Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
Today we share a zoom room chat with the one of the founding members of 80s funk band Wa Wa Nee, Adelaide's own Steve Williams.
Who could forget debut single "Stimulation" peaking at No 2 in Australia in 1986, "I Could Make You Love Me" peaking at No 5 that same year followed by "Sugar Free" and "One and One"?
Recently inducted into the SA Music Hall of Fame, and still performing with Matt Finish, MachineHead and The Deep Purple Experience, Steve has been busy creating not one but two solo albums with some pretty heavy hitting friends.
Includes Songs:
The Party Boys - Do Wah Diddy Diddy
Wa Wa Nee - Stimulation
Steve Williams - Shelter Me
Steve Williams - Stormy
Steve Williams - Deja Vu
What's Steve Williams from Wa Wa Nee up to at the moment?
Let's find out .....
Get out when you can, support local music and I'll see you down the front!!
Visit: ThatRadioChick.com.au
Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
Today we share a zoom room chat with the one of the founding members of 80s funk band Wa Wa Nee, Adelaide's own Steve Williams.
Who could forget debut single "Stimulation" peaking at No 2 in Australia in 1986, "I Could Make You Love Me" peaking at No 5 that same year followed by "Sugar Free" and "One and One"?
Recently inducted into the SA Music Hall of Fame, and still performing with Matt Finish, MachineHead and The Deep Purple Experience, Steve has been busy creating not one but two solo albums with some pretty heavy hitting friends.
Includes Songs:
The Party Boys - Do Wah Diddy Diddy
Wa Wa Nee - Stimulation
Steve Williams - Shelter Me
Steve Williams - Stormy
Steve Williams - Deja Vu
What's Steve Williams from Wa Wa Nee up to at the moment?
Let's find out .....
Get out when you can, support local music and I'll see you down the front!!
Visit: ThatRadioChick.com.au
That radio chick, cheryl Lee, here with you. Welcome to the Still Rocking at podcast, where we'll have news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians and artists. Today I share a chat I had recently with founding member of Wa Wa Knee, australia's 80s funk band guitarist, steve Williams, who, along with Paul Gray, formed Wa Wa Knee in 1982. They had four top 20 hits, including Stimulation, which peaked at number two and is burned into the Aussie music landscape. Steve worked with James Freud band Mummas Darlings and Richard Cutton before relocating to Europe for a number of years and then returning to Australia in 2006. What's Wa Wa Knee's Steve Williams been up to lately? Let's find out. You're with Cheryl Lee, that radio chick. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so pleased to introduce you to the Zoom room, mr Steve Williams, the super duper guitarist from Wa Wa Knee. Thanks for joining us, steve.
Speaker 2:Hi, cheryl, thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Speaker 1:Wa Wa Knee's an iconic Australian band, so we'll just touch on them because we also want to get into talking about your fabulous new music as well. But, as we often do, we've adopted you in.
Speaker 2:Australia. I wasn't born in Australia, you know. I was born in Wales, in the UK. I grew up there. I moved to Australia when I was 13 yeah, to Adelaide, yeah. And then I lived, you know, in Adelaide until I was probably about 19, I guess, yeah. And then where did you go? I went to Sydney.
Speaker 2:What happened is a friend of mine and I we hitchhiked to Sydney. Like we thought we must have been like about 17 or 18. We hitchhiked to Sydney and back then that was quite a viable means of transport. We hitched over there and like we kind of loved it because we were both like muses and there was this tiny little book I can't even remember what it was called. It was one of those little kind of tiny little book things. And I'm not kidding you, the amount of gigs, like just on any day of the week there was just like dozens and dozens of bands, let alone on the weekend, you know. I mean. So we were like, ah, this is really cool. Yeah, well, we were there. We saw some a few iconic acts, you know, and I guess that was kind of a bit of a thing. Like we headed back to Adelaide about a month or so and then eventually moved over there, kind of thing, a little while later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when in Adelaide did you live? Where did you go to school?
Speaker 2:I went to Brighton High School. What happened is my aunt and uncle emigrated to Australia from Wales in like the 60s, I reckon maybe like 65 or something, and then in about like 971 or 72 they came back and said, like this is everyone I had, like a house at the beach and so it looked pretty amazing. And the next thing we, like we, emigrated to Australia. I was 13 kind of you know. I didn't really think it through I guess at the time.
