Are you being nudged in a certain creative direction? Don't ignore it! Steve Young, a comedy writer for The Letterman Show for 25 years, followed his curiosity while writing the ongoing bit Dave’s Record Collection. In the process, he discovered the unknown world of industrial musicals, co-wrote a book about it and then became the subject of an award-winning documentary, "Bathtubs Over Broadway." Tune in to hear musical theater like you’ve never heard it before! And learn about Steve's process and the artistic rewards of photographing a dirty wad of gum. Check out Steve's work and projects at steveyoungworld.com. Read his book "Everything's Coming Up Profits" View the Bathtubs Over Broadway trailer!
Check out Steve's work and projects at steveyoungworld.com.
Read his book "Everything's Coming Up Profits"
View the Bathtubs Over Broadway trailer!
Learn more about these other artists:
Steve and Dava's two short films are still on the festival circuit, but check out these behind-the-scenes videos:
See Celibrigum photos!
Listen to the great song "Take That Step."
And check out the Bathtubs Over Broadway soundtrack!
Tricia
Hey there. I'm Tricia Rose Burt, and I want to ask you a question. What creative work are you called to do but are too afraid to try? Are you in IT but dream of doing stand up? A PR exec who longs to write a screenplay? Did you change your priorities and now you want to leave your fully funded PhD/MD program and go to New Mexico and paint? Or maybe you're like I was in my early career, trapped in a lucrative, but soul crushing corporate job when what I really wanted to do was tell stories on stage. In this podcast, we'll hear from artists who took unexpected leaps and found the courage to answer their creative call so we can inspire you to answer yours. This is no time to be timid.
Tricia
Well, welcome to the show. If I said to you the words Industrial musical, would you even know what that meant? I didn't until I stumbled upon a documentary called Bathtubs over Broadway about five years ago. Basically, it's musical theater created back in the fifties, sixties and seventies for corporate events like national sales meetings for companies like Johnson and Johnson, Frigidaire and Citgo. And if you're wondering what an industrial musical sounds like, it sounds like this:
Clip
(A medley of songs)
Tricia
But can you imagine seeing one of those at your annual meeting? I mean, it beats the hell out of PowerPoint. They're absurd and wonderful. And my guest today, Steve Young, thought the same thing. He's the star of the documentary. He was a writer on the Letterman show for 25 years. And he was in charge of finding wacky records for Letterman to talk about on a show. That's how Steve discovered this unknown world of industrial musicals. He co-wrote a book about them called Everything's Coming Up Profits. And that became the basis for Bathtubs over Broadway, which has won a ton of awards and gets 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. When I asked Steve what was most vital to sustaining his creative life, he said Curiosity. And it was his curiosity that urged him to find the people who wrote and performed in these musicals and what it meant to them. And just like Steve wanting to connect with those artists I knew sitting in that theater five years ago that I wanted to connect with Steve. I'm so delighted he's on the show.
Tricia
Hi, Steve. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm so glad you're here.
Steve
Hello, Tricia. Good to be here.
Tricia
Well, first of all, I saw Bathtubs over Broadway in 2018 in the Belcourt Theater in Nashville. And I went in, you know, expecting to see a documentary. And at the end, I'm weeping. It was just such a moving show. And at that moment, I'm like, I need to know that guy. I need to know who that person is who pursued this whole thing about industrial musicals. But I want to ask you a question right off the bat, because I've been doing Steve Young homework. And I know that you went to Harvard and I know that you were in the Harvard Lampoon. But I also know that you said you were not a comedy geek growing up. So how did you know you were funny? And how did you convince the Harvard Lampoon folks that you were funny?
