My Musical Timeline - Steve Cunningham

posted December 15, 2014

1955

1966

1967 Just Us

My first musical group. “Just Us”, was an acoustic duet with a friend in Hacienda Heights, California. We made up songs for a Sgt. