The Stepkids - "Suit And Tie" and "Sweet Salvation"

I caught The Stepkids when they passed through Georgia on tour with Mayer Hawthorne. Prior to that I had heard them on Gilles Peterson's "Worldwide" radio show on the BBC. I also had a track from them that came on one of the Label Love compilations I had gotten my hands on.

None of that prepared me for what I experienced when they took the stage. They hit the stage wearing all white with a movie screen behind them. The room went pitch black. As the music started the stage was filled with a psychedelic light show. The music was incredible! Full of harmonies, melodies, and funk. By the

end of their performance, I was sold. I headed out to the lobby to buy the album before the Mayer started up. I only bought the album but they could have sold me on anything they had if they had tried. Instead I convinced Dan to take a picture with me.

I played that album non-stop for about a month. It sounded like what I figured a song written by Bootsy Collins for The Beatles would have sounded like.

More than a year has passed since I saw them live. Almost two years has gone by since their self titled debut album was released in 2011. News from the land of The Stepkids had become pretty sparse. So when I saw a tweet today saying check out The Stepkids covering Justin Timberlake's "Suit And Tie", I got excited!

I got even more excited when I hit play and realized they covered it in the style of swing jazz!



Amazing how covering a song in a Jazz style can class it up a bit, huh? And now you also understand how much fun these guys are!

Well, not to just leave you hanging, I also found out that they recently released a new single and a video for it. Their upcoming album, Troubadour is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2013. The video for "Sweet Salvation" has the crew traveling through space in what was more like the idea of space travel during the 60s and 70s. Pretty fun stuff.



Now, I'm excited about hearing the new album this fall.

Roger

PS: Dan was a really funny guy.

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