Speaker 1:Music is definitely, definitely your passion. Then when did you realise that music was in your DNA and that music was going to be your thing?
Speaker 2:It kind of never really wasn't, if you get what I mean. Like I just always remember music being there. I'm like a crap in the UK in the 60s. I was born in 1960, so like.
Speaker 2:I just remember like there was always like the Beatles happening in the background, and you know I mean so how could you still not be, really, I guess, if you grow up in that environment? You know, and I say my dad was a crazy like classical music. He was always playing, like always classical music. Him and my brother were so much like buying for the record player in a switch between the classics to, like you know, the Beatles or the Stones or whatever from my brother's records, you know.
Speaker 1:Do you have any brothers or sisters that are in the music industry at all?
Speaker 2:None of my other, you know siblings became musicians or anything. They're all. They're only like sciences and stuff. There you go. So you're the clever one, yeah maybe that's a good way of looking at it.
Speaker 1:The last time I saw you was actually here in Adelaide not that very long ago, when you were inducted into the SA Music Hall of Fame. So firstly, congratulations for that. What a great night that was.
Speaker 2:That was such a cool night. You know, like I don't really get nervous or anything at a gig, but because that wasn't really like a gig, it was something different, I didn't really know what to expect and I was not not apprehensive or nervous, but just like I'm sure work was going to go down. So it was really cool and you know, talking to Greg Clark was really easy.
Speaker 1:really easy to talk to a great guy you know, and Victor put a cool thing together.
Speaker 2:So like I mean the warms in the audience. It was really lovely. I'm glad you were there and you experienced it. It was such a such a great vibe in the room, you know. So, yeah, it went really better than I could have thought.
Speaker 1:You're inducted with an old friend of yours, Vince Contrina, because I didn't realise that you guys had been a little while in the Zep Boys together.
Speaker 2:We go back back way before the Zep Boys show. We go back to party boys. We were in the party boys together Before.
Speaker 1:I came on.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you remember on the actual evening, but they played a clip of the party boys. This is I don't even know if this is on YouTube, but it's pretty rare, but it's the party boys doing. Do I Did he, which was who even did the original. I can't even remember. It's a pretty lame song, but yeah, we did like a hard rock version of that and it's hilarious. Just the clip itself is totally hilarious. Vince is in it, I'm in it. Brad Carr, the guitarist, the original Quiet Boys guitarist, who's a really good personal fan of mine, who's one of the most crazy characters and like, seriously like, probably one of the best guitarists that Australia's ever like produced. The guys are on fire. You know Mark Evans is on bass and John Zak was on drums. If you find the video, have a look at it. Try and find it, it's pretty hilarious.
Speaker 1:I reckon I have found that and I've got the audio of it and I think I might play it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Segue away Still rocking a podcast with that radio chick, cheryl Lee. Do-wah-ditty-ditty was originally recorded in 1963 by American group the Exciters, but of course it was made internationally famous by the British band Manfred Mann. But here's our very own the Party Boys doing their version Back more with Steve Williams from Wa-Wani Straight after this there she was, just walking down the street singing Do-Wah-Ditty-Ditty, dum-ditty-ditty.
Speaker 1:At the same time, our wonderful Bridgeway was inducted, as well as a venue. So that was it. It was a great night, and it sort of like was all. It all came together, didn't it?
Speaker 2:It was good. It was a really good night. I mean Bridgeway would. So many cool bands over the years. I remember playing firstly there with I was playing in Alex Tomlin had a band called what was it called? Jimmy Sheldra, I think our band was called, and we were supporting a band called Almost Human.
Speaker 1:Almost Human.
Speaker 2:I remember Almost Human this way. Yeah, you know, in the 70s I guess I think that was the first time I played there, but since then I played like every band ever that you've ever played in and tour pretty much had done the Bridgeway. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that was my local, so we were there, you know, every Thursday, friday, saturday, sunday we did it with the Party Boys.
Speaker 2:Vincent and I did it with the Party Boys on that tour that we did Tony Clark's band. They had an all-girl kind of metal band. What were they called, I can't remember. They were pretty good. They were supporting us or playing with us, I should say.
Speaker 1:What great memories. Briefly about Wawhani, because, as I said, I want to get onto a couple of exciting new albums of yours. But you and Paul Gray got together in sort of a little bit of an unconventional way originally Not really.
Speaker 2:I meant how do you think we did that?
Speaker 1:I saw that you made music together before you'd even you know, met each other.
Speaker 2:Well, that part of it is true. No, that part of it is true.
Speaker 1:Oh, what part of it do you?
Speaker 2:think you're not. That's a bit entirely normal to me. I don't know if it is. He had an ad in the paper, like I was living in Sydney and I was like really struggling and trying to figure out like how do I get into a rock band as in this rock band it was just absolutely killer and we nearly signed to Alvitz. In fact we did some recordings at Alvitz that I have that are really great. Bams called Griffin and the singer was the song called Kevin Daines. He was kind of like Jimmy Barnes with a bit of Freddie Mercury. You could get it. It was, you could get it. I mean he had that kind of bouncy sort of screaming sort of thing, but he also had that slightly more. You know Freddie's had that Plamboyance. Plamboyance you know Robert Plant has as well. You know I had as well. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So yeah, but that was a killer band.
Speaker 2:We nearly got signed with that. Unfortunately, Kevin passed away you know, this is one thing led to another. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you guys got together, eventually met each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he had the ad in the paper and then he you know, I actually called him and we got talking. This is a bit different machine, but back then there was this thing called a task amp for the studio 244, which is really common. Like every muso with a decent thing, whatever. I had one of these little gadgets. It was this sort of thing that you put your cassette in and it allowed you to do like four track recordings, which was At the time it was pretty revolutionary, because you probably really didn't do that properly at home. So we both had the same, currently the same gadget, right, we both had the Tascam 244, right? So I mean, if he had the Thostex and I'd had the Tascam which you know, that was kind of the other machine we wouldn't have been able to do- it.
Speaker 1:So we were lucky. We used to just send each other cassettes.
Speaker 2:You know he'd send me a cassette, we'd put guitar on it. The process was pretty slow Back then. The mail, the actual physical mail, was kind of important. So I don't think it was like you know how. Now when you mail something, it takes like seems to like forever to go like down the street. You know what.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, it was always you know, to take a few days to get there and then take a few days to get back. So eventually we had four songs on a tape and that was like stimulation I could make you love me, sugar-free and man-child. Now all those songs ended up on the first record and three of them obviously went on to become, you know, hit singles and blah, blah, blah. So you know, by doing that process we ended up with that as four songs and it was kind of a quite a productive little few months that we spent and then eventually we did. He came over to my. I had an apartment in double bay which was a really ritzy. I accidentally moved into this posh suburb. I just flew to it. You know, I just happened to get this really nice little, you know, flat out. So I was living there. He was living at, I think, neutral bay on Mosman with his parents. Still, he was quite young, he was only like maybe 24 or something.
Speaker 1:So you guys were sort of ahead of your time creating I mean, everybody does it now and you've done it recently creating music remotely. You guys did it way, way back.
Speaker 2:We did. I guess I hadn't really thought about it. I did that for ages, you know, and that's kind of how we got the basis of what became that first well-on-the-album, which. I mean we did two albums plus sort of an EP. All of the songs that people kind of know were really on the first album. So that was kind of the important album. The second album was a little bit weaker. I think we just spent so long on it it became diluted in the whole process. It sort of became. You know, it's got a few good moments but I don't think generally it's as cohesive as the first regular.
Speaker 1:Still rocking a podcast with that radio chick, cheryl Lee. Without any further ado, I think we should play Stimulation Wawani's big hit, the debut single from 1986, from their self-titled debut album, and we'll be back to speak to Steve Williams about what he's been up to lately. Very shortly let's talk about the new stuff. You've been busy. You haven't been sitting on your bum, have you?
Speaker 2:No, I have been quite busy. I mean, look prior to COVID, I think about like four or five bands that were working quite a lot. So there was a lot of shuffling going on with just giggling and stuff like that, you know, and just making, like you know, money to live and stuff. So you know that was all good. And I play in a couple of cool bands, like I play in Matt Finisher. I'm gonna show you Matt Finisher and when you come to me they do quite large shows that are they're really great thunderplakes. It's a great band and with great catalog of material. It's just like you know. They're good pop songs, they're easy to place, that's not like a ruck. There are certain gigs that are like a little bit more challenging than others and they can be like you know your head's about to explode, kind of thing, when you're contemplating what you've got to do.
Speaker 2:That finishes in like that. It's a really groovy, easy gig. So you're playing quite a lot of venues, the songs that people dig, and they're kind of easy and such fun, you know I mean. So I really love playing those songs. It's great material.
Speaker 1:Are you also still playing with Machine Head?
Speaker 2:I'm doing Machine Head. We've got a couple of gigs coming up, one's in September, and then I think there's the usual one at the end of the year that we usually do, I think at the GARV or maybe the Bridgeway, I'm not sure one of the two.
Speaker 1:Great to have you back home. So at the end of last year you brought out Surrey Road.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:I guess half way through last year and you had lots of fancy pants, people collaborating with you on that one.
Speaker 2:I did look. I was really lucky and in fact there's a guy called Terry Slesser. There was obviously a band called Free in the UK. He had that huge hit. All right now they're, like you know, rock gods of the highest magnitude. You know Paul Kosoff, the guitarist after Free split, I hate, from the new band. They were called Backstreet Border. They're absolutely incredible. They did a couple of albums that have actually superb. Any fan of 70s rock genre should look into Backstreet Caller because their album Second Street particularly to me it's like white, up there with all those really great albums that you know kind of everyone had in their record collection.
Speaker 1:You had to have certain records, or we can't be friends.
Speaker 2:It was important. I mean it still is, but now it's just in a different way. You know what I mean. But yeah, paul Kostoff's the band after Free Backstreet Caller. The lead singer was the guy called Terry Slesser. So Terry sings on Surrey Road. He sings the first track, addiction. I mean that's a huge, huge honour to have, but I've got Terry doing that one. He's amazing. I've got John Kenny from the Rock Millens who's an amazing singer. If you remember New Groove, that was such a cool song. New Groove by Rock Millens, it's fantastic. Yeah, it's a killer song. Well, he's the guy singing that. So you know I've got him. He sings quite a few of my tracks. He's the guy who made mine. I've got a friend of mine, this girl, nicola, that sings a couple of songs. She's called Vince, actually singing a track.
Speaker 1:Did he?
Speaker 2:Vince Conorino. Yeah, he sings one of the songs on Surrey Road. I've got Tim Watson, rather from Taxi Ride, I've got Pat Powell from the Melbourne Sky Orchestra, louise Pease and Houston Adelaide chick singers. Yes, I've got Macro doing some stuff. So yeah, there's a bunch of people on that first record.
Speaker 1:Let's have a listen to one of those songs from last year's album. Surrey Road, Shelter Me was written by Steve and Pat Powell and features the smooth vocals of young, up-and-coming Melbourne singer, Nick MC. Speak more to Steve and hear a couple of songs from the latest album after these.
Speaker 2:So I did that it all went okay. But I've recently now just put out the Deja Vu record, which is literally I didn't just come out, so you may have heard some of that.
Speaker 1:Yes, I have. What I found was especially with the first track. It was a little bit not what I expected. I found it to be so relaxing and it got me in such a calm whether it's that initial instrumental stuff, but it calmed me down. I loved it.
Speaker 2:Look the way I look at it, cheryl, I reckon that I don't really think about like making a record, of trying to make like every song being like a bang a kind of thing. But I would say that potentially any of those first three are potential singles. So either that one, stormy, the next one, deja Vu, slype, sort of catchy, and also Pump, which is the one that we did at the gig. That seems to be getting quite a good response soon from me. So you know, yeah, I think the stuff's quite eclectic. You probably heard that if you listen to the whole thing yourself. Yes, it's not all the same. You know the records I make. They're not like over. Sure, there's going to be a few tracks in a certain thing, right, but then there's also going to be little bits and pieces of stuff. That's quite a diverse place.
Speaker 1:And what I really loved about it was you've done it sort of like an old vinyl, like Side One and Side Two.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, I've absolutely done it like that. I've done that on both of those records. I did them both with that in mind, so that's why the last track on each record also is kind of a little bit. You know, particularly the last one on Deja Vu. That's about seven minutes long or something. It's got that really long intro.
Speaker 1:Well, we're looking forward to seeing you in Adelaide. So get onto the Googleometer and track down those tickets for Machine Head.
Speaker 2:There's also one in September, before that I think, the one at 20, it's the 25th of September. I reckon that's an outdoor gig somewhere.
Speaker 1:Still rocking a podcast with that radio chick, Cheryl Lee. Let's have a quick listen to Stormy from the new album. We want to get our hands on either Deja Vu or Surrey Road Best place to get that.
Speaker 2:At the moment Surrey Road is on iTunes and Spotify and all that stuff, so you can get it on either of those meetings or you can go to my band and you can go to my fan page.
Speaker 2:Melbourne is my city, so you can buy there, or you can just listen to both albums. You can buy each, each album. You can buy both albums together, in both physical CD format or just as a digital download, whatever you prefer. So you know, I think it's easier. Everyone prefers like to just instantly download it, but quite a lot of people think they like to see these two. I think so they seem to be making a bit of a comeback, I think so.
Speaker 1:I think we all miss not we miss the tangibility of holding a CD or holding a vinyl. We miss that.
Speaker 2:I think what happens is this before the internet and before we had mass media, right, there was no like gadget. You couldn't go on your TV, like I don't know there was. I grew up in the UK and the TV was pretty crap, whether it was like two. I think there was three channels, right, you know one channel like BDC one and ITV, and then there was BDC two, which had all kind of weird stuff that make you know what I mean. And so you know, like, for instance, what that meant was that there's no access to kind of any imagery or sound or anything Like it's hard to even conceive this world existed now.
Speaker 2:So when you bought a record, especially an album, like, you had that big 12 inch kind of record cover with all the artwork and it was kind of on this, like like the entry into that, into that world, if you get to get what I'm saying, whereas that's all done to digital media and videos and stuff. You see, you know these are just the records, so. So, consequently, they had a real, they had a kind of a value and equality. So an ice cream is like 50 bucks, right, and you buy it and it's wow, that's amazing, I've been saving.
Speaker 2:The ice cream is free and they're giving away as much ice cream as you can eat. You know, all this free ice cream, and then they offer you another free ice cream. It's kind of like, oh man, I'm sick of the free ice cream. You know, it's kind of that's how music's become a little bit, so that it's become a saturated, and because you can get so much stuff for free, it's just the way it is now. Um, it's sort of devalued it, I guess, particularly from kids point of view. I mean, it doesn't. I think the people from my generation, um, it's different it holds a different sort of place in your, in your, in your value system.
Speaker 2:The kids now like music's just so instantly accessible in, you know, everywhere, and you know. That's great too, because what's more important at the end of the day, you know so.
Speaker 1:Both have got their pros and cons.
Speaker 2:but you know, when you're on digital album I do miss, not, you know, with the little booklet and hopefully does this album come with lyrics and reading all the lyrics and then you know, the most recent thing I was just looking at the other day and I hadn't even thought about this Like, apparently, every time you stream a song which we all do all the time Like I mean, I've got all my albums are like, but I've been bored, I still stream them because it's just easier, right? So yeah, apparently every time you do that, like the streamer song uses like a huge amount of electricity in terms of like streaming it from wherever they're streaming it from, like the cloud or where I've got all the stuff happening. I know you didn't even think about it, right. So apparently, like putting on a CD or a record player is from the environmental sort of point of view, in terms of like emissions productions, it's way less. It's got an interesting topic. Yeah, when you're actually streaming, it's a completely different system, like everybody's actually physically downloading simultaneously that same thing, you know.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yes, I never thought of it like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, I was just reading a band on Twitter.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining me in the Zoom room today, Steve. It's been wonderful having a chin wag with you and again congratulations on the induction into the SA Music Hall of Fame and all the best with the new album, Deja Vu, and I think we might go out with the title track.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Thank you so much for your support. Charlotte Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a pleasure and I look forward to seeing you next time you're in our beautiful city. Absolutely, take care. See you soon, you too, ta-da. Steve Bye, you're with Shirley, that radio chick. Thank you so much for joining me on the Still Rocking it podcast. Hope to catch you again next time. Get out when you can support Aussie music and I'll see you down the front.