Steve
Yeah. So it's an interesting thing because most comedy writers or comedians that you talk to probably have some version of I was eight or ten or ten or 12 or 14, and I saw something that made me immediately think, Aha, there's my life's mission or the light bulb going on over someone's head. That's what I need to be doing. I had moments where I thought something is hilarious, or even early on I was saying funny things and making everyone in class laugh, but I didn't put it together with, Oh, that's a thing to do with your life. That may have been partly a function of just less media saturation. 40 years ago, when you you didn't have everybody aspiring to break into Hollywood and create shows and things like that. I do remember, probably other funny people have versions of this, I have a little mental Rolodex of great successful things I said as a kid in school like that made a whole room full of people laugh and I thought, alright, I'm getting a positive reinforcement on that. I'm going to try to keep doing that. But I didn't really understand that TV shows had writers and that that was a job or a career. I saw The Letterman Show for the first time in the early eighties, and it absolutely devastated me in the best way possible. And I was on the floor laughing for 20 minutes and curled up in a fetal position. That should have been the light bulb over-the-head moment of I know what I want to do with my life, but I kind of forgot about it. I didn't keep watching it. It was on terribly late at night and I was in high school and TV and there's one TV in the house and it wasn't in my bedroom. And so I just kind of forgot about late night comedy for a few years until I was at Harvard and I got on the Lampoon, and that was kind of the oh moment of people go on from college and work being funny. What an interesting idea. But the Lampoon was a fun, sort of weird club, but it was also a magazine that was trying to do a good job and to get on the staff, you had to try out by submitting funny written humor pieces or if you wanted to be on the art side of it, you drew cartoons and fun illustrations. There was also a business staff. So I was putting in my sample pieces and hoping they were funny and getting some very encouraging comments written on the back by people like Conan O'Brien. And I thought, maybe this is my thing.
Tricia
So when you got the job at Letterman, how long did it make you feel like, okay, I'm in the right spot? Like, this is a good fit. I mean, how long did it take for you to step into your groove there?
Steve
I had watched the show relatively little, just that sort of indifference to consuming media that has been an intermittent theme of my life. So I had a little catching up to do. I didn't know all the inside lingo about things on the show, and they weren't even that inside. Big, serious fans of the show would have been better prepared in some ways than I was, and I had to ask a lot of embarrassing questions in the meetings. But pretty soon I thought and the head writer who hired me also thought, there's something here that will over time become strengthened and polished. And I stayed for 25 years. So I guess I guess that was right.
Tricia
It's remarkable for people to stay anywhere for 25 years. But in that kind of position, you think, is there a lot of turnover in comedy writing?
Steve
The Letterman show felt like kind of its own ecosystem. We were in New York. There weren't too many shows in New York. There were a few other late night shows. But Los Angeles has always been the big epicenter of everything, and people seem much more connected to showbusiness in general if you're out there because it's just what everybody is kind of talking about. I could go for years without thinking about the quote unquote entertainment business when I was at Letterman, it was just I went to work at this building and I worked on stuff with my friends and we tried to make Mr. Letterman laugh and then hopefully an audience. And it barely felt like. Some nights I was surprised that I would hear somebody say, Oh, I love that thing you that was on Letterman the other night. And I had the first impression, how would you know about that? Oh, right. It was on television. I forget that it's not just this little private thing we do in this building to entertain ourselves and 400 people who come in. It felt distant at times from -- I've compared it to it's a small island off the coast of the entertainment business. And you could go back and forth by a ferry or something, but it it didn't feel like I was really part of that larger, larger culture, which maybe in retrospect, oh, I would have had more things happening sooner post Letterman if I'd been really plugged in. But I am who I am.
Tricia
I will tell you, I mean, this is going to sound like a heavy word, but what started as just a comedy bit for Dave's Record Collection, I think really turned into a ministry. I mean, it's remarkable the lives that have been touched and changed by you following that thread and you not dismissing it or ignoring it and following it, even though it made no sense at the time. But for people who are not devoted Bathtubs Over Broadway fans like myself, can you talk about how that started and where it led?
Steve
Okay, absolutely. Love to tell the origin story. But I should mention also Bathtubs Over Broadway, the beautiful documentary that brought me to your attention. I'm the main subject of it, but I am not the filmmaker. Another miracle of this story is the fact that it's the debut feature film of a film maker and director named Dava Whisenant who I met when she was an editor at the Letterman show.
Clip
No way.
Steve
Yes. So she has brought the the magic fairy dust of inspired filmmaking to sprinkle.
Tricia
And that was her debut feature?
Steve
Yes.
Tricia
Wow.
Tricia
She said, I want to make this documentary. And I said, Absolutely. I think you're exactly the right person for it. So it took four years to make. And I had never been involved with something that took more than a couple days to make from like the Letterman world. But she she landed the plane. She any any positive metaphor you want, she did it. So it's it's been fantastic. But I want people to know that it's my movie in the sense that I'm in it, but I certainly didn't make it.
Tricia
Well, she did an extraordinary job. And you gave her a lot to work with.
Steve
Well, I hope so. And she made it easy for me to just be myself.
