadillo, won the 2002 Texas Review Press Prize in the Novella. His story collection, Love to the Spirits, won the Independent Publisher Prize for Short Fiction for 2005. His novel, Catbird, was named a Book Sense Notable by the American Booksellerâs Association in 2006. Marchâs novel, Strangers in the Land of Egypt, is under contract with Permanent Press in Sag Harbor New York and due out in early 2009.
March also plans to complete another album in the summer of 2008.