Steve Mednick can’t stop.
After he turned 50, he started writing songs and recording them. The songs keep coming. And the CDs.
And the writing, and the music, keep getting better.
Like a host of local professionals, Mednick, a lawyer active in politics throughout his career (he was for years a city alderman), decided to fulfill a dream of his youth when he hit middle age. He has just released his third CD, Ambling Toward the Unknown. Like his previous two efforts, the album is a folk-rock meditation on growing older and on the political course of the country. Produced by veteran local musician Eddie Seville, the CD is lively, smooth, and interesting throughout.
Mednick, who’s 55, already has a fourth CD in the works.
Click on his website here. Click here to sample songs or buy the new CD. Click here for a previous story on Mednick’s career path.
Following is the transcript of a conversation with Mednick about his musical journey — and about why musicians are more honest than politicians.
You’re on a songwriting tear. What started it?
I guess staring in the face of mortality. Forming a band at age 50 and then figuring out what you can do thereafter. I have 28 other songs that are demo’ed now. Eddie and I are doing a project that’ll hopefully be out in January on an EP of five songs.
The themes I pick up on your albums seem to be wrestling with growing older, and wrestling with the country’s political collapse. Am I right in sensing that you’re able to emerge optimistic about the first but you’re utterly pessimistic about the second?
Through ’08 I’ll remain optimistic about the country. What I’m singing about on the most political songs — “Grave Rolling,” “Jacksonville”; it culminates in a “Time for a Change” — “Time for A Change” says we better change, we better move on. I retain a measure of optimism that we can change. I’m concerned about where the country’s going, but I maintain an optimism.
The Founding Fathers are rocking out — but not too happy about it — in “Grave Rolling.” Did you have any particular founding father in mind when you wrote that song?
No. It could be the founding fathers and mothers. It’s the people who started this country. The separation of powers, how that would work. What matters you would investigate a president for.
That song is about Ken Starr and impeachment. That song came to me 10 years ago before I started writing. I had been talking politically with a lot of people. When the impeachment started, I said the founding fathers would be rolling in their graves if they knew how the constitution was being perverted. It stayed with me. It came to me as a song [later on].
The founding fathers are doing a lot of rocking and rolling in their graves in general.
Your albums have a professional sound, great production. Do you know how to do that stuff yourself?
No. Eddie Seville is a great producer. Now that this is my third effort in the studio, I have learned a lot more about what the possibilities are. I’m proud of that “co-producer” credit that he gives me. It’s much more than just writing the song. It’s kind of like making sausage.
… and legislation?
And legislation. I had a state senator who has known me for years say, “This is very different from your political career.” Not really. The only difference is that you can be more honest when you’re writing music than when you’re running for office. Everyone says they want honest public official. But I’ve never known a public official who spoke the truth and was rewarded for it. It’s one of those great ambiguities of American politics. If you say the things that are really important — Jimmy Carter and energy 30 years ago — you get castigated for being a pessimistic. Ronald Reagan would come in and utter bromides about American people being strong and persevering and we don’t need to be told these negative things. We’re now 30 years into a period of great denial in this country and great folly. Maybe if we listened to Jimmy Carter, Al Gore wouldn’t be getting the Nobel Prize for global warming. We would have addressed it 30 years ago.
It seems like the positive responses to your first albums may have taken you by surprise. What was the most exciting moment amid all that?
I spent most of my life writing contracts and legislation. To have critics accept what you are doing and validate what you are doing is exciting. Having [praise from the Register’s Patrick] Ferrucci and [the Courant‘s Eric] Danton was quite exciting. Most of these people are younger. You’ve got a guy in his mid-50s producing music that is more similar to music that was being produced 20 years ago, being accepted by younger writers.
Didn’t you say there was some kind of European licensing deal?
I have an agent in Europe now. My music was picked up by a station in Belgium. This fellow from Firma Hemifrin in Stockholm is trying to license my music and circulate it right now in Scandinavia.
Steve Mednick, the 21st century Abba?
Yeah, right. … I don’t consider myself a singer per se. I focus on the writing. I hope the singing is getting better. A lot of people were saying, “My kids were listening to it. They loved the music. You have no voice.”
“Do they think Mick Jagger has a voice?”
“No.”
“That’s fine.”
As you do it more, you get more comfortable in the studio. I’ve settled in with a strong group of musicians.
All these New Haven lawyers and architects recording original rock albums in middle age — what accounts for the trend?
Lost youth. Just trying to recapture. I think the music we grew up with was very special and very entwined with who we are and what our times were about. When I meet Republicans who are Grateful Dead fans, I still don’t get it, because I view the music as countercultural. I put a lot of the music of the ’60s up there with Bobby Kennedy’s speeches in what made me interested in the political process.
We have a little idle time. I like it better than golf. I was motivated because my best friend from childhood put a gun to my head and forced me to do this band thing when we turned 50. It reopened all this stuff; I hadn’t played guitar in 20, 25 years. I played around with the piano a little bit. All of a sudden we’re out performing in clubs.
Then I started writing again. I had all this poetry and lyrical stuff that I started doing in the ’90s that was sitting there.
Does it take courage in your mid-50s to record your own songs and perform them in public?
Yes. It’s scary. Not so much anymore. When I first did it, I said, “Am I fool to get up in front of a bunch of people and perform?” And secondly, to go into the studio. I’m very lucky I went into the studio with Eddie Seville. He’s been a terrific producer and collaborator.
If you could be a U.S. Congressman or a folk-rock star — I get the sense you’ve dreamed about both — which would you choose?
Oh boy. Oh my God. Who’s the Congressman from Westchester? I’d like to be John Hall. Have it both ways.
If you could pick one person to sit down and jam with, would it be Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, Stephen Stills — or someone else? And why?
Ooh. Jackson Browne. Jackson Browne is a terrific songwriter, a kindred spirit politically, very grounded guy. He’d be a terrific guy to talk to, harmonize with, and write with. Although the other guys are amazing.