Steve
And documentary subjects have to trust the filmmaker in order to really tell the truth about what's going on. So that that worked out. When I started at The Letterman Show, the head writer, a man named Steve O'Donnell, who was another great figure in my life, said, I think you should run the bit we do called Dave's Record Collection. And as I, as an extremely casual viewer of the show, had never actually seen this segment before, but suddenly I was going to be in charge of finding strange, unintentionally funny, real record albums that could be part of this found comedy piece. And Dave would hold them up and we'd hear a little clip and he'd have a joke. And we had the celebrities who shouldn't have been singing but were singing anyway. Like William Shatner was a a good, low hanging fruit. We plucked a lot of wacky instructional records, like I learned how to touch tape, things like that, take dictation.
Clip
William Shatner live, and we'll be listening to a mental journey through space. William Shatner. Ladies and gentleman. Let your mind float into the solar system. Look at the planets wheeling around the sun.
Steve
When I started finding souvenir private pressing albums from company events like sales meetings and conventions. And they were musicals. They were entire Broadway style musicals. And the records all said souvenir use only. Not for air play, not for sale. So these had been created for meetings behind closed doors at company events where suddenly it would be a Ford tractor guy watching a musical about the new line of Ford tractors. And what a great year it's going to be to sell them. And maybe there's a beleaguered Ford tractor dealer who's finally got his mojo back because he believes in the future again. All these tropes and powerful bits of musical theater being turned toward this maybe one performance in front of this very narrow special audience about. Here's here's the world of your work and why why you should be glad you're with this team, B. F. Goodrich or Westinghouse or whatever. And it sounds like it could be awful. And some of the shows were sort of just desperate, sad little outings with song parodies or whatever. But the better ones. I kept finding hauntingly good songs about selling and servicing diesel engines, or being an insurance salesman or about Westinghouse Electric Power Systems or whatever. And I just thought, what is going on?
Clip
"Diesel Dazzle"
Steve
So that was the that was the beginning of it. Just casually finding the first handful of these albums and fast forward decades and I have assembled what I believe is the biggest and best collection of this stuff in the world. Not that I have many competitors, but there was a book I co-wrote with another collector friend of mine and then the documentary, and along the way it went from just finding records to finding people. And I think that's what caught you about the documentary was how my curiosity got me all the way down to finding who wrote these things, who performed in them, what did it mean to them? And yeah, sure, do they have some more records in their basements that I don't know about yet? That was part of it. But after a while I realized these people have things to teach me about music, about life, about just any big question that human beings face. And so I've gained concentric rings of honorary families in all directions with these people. And as you see in the movie, it's it goes quite far to the point where I'm asked to eulogize people sometimes.
Tricia
You know, I'm a storyteller. And the narrative arc in that film is so brilliant. It's just brilliant because you go from I mean, you say in the film, I didn't have any friends outside of the show. I didn't have any hobbies, you know. It was just it was a small life, small ish life. And then at the end, it is just this incredibly rich world filled with all of these people. And watching that narrative arc was so moving. And I also think you've talked about in other interviews that I've listened to that you could sort of relate, because these folks had kind of signed up for having a life of anonymity or just no one ever knowing what they were doing because they were so short lived. They might do them one time and that's it. And that you sort of felt the same way sometimes with the stuff that you did with the Letterman. You write something that no one ever saw. So there's this kind of kinship with making something that doesn't get recognized somehow.
Steve
Yeah, that's something you have to learn in so many creative fields is how to walk the tightrope of caring enough to continue to give it your best shot every time, while also not being devastated by the understanding that most of the time, whatever you try isn't going to work or isn't going to be accepted or bought or put on TV or whatever, and you just have to not let that eat you alive. So that is something that is tough to to grapple with. How do you and other versions of that like I would talk to people and they would say, you know, probably the best thing I ever did was this lawnmower musical. It played once at eight in the morning to a hotel ballroom full of lawnmower salesmen. And it was great and it wasn't recorded at all. And the minute it was over, it was gone forever. And I can never really get that back. And you can't even explain barely, to your family what it is you're doing. They just think you're writing commercials. And you're saying, Well, no, it's a whole other thing and it's musical theater, but not for the public. So hard to explain to the outside world. You just kind of say, All right, I'll just take this good paycheck and make my peace with it. And I show up very late in the game for many of these people's lives. And I say, surprise, We are going to talk about. Yeah. And I had to get past certain levels of suspicion with people.
Tricia
Were they really suspicious? What were they suspicious of?
Steve
Well, first of all, if I introduced myself properly and mentioned that I might have found their record album while gathering material for The Letterman Show, that's a red flag. Someone might be here to make fun of me. Somebody I'm going to get sucked into a vortex of mockery and took a little while sometimes for people to understand this isn't for the show anymore. We already put Diesel Dazzle or the Bathrooms are Coming on the show and that was fine for 20 seconds. But now I really want to talk to you about how this worked and what it meant and how do you how do you think about it now, looking back? And what else did you do? And I could I could get to the point where people saw I was sincere and then it was okay. But I remember emailing somebody and saying, Hey, I love your B.F.Goodrich show, I would love to talk to you about it. And I got the email back. Ha ha. Very funny. Who put you up to this?
Tricia
Oh, oh my goodness.
Steve
It was not respectable. And even now there's still a whiff of, Oh, you can't be a real actor or a real singer if you're doing this.
Tricia
What's so beautiful about the film and what you did is that you acknowledge these people, that what they did was real and mattered. And because it can be a lonely road sometimes, and particularly though if you're in an industry where people are mock or actually mocking you, that's pretty tough. When did it happen for you, though when you were like, this is for The Letterman Show? When did it become about you, about you wanting to pursue this?
Steve
It was after a couple of years of casually happening to find the first seven or so records and realizing these are way better than they should be. They seem absurd on the face of it. I mean, we felt like we're already most of the way there. If you have a musical about Ford tractors or fluorescent light bulbs or something, I thought. But I keep singing the songs to myself and it's like weeks past the record collection bit and I'm still singing the diesel engine songs. What is going on? And there was some point somewhere, I don't know, 1996 or so, I started going to record shows thinking, Well, you know, I'm looking for stuff for the show, but really I want to see if I can find any more of these things. And it was very, very slow going because very few record dealers knew what I was talking about. But that led me to thinking, all right, some of these records, not all of them, but some of them have credits. And maybe I can find some of these people. That still amazes me that I took that step of saying, I'm going to try to research where certain people are, if they're still alive, and start calling people with that name and seeing if I can find the composer of the the 1958 Oldsmobile show or whatever, or just this seems improbable to me as I look back on it. But somewhere around the summer of '96, I got out of a notebook and just started taking notes about who I was looking for and where they were and when I would get someone on the phone and then get past that suspicion layer, and then they would start telling me, Oh, you know who you should talk to? Oh, you know who did a million of these? And oh, I've got a closet full of reel to reel tapes. You want them? So you would start to realize I'm only touching the faintest edge of this. And it is vast. And no one ever really talked to each other about it. My friend Hank, who you see in the movie, when the when I said I was doing a book, he said, Why? I can't understand why you'd think that would be a good idea. The book came out and he, for the first time in his life, realized there were people like me in all these different cities for 40 years. I never knew there was so much of it.
Tricia
Oh, my gosh. Hank, he just breaks my heart. There are scenes in the movie when you are singing with him and you're singing with Sid, and it's just, you know, the joy on their faces, the joy on your face just shows the power of of just following that creative urge and seeing it through. It's sometimes it's tricky being in a studio by yourself going, Is anybody going to see this? Is anybody going to care? What matters if I keep going with this? To just what was inside of you to say, Keep going with this?
Steve
I sometimes think I haven't really done much of anything creative here. I've just done the archeology and tried to find the people who were entertaining me with this wildly improbable material. And I just thought, I am I have what I call comedy damage. I mentioned in the movie or regular quote unquote mainstream comedy is fine, but it's not going to be very surprising to me very often. And I was looking for the more esoteric kicks and this stuff was like a meta level of comedy. It was completely real and sincere and so off the charts of I couldn't have imagined this could be real. What made me want to pursue, part of it was just the collecting gene early on. I go, Oh, now I've got 12 of these albums. How many are there? Are there 20? Are there 30? You know who I should call is this Hank Beebe fella. He's like, written the music on four of the best ones. Maybe he's got 20 more that I don't know about. So part of it was just that that I'll find more stuff. But somebody who saw Bathtubs Over Broadway once actually wrote me a letter. And how often does that happen anymore? I think it came in the mail but that this person I, I don't know if I even have the letter, but I've always remembered one thing the person said, which was, you thought you were looking for people so you could find records, but really you were looking for records so you could find people.
Tricia
Hmm.
Steve
And I didn't realize at first that was it. But once I get off the phone after talking to Hank Beebe for 3 hours and think I need to try to be more like this guy, he he seems to have that outlook on life and the talent and the patience and every other good quality that I would like to cultivate in myself.
Tricia
You have a wonderful line in the movie that says I'm paraphrasing, is that this stuff needed, that I needed a guy and I was the guy. Like it was almost like you were anointed to go and find these people and bring them together and bring them to light and shine light on work that had been done that wouldn't have been acknowledged. And it's just it's so important.
Steve
It makes me feel good when I think about all the families who have told me dad was so happy and proud in his last years because somebody finally got it and was excited to put a spotlight on this in a way that was not mockery, but was saying this is part of a continuum of art and it's a part of the spectrum of art you may not have considered, but just listen to the music and see if you think it's good music. And Hank Beebe told me, I guess when we were putting out the soundtrack album, he said, I have to thank you and Dava. When I was in New York trying to work in the theater world, like in the sixties and seventies, I was known to some people as the king of the industrial shows and they meant it as an insult. And he said, But guess what? All those people are dead now. I am still alive. I am in my nineties and people who were not born when any of this was happening, thanks to what you and Dava have done, they are listening to these pieces of work of mine and these songs and they're not bringing this prejudicial baggage to it. They're just saying, Wow, you know what? That General Electric Silicone song is absolutely bonkers, but it is a work of genius.
Clip
"Silicone, Silicone"
Tricia
And how did it feel for you to go from being behind the camera into being in front of the camera?
Steve
It's I don't think it would have happened really without me finding something that I really wanted to show to the world and tell the world about. I think even now I'm struggling with the fact that, okay, I'm trying to do creative things, being a songwriter, writing different kinds of things, and I find it harder to promote things that I am purely doing for myself than I do for, Oh, everybody should come to this show because I'm going to show you crazy things that I found that other wonderful people did, and I'll tell you about how wonderful they are. I have an easier time with that. But I really did feel like, okay, like you said, this stuff needed a guy. I was the guy. I was excited that there were a few other record collectors who found a few of these things, but only a few, and no one had ever bothered to track down the actors and writers and singers before. So that was a new level. And the bigger it got, I just thought I may be deluded, but I think several things are true. Number one, I think some of this is actually fantastic. And number two, I think there was so much of it that it is like an undiscovered continent on the planet that has never been on a map before. And it's exciting to find a new continent and show people, look, it's got mountains and jungles and beaches and everything else, and it's much bigger than you could have imagined. So I love showing this stuff to people and watching them watch the films that I bring to my shows and watch them listening to the music and thinking they thought like you did. Coming into the documentary, Oh, this is just going to be kitsch. This is going to be something to laugh at. And then you think there was something big going on here that we had no idea.
Tricia
It's a very hopeful film, you know, And the best stories are all about vulnerability. And when you watch them talk about work they love so much and people didn't get to see it, it's really very powerful.
Steve
So many terrific stories that Dava couldn't fit into the movie. She said she had enough material to make three movies. But Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist for Fiddler on the Roof, when he and his partner were kicking around New York in the fifties before they were famous, they were doing industrials. They wrote the Ford Tractor Musical that I pulled up at one point.
Clip
Excerpt from Ford Tractor Musical
Steve
And then they were writing Fiorello, and then it's Fiddler on the Roof. And Sheldon told me, you know, I had a twinge of regret when we started getting really successful. And I thought, Oh, gosh, I hope I don't have to stop doing industrials. Oh, it seems like something you would want to graduate out of but he said. I loved the puzzle of it. Give me the least promising premise for a song or a whole show and I will prove with my artistry and craft that I can make it work and I can convince you. And he he said there was a little regret at not doing that anymore.
Tricia
We'll get back to the second half of our conversation in a moment. But right now, I want to tell you about our sponsor Interabang Books, a Dallas-based independent bookstore with a terrific online collection. At Interabang, their dedicated staff of book enthusiasts will guide you on your search for knowledge and the excitement of discovery. Shop their curated collection online at interabangbooks.com. That's interabangbooks.com.
Tricia
So now I know that you're working with Dava on two or you've made two other films with her, right? Two short films?
Steve
Yeah, we've made a couple of short films. We have another one in the pipeline now. We've written several scripts for scripted projects. It's turned out to be a very good collaboration.
Tricia
It is difficult to talk about a visual project on a podcast medium, but can you just talk a little bit about Celibrigum, because I love Celibrigum so much. There's for me, there's some sort of connection between Bathtubs Over Broadway and Celibrigum in that you're really good at noticing things and you follow it through. Like some people may disregard it, but what you do is hone in and notice it and then build a bigger world around it, which I think is really, creates some really interesting work. So can you talk a little bit about Celibrigum?
Steve
Sure. I appreciate you looking into that and thinking about that. I do think a lot of the territory that I've worked comedically over the years has been trying to notice the detail that other people wouldn't think was worth bothering with. Like all these records that I was finding in the early days there in the junk bin are there in the miscellaneous oddball $1 bin. And no serious collector that I ever knew thought this was something to pay attention to. Part of it is maybe my saying, well, I would love to to to feel like I disproved other people's biases or whatever, but the Celibrigum project, for years I was running the monologue at The Letterman Show, and I had to be up near Dave Letterman's dressing room every afternoon, which was on the second floor of the theater building. Not quite the same as the office building, but I had to go to this other building, stand in a hallway and be on call to go in and rewrite monologue jokes and suggest new jokes and all that. But I'd be sort of on call and waiting in this hallway by this window that looked down onto 53rd Street. And I noticed at one point there was a lump of very dirty, hardened old gum that someone had stuck on the outside window ledge outside the window. And I just thought, well, look at that. I wonder how long is that going to last in the New York weather. Is going to be here for years? And I started taking pictures thinking, oh, maybe it'll be an essay about the four seasons of New York on a piece of hardened gum. And that would have been very mild. But at one point I realized, oh, my goodness, look at this. Every day, about 45 minutes before the show, limos and SUVs pull up and out get the toast of the town. The A-list celebrities, your George Clooney's and Julia Roberts all coming in to be guests on the show. And when they get out and they're waving to the paparazzi and signing autographs and there's cheering crowds. I'm going to take pictures. And every day it's a different celebrity, but the same piece of dirty gum in the foreground. And so Celibrigum was born. Different day, different celebrity, same gum. And I thought, I don't know if this is anything, but it's just stupid enough to appeal to me. And I started a website, celibrigum.com. Not every picture was that interesting, but sort of on the broken clock right twice a day theory, if you take hundreds of pictures, sometimes you get something that with striking light and a gesture and a moment. And and I liked quite a few of them. And I gave Dave Letterman a photo album of my favorites for his birthday. And he immediately got the sort of cheerful foolishness of this. And and I think we both kind of felt like there are certain kinds of art where you can't tell am I serious about this? Or is this all a joke, or does it not even matter anymore? Do certain kinds of jokes become art through solemn repetition and commitment?
Tricia
It's like a ritual.
Steve
Something about the fact that I had been doing this over and over again, and some of the pictures were kind of cool. He said, This is fantastic. We we have to do an art gallery show and ha ha sure. But he said, No, I think we're going to do this. And so that year, The Letterman Show staff holiday party was at an art gallery downtown where he had paid to take over the space for the night and paid to have 50 something of my photos professionally enlarged and framed. And the New York Times sent a reporter and suddenly it had gained, if not credibility in the art world, credibility as some sort of conceptual art stunt, perhaps. And that really just to me, that's all it probably deserved to be. As much as I still do think some of the photos are fun, but it was an example of yes, it was ridiculous. And I kept doing it and it kind of was vindicated by Dave Letterman's seal of approval.
Tricia
But you know what? I think there is something about the persistence of it, and it's just it's a great lesson or a great example of what can come out of just first of all, noticing that one thing and then realizing I'm noticing this and this matters to me for whatever reason, and then just keep building it. And and again, just like the worlds that come as as a part of that initial looking, you know, is pretty astonishing.
Steve
The mute debris of civilization and our surroundings. Sometimes there's something evocative there if you're just patient and observant. And it really didn't take off until I realized, Oh, it can be combined with this extremely publicity friendly look at all the celebrities. Everyone loves celebrities. Oh, look, there's Tom Brokaw coming in and there's there's there's Barbara Walters. There's whoever is your favorite person. They were probably in Celibrigum at some point.
Tricia
You take photographs, obviously, but you're also you're starting to write songs or you've been writing songs, but now you're actually pursuing that a little bit more actively. Did you go to Nashville and record?
Steve
Late in my Letterman tenure, I was starting to write little songs and had jingles that were getting in the show, and I'd come up pretty well with my guitar lessons and was now sort of a pretty good amateur finger picker. And I realized, Oh, this is a faucet that I have now turned on.
Tricia
Wait, so hold on. How old were you with your first guitar lesson?
Steve
I'm not counting the sort of sophomore year in college that didn't really stick. But in 2004, I looked for a teacher in Manhattan and got a recommendation which turned out to be terrific. A woman named Val Machand and I don't know where she is now. She seems to not be on the Internet at all, but she said, Oh, what do you want to do? Strumming, flat picking, fingerpicking? And something about my very faint knowledge of fingerpicking made me say, Yeah, yeah, let's do that. And it turned out I had an affinity for it. And I ran through her curriculum pretty well. And after a couple of years, she said, I need to pass you off to another teacher, but I want you to work with me on piano so you can get some music theory, because I was really not educated musically. So. So that has been a fun journey and writing songs sort of uses similar muscles to writing a fake commercial for the Letterman show. You have to have a premise that you think is worthwhile, have a few bits of development and then get out before people get sick of it. So lyrically and musically try to juggle all that. So I find that a satisfying outlet now.
Clip
Steve Young's "I'm Touched"
Steve
Yes, I've been very lucky when I was in Nashville with Bathtubs, maybe the time you saw it, I guess. Happen to meet some people connected to the music scene, and it was just super wonderful good luck. Oh, you write songs? Oh, we'd like to hear what you're working on. Oh, these are very good. Oh, we should set up a recording session. So I just have been the beneficiary of wonderful luck and wonderful friends helping me to get going.
Tricia
You know, the name of this podcast is No Time to be Timid. And one of the things that we've been focusing on this season is the trait that helps people sustain their creative life. And what is the trait that you think helps you sustain your creative life?
Steve
Hmm. I hope you don't mind if I say sometimes there is a time to be timid, but maybe in the reflection that comes while you're timid, you can realize what it is that answers the second part of your question. What makes you really think I need to keep going? Yeah. So I wrestle with those things. It used to be that there was no time to be timid because I was paid to write something at the Letterman show and it's due in 20 minutes. There was literally no time to be timid. You just had to go, just not over edit yourself or overthink. Just start putting things down on paper. And the writer's room was a very supportive place, and we all were rooting for each other. And people would be self-deprecating and saying, you know, I don't know what the second half of this is, but here's my first half of an idea, or I can't remember if I'm remembering this from somewhere or if I've just made it up, but I don't know what it is. Maybe someone will help me. So that was a very supportive place. But when you're not in that room and you're not on a deadline, you have to say, What do I just keep circling back to in my mind that I think there must be something to this, because this is the fourth or fifth time that I've gotten myself thinking about it. And maybe it'll be a relief if I just start putting it down in some form. And I have ways to trick myself saying, Oh, I'm not really writing a novel. I'm just like seeing what this character's voice would be like if I just started writing some pages. Because if I said to myself, I'm writing a novel, I'd be paralyzed with insecurity. Like, I don't know how to write a novel.
Tricia
Are you writing a novel?
Steve
Oh. Two of them.
Tricia
Oh, my goodness.
Steve
Oh, yeah. I have, this is another challenge is how many things can you start versus how many things can you finish? And songs are great because I can finish a lot of those athough I have plenty that aren't finished either. But trick myself into thinking I'm not doing the thing that sounds impossible. I'm just doing this little little sort of amusing exercise off to the side. And if it keeps going, great, but I won't put a label on it. And even now, I hesitate to say I'm writing a novel because I think, Well, who are you to write a novel? You're you're the smart aleck who just writes top ten lists or whatever.
Tricia
But I do like the word that you said, that you get relief when you finally write it down. If it comes back four or five times, that there is a relief that comes from finally making whatever that thing is that's nudging you.
Steve
Yeah, I've read screenwriters saying if you have an idea and you think that's pretty good, but then it slips away and doesn't come back, that may not have really been that compelling an idea. But if you brush off an idea four or five times when it keeps coming back and you keep saying, Oh and you know what else? Oh, actually, you know, it would be fun with that then then you'd better pay attention because your brain and or the universe is trying to tell you something like this idea needs a guy and you're the guy.
Tricia
Absolutely. Absolutely. What are you working on right now that's scaring you?
Steve
Oh. I'm. Restarting my my one man industrial musicals film show.
Tricia
Oh, that's right.
Steve
You may have seen a mention on the website. I haven't done this since before the pandemic, but I like to go places, different cities, where I can line up a venue and hopefully get some publicity and people in to say, Ladies and gentlemen, wait'll you see what I found. And I tell them about the records. But then I say, I have films and you see some of them glimpsed briefly in Bathtubs Over Broadway, like the G.E. Silicones film that came out of Hank Beebe's basement. The Bathrooms are Coming 16 millimeter film that came out of Pat's basement. Some things I found on my own or have come from other collectors, but it's an hour and a half plus show that I narrate and curate and explain and lovingly lead you through some of the strangest images ever committed to film. And it's not scary to do it. It's just scary to think, can can I make a going concern of this? Can I be a business man? Like you're saying people want to make this stuff. They don't want to necessarily.
Tricia
Market.
Steve
Promote this stuff. And I'm carried through some of that reluctance by just the feeling like people are going to love this. People, I did it for a few years on and off before the pandemic and people love it and are amazed by it.
Tricia
When I saw the movie in 2018, I'm like, I need to know that guy. What you ended up being called to do, how many lives were just brought into the light that would not have been is a really wonderful, wonderful thing. So it was just terrific. Well, we will spread the gospel here at no time to be timid.
Steve
Oh, thank you. And you used the word ministry, which I don't think I'd ever heard in conjunction with the whole adventure I've had. But it seems not wrong. I have felt so happy when like you see in the movie, where Pat finally gets up on stage 45 years later and sings for a crowd of people. And a sort of vindication that she never thought she'd have. And I thought that's her. But I helped.
Tricia
Yeah.
Tricia
Please keep doing what you're doing.
Steve
I will. I think it's not only a habit and a higher calling, but still just fun. When when I find an amazing new record or somebody emails me out of the blue. Oh, I have a closet full of stuff from the Armstrong Flooring Company's musicals or. Oh, just I still get that tingle of, Oh, this might be the best thing ever.
Tricia
Yeah, that's what we're going for. We're going for the tingle. That's it.
Steve
Yeah, that's right. It's out there.
Tricia
Yes. And I want to say one more thing. I love what you said. And it was in Sid Siegel's eulogy that life can be so rich and wonderful when we step off the logical path and embark on eccentric adventures. It is. It's all I can do not to tattoo it on my arm, because I was. I was raised that being logical was what you needed to be. And I think this gives so many people permission just to get off the logical and go explore and make a difference.
Steve
That's right. Whether it's whether it's taking pictures of hardened gum with celebrities in the background or looking through the records in the record store that are assumed to be junk and seeing if you see a pattern no one's ever seen before. Yeah, I can be an extremely logical, rational person, but there is that streak in me and it has been my saving grace, I guess, professionally and personally, that I want to step off the path and and like the song I wrote with Hank Beebe. Take that step. Shine your light. That left turn might be right.
Tricia
That was my question to ask is, can we please play that? Because that song is like my anthem.
Tricia
So yeah.
Steve
Like if nothing else good ever happens to me in my life. I've got all this, and it turned out better than I could have imagined.
Tricia
Yeah, well, we are so grateful for it. Thank you again, Steve.
Clip
"Take that Step" by Steve Young and Hank Beebe
Tricia
You've probably noticed this is not our usual theme song. We're celebrating the genius that is Steve Young and Hank Beebe, who wrote this song "Take That Step," and Bathtubs Over Broadway. Stick around until the end so you can hear the conclusion of the song. I had more fun talking with Steve. It was such a thrill to meet him. And here are some questions we can all think about. Do you follow where your curiosity leads you or do you dismiss it? Are you paying attention to your surroundings, like in junk bins and windowsills, for possible creative inspiration? And finally, what makes you tingle? You can find out more about Bathtubs Over Broadway and Steve and his latest projects by going to steveyoungworld.com, and following him on Instagram @pantssteve. Make sure to check out the schedule for his live show, too. He's got upcoming dates in Cleveland, Philadelphia, Asheville, L.A. and Hartford with more to come. And if you haven't seen the movie, watch it now on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, all sorts of places. It is beyond inspirational. Get the soundtrack, too, which is available on Apple and Amazon.
Tricia
And if your curiosity is leading you to follow a more creative path, join me at my No Time to Be Timid retreat November 10-12 at the beautiful Cranberry Meadow Farm Inn here in Peterborough, New Hampshire. It's an intimate gathering of eight like-minded women in various stages of their creative journeys, who are eager to integrate more creativity into their lives. There are only a few spots left, so if you're interested, check out my website triciaroseburt.com And click on No Time to Be Timid. Then email me or schedule a conversation to see if it's the right fit for you. And don't forget to follow me on Instagram @triciaroseburt.
Tricia
Join us for our next episode when we'll be talking with author and memoir coach Marion Roach Smith. Whatever your medium, Marion's thoughts on the creative process and what it takes to sustain a creative life will no doubt help you with your own work. And remember, this is no time to be timid.
Tricia
No Time to Be timid is written and produced by me, Tricia Rose Burt. Our episodes are produced and scored by Adam Arnone of Echo Finch, and our theme music is Twists and Turns by the Paul Dunlea Group. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show, spread the word, and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. No Time to be Timid is a presentation of I Will be Good Productions.
Conclusion of "Take that Step."