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2002-3-20

Richard Stepp

#001, March 20, 2002:
After some delay and a false start, we finally have the site up and running (we hope). The last few months have been very busy, with Richard Stepp's "Hooray For Santa Claus", "Christmas In An Old Log House" and "The Coolest Christmas Of All" doing very well on the airwaves around the world this last Christmas. The single that features "Rhythm of The Sun" and "Ain't Got Nobody" is still getting airplay in Europe and Australia/New Zealand, as is one of Richard's new songs, "My Pretty Blue Rose". A big thank you to all the radio stations that are playing Richard Stepp's music.

He has also been busy recording at Hoovercraft Sound where the finishing touches are being applied to a large batch of songs, mostly new but some old ones too. It's quite a varied bunch of songs that cover country, rock'n'roll, pop and gospel music. A handful of songs have just mastered, and some of these should be out soon (maybe March 2002). Some of Richard Stepp's older recordings have also been remastered to digital from the original master reel-to-reel tapes and we hope to have some of those reissued this year as well. "Holiday In Hollywood" sounds great!

So what's Richard Stepp up to with his new release It Only Takes One" ? Quite a bit, really. A part of what he has done here is clearly deeply rooted in classic country that recalls the 1950s and 1960s, and the rest is divided between romantic ballads and rockin' & rollin' foot-stompers. A couple of songs have already been 'road-tested' on a number of radio stations throughout Europe and Australia. We think that these radio stations will love Richard's lovely "My Pretty Blue Rose" from the new album. There's lots of other goodies too. There's the rocking title track and the very modern "Jen", which Richard co-wrote with his son Jessie. Be sure to order your copy now.

1. Bev West, who provided the pedal steel sounds to several of my songs. 2. Lou Hoover, not just another knob twiddler, and 3. Bev, Lou and myself at Hoovercraft, (all 2001).

In addition to the five CD titles currently in our catalog, we have a number of projects almost ready for release. Richard Stepp has been very busy indeed, and has almost completed work on two new CDs. One is a gospel record featuring a number of standard songs like Old Rugged Cross as well as originals like Walking In Clean Shoes. The other project is a rock album, a side of Richards so often overlooked.

We have dug through the vault and found a number of great Shakedown master studio tapes from 1976 and 1977. Though there is not really enough for a CD, we a number of Shakedown live tapes that could be used to make it worth putting out. Watch this space.

Going through the vault we also found some great tracks by Home Cooking, a group that featured both Richard Stepp and Ray O'Toole (they also shared the stage in The Northwest Company, and later in Shakedown and The Richard Stepp Band). One of the tracks is Chasing A Dream, which Richard re-recorded in 1975 and released as his first single on Mushroom Records. Also on these tapes were two great versions of Hell I Know, a song Richard has updated and almost finished recording for his previously mentioned rock album. We had all of these vintage tracks remastered, as well as both sides of Richard's 1975 Mushroom Records single. Look for some of these tracks to make it to CD sometime in 2002.

Roger Stomperud,
RS Records 2002

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