Dream Syndicate leader Steve Wynn is gearing up for a busy period which will see him return to Glasgow next month in support of his new album ‘Make It Right’ and new memoir ‘I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t true’ both of which arrive on 30th August.
itm? recently caught up with Steve before he heads out on the road and initially asked him about the new album.
“It’s my first solo album since ‘Northern Aggression’ with the Miracle Three in 2010 so it’s been a long time. The Dream Syndicate and the Baseball Project have been keeping me busy, but I do want to do more solo records. That’s what I probably do best now, I just haven’t done it in a while.
“I like the freedom of being able to play casting director to make a record and just choose from my contact list for people to play on it, that’s a lot of fun. So that’s something I want to do again soon.”
Whilst Steve has been at pains to point out that the songs on ‘Make It Right’ are not directly autobiographical, alternating between the book and the record definitely had an effect on the latter.
“The record is connected to the book in that I was writing and recording the songs during the time I was writing the book. Without being too conceptual, I found that the songs I was writing tied into the book as there was a lot of looking back and imagining things that could be different and wanting a second chance.
“So there’s definitely a nostalgic, life assessing thing about the record that makes sense since I was spending most of my days typing out words about my life.”
Steve’s contact list was utilised to the fullest extent in recording the songs for this record.
“There are probably 30 people on the record, everyone from Linda Pitmon to Mike Mills to Scott McCaughey are on it. In fact, the Dream Syndicate are actually on a couple tracks and ‘Then Again’, is the Dream Syndicate with Psychic Temple, this Long Beach band out in California.
“Vicki Peterson and her husband, John Cowsill, are on the first track with Linda, Mike and Eric Ambel (Del Lords) and they’re wonderful. That’s actually the last song that I wrote and recorded just last March.
“But Paco Loco (Australian Blonde from Spain) and Emil Nikoliase (Serena Maneesh from Norway) and a string quartet from the Czech Republic are also on it. It covers a lot of ground!”
Other than a soundtrack released only in Norway, this is the first time that Steve has released a solo album whilst still in an active band. He explains that the different nature of his various ventures helps guide his songwriting.
“I mostly write for projects now. I still write randomly for kicks all the time and come up with lines and riffs and things like that.
“But for the Baseball Project I know what those songs are going to be about, that’s very specific.
“And when it’s time to write a Dream Syndicate album I’m saying, okay that’s my freaky, psychedelic, trippy head band.
“I like that that band is specific for that now, because in the 80s, the Dream Syndicate was my one outlet for everything I did. So it was almost like a solo thing and a band thing at the same time which was why our identity shifted during those times.
“But when it comes to having singer/ songwriter ambitions, that’s solo record time and I would like to get more into that again because that’s a lot of fun.”
Turning to his memoir, published on Jawbone Press, Steve had always had an idea of the sort of book he wanted to write.
“I think there are a lot of stories you can tell in a memoir, music or otherwise. You can talk about your romances, your sex life, or your booze and drugs. There’s a little of that in my book, but what I chose to do is write about how does somebody fall in love with and connect with music?
“How does somebody decide to be a songwriter and a guitarist? How does that person somehow end up being not only in a band, but in a band that was kind of taking the world by storm for a couple of years? And then how against all odds does that same person do all he can to destroy success and then build it back up again?
“So it’s just a natural arc of the impossible dream, achieving the dream then having to pull it out of the ashes before it’s too late.”
Steve admits that initially he didn’t have a specific end point in mind when he started writing and didn’t come to a firm conclusion on that until he had signed with his publisher.
“I just started writing but when I was signed to Jawbone Press, the publisher Tom Seabrook said, why don’t you stop in 1988 and save the rest for a second book? Now that’s an idea! And 1988 felt like a really natural place to end this book and the arc of what I thought this book was all about.
“Sure, that implies a second book, and this one took me five years, but I’m ready to start thinking about the next one. I know that Bob Dylan called his book ‘Chronicles Volume 1’ and that was maybe 30 years ago and there’s no volume two yet. So it does give me a lot of time but I do think there’s a lot of stories that I still want to tell.”
One particular short time period features a lot in the book.
“I spent a lot of time writing about the first three weeks of the Dream Syndicate, with so much happening in those three weeks. I mean, we went from our first rehearsal to our first recording to our first show, all these things, in three weeks!
“You know, now you talk about three years, the way you talked about three weeks but welcome to getting older, right?”
Steve picks out an experience that the book helped him put into the right perspective – after nearly 40 years.
“ ‘Medicine Show’ is a record I quite like, but the process of getting there involved five of the most miserable months of my life, that I wouldn’t want to live again.
“I wouldn’t wish on anybody five gruelling months of recording the same eight songs, 12 hours a day seven days a week and feeling out of control and powerless. I remember at the time, and I don’t think this is in the book, I was reading ‘The Trial’ by Kafka and went, oh man, this is a little too close to home!
“But in the course of writing about making that record, I had a realization that halfway through making that record, rather than fighting against it and being miserable about it or feeling helpless and frustrated, I just gave up control and abandoned myself to the record. And that was a turning point that made it a much better experience.
“So that was something I can say now, because I know when that change happened, and I can detail that in the book. That was handy.”
Between publication/release and next May Steve will be playing shows in the U.K., Europe and the U.S..
“I’m finding that writing a book, maybe because I’ve never done it before, gets you a lot of attention which is nice. I should have done this a long time ago as there has been a lot of demand for shows.
“So I’m booked solid until next May and that’s wonderful. I’m looking forward to doing that.”
Looking further ahead, after the solo dates in the first half of the year, Steve will turn to the long-awaited boxset reissue of the Dream Syndicate’s second album ‘Medicine Show’.
“Finally, we got the rights back for the first time ever. It was a long court battle with the parent company of A & M, which went on for years and there were a lot of lawyers involved. It was crazy.
“I think it’s such a simultaneously strong, definitive record for our band but also misunderstood. So, I think the boxset will do a little bit to explain what it was all about.
“We’re just thrilled to have that record, get it remastered, put it out and give it the context that it deserves.”
The boxset will likely be the catalyst for further Dream Syndicate shows next year.
“We’ll probably tour behind that the same way we did with ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ a couple years ago, where we’ll do a set of new material then do ‘Medicine Show’ from start to finish, probably in the fall of ‘25.”
Beyond that, Steve has plenty of plans but no set timescales for anything.
“I know I want to make another Dream Syndicate record and I want to make another solo record, so who knows?
“I love making new Dream Syndicate records and I like the way they’ve been going. I definitely don’t know when we’re going to make it but maybe sometime next year.
“After that, who knows? I want to make records with half the people I’ve ever known! So as long as I can keep doing this, I will.”
Here’s one of the singles taken from the new album:
The album ‘Make It Right’ and book ‘I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True: A Memoir of Life, Music and the Dream Syndicate’ come out on 30th August on Fire Records and Jawbone Press respectively. Fire are doing packages including both the book and the album here.
Steve has an extensive run of dates in the U.K., Europe and the U.S. for the remainder of 2024, (including a Glasgow show at the Hug & Pint on Thursday 19th September) and here’s the full list of U.K. dates:
