Steph Sweet ran away from home at the age of fifteen and started singing in bands. She joined her first professional band as a singer at seventeen, lying about her age to get the gig. The Love Hysterix were a five-piece psychedelic band that quickly got a lot of positive attention in the local press, getting radio play and supporting Attila the Stockbroker at Warwick University, touring the underground and university UK scene and securing a manager. They were also offered a recording contract, which Sweet turned down as a bad deal.
She left the band to concentrate on her own song-writing. There followed a few bands that Sweet fronted as vocalist and guitarist, before finally forming the stoner-rock band Roadkill, who again quickly garnered a strong following, selling out their first gig and blowing the pub electrics. Their last gig was at the European Festival of Punk in Edinburgh. The drummer took LSD and soiled himself onstage, the tour manager drunkenly stole the van and the lead guitarist left her husband and ran off with the bass-player.
Steph Sweet then moved to Brighton and took an extended break from music for seven years. She wrote and published her first novel with an independent London publisher, who flew her to New York to sell the film rights. She focused on writing a further two novels, now published under the name Stevie O’Connor, before a close friend finally persuaded her back into performing at his pub, the Neptune. Music bit her again and she began the process of assembling her own recording studio, starting with a Tascam 4-track tape machine and trying to master the dark arts of soundwaves, recording, arranging and mixing music.
Sweet discovered Soundcloud and never looked back. Her first lo-fi tape 4-track song, Synaesthesia, was selected as Soundclouder Of The Day, gaining her thousands of followers but more importantly for her, connecting with working musicians from around the world.
Since then she has been number one with Ellen, featuring regularly in the Soundcloud charts, and her most recent single, Breathe went into the Soundcloud New&Hot Indie Chart at number two and stayed in the top ten for a fortnight. She has also been played on BBC radio and is interviewed and featured frequently in international music blogs in Canada, New York City and England, such as The Devil Has The Best Tuna, Left Bank Magazine and Overblown.
In this interview spotlight, I chat with Steph Sweet about the latest album (Edie), what keeps the music flowing, music memories and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
What’s something you’d like readers to know about your latest project?
A Wicked Man is my latest single to promote my new album Edie (that tricky 4th album!) It was written on my new Fender Jag in one night, and is a frisky little, tongue in cheek rocknroll number.
How does this project compare with your other release(s)? Was there anything specific you were trying to accomplish?
This was a deliberate return to raw, live music, with minimal overdubs and all written and performed with heart-felt passion.
What motivates you to create music?
Music is in my blood, it keeps me alive. I’m sure only a certain percentage of the population get that.
What’s one of your first or most powerful music memories? Did that play any role in driving you to create?
I was twelve years old on an SAS type course in the Welsh Mountains, it was a brutal but incredible experience to climb mountains, orienteer alone, sleep outside under the stars, rope climb over ravines etc. But on the last night we had to prepare a piece of entertainment for the camp-fire and I got the girls together in my tent and wrote us a quick song, all of us mimimg drums and guitars on pots and pans. We smashed it. The girls loved it, the teachers loved it even more and I was there, singing into a wooden spoon and pulling rock poses in my cagoul and bandaged-up feet like a wild child. I’d already done some dance and acting classes at school, but I knew right then that that was what I was born to do. It’s like something bigger took me over. And it felt mighty damn fine too.
If you could collaborate with anyone – dead or alive, famous or unknown – who would it be and why? If it’s an indie/DIY artist, please include a link so readers can check them out.
I’m so lucky to have been in the bands I’ve been in and also now with Soundcloud, I work collaboratively with working musicians from across the globe, but I respect and work a lot with the wonderfully talented Drunkeninstrumentcorporation https://drunkeninstrumentcorporation.bandcamp.com/
What was the last song you listened to? And who is one of your favorite all-time bands/artists?
I am so loving the neo-psych movement right now, it feels like the summer of love, with everyone leaping out of lockdown…so I was listening to Magnetic Glance by 23 and the Infinite Beyond
Where is the best place to find you and stay connected?
I really appreciate Your time. Anything else before we sign off?
Thank you so much for your time. Wishing you a beautiful summer of love and music and vibes x
