Finnish metal-bluegrass covers band Steve N' Seagulls is back! The band is now streaming their cover of Scorpions' 1984 classic "Still Loving You," and were courteous enough to sit down with Metal Injection for a brief interview about everything from cover songs to who really farms in the band.
How did the idea for Steve 'n' Seagulls first come about? It seems like such an obvious thing to do, but clearly you're one of the first.
The whole thing started as a side project and something fun to do. As kids of '90s it felt comfortable and awesome to play some classics from that era. And it seemed that those songs worked well with this sort of instrumentation. There are plenty of good riffs to play with an accordion, banjo etc. It's also nice to challenge ourselves with this sort of mixture that is not the most obvious one for us Finns.
What's the arrangement process for Steve 'n' Seagulls? Does it usually start with one instrument and then go from there, or do you all sit down and try to figure out how to make a song work?
For us it's usually so that someone comes up with an idea for an arrangement or an original song. There might be a demo that's already pretty well arranged or just a short idea. Then we start to go through the ideas together and throw in more ideas. That's how it usually evolves to a song ready for live show or album.
How hard is it to come up with songs to cover? You've been doing this for nearly a decade now, and I'd imagine it's getting tough to come up with new songs.
That actually true – it's been a decade already! We feel that there are so much awesome songs in the world that there will always be one to be found. But also on the last three albums we've had original songs as well. But just thinking the '90s alone has such an amazing music catalog to it that I don't think we're gonna run out of cool songs
What's one artist Steve 'n' Seagulls hasn't covered yet that you want to?
Bloodhoung Gang or Accept!
How's the reaction to a Steve 'n' Seagulls live show? I'd imagine people have a great time.
We are in Belfast at the moment and last night was our first gig in Dublin. It was such a good time and people gave us some amazing feedback. We can honestly say that we have awesome fans. People love to have good time in our shows, we go talk to people before and after show – usually at the merch desk. And we get a lot of feedback on our social media channels too. So we happily can say that the feedback is super positive! And thank you everyone for that! It feels awesome every time. There has been a wall of death, moshpits, auditorium audiences and everything in between.
I have to know – how many members of Steve 'n' Seagulls are actually farmers?
One of us has an actual company on the countryside – he's involved in various types of farming. Two of us live on the countryside – don't know if that counts as a farmer but it does include a lot of farm type work. One of us crew up among cows and spends a lot of time at his countryside place – growing a lot of plants and such. We're all from small towns and at least half of us live at the countryside at the moment. So it's not the most simple answer but hopefully that clarifies the matter a bit. Most of our videos are shot on our home farms or places we grew up. So there's plenty of farmer blood in our band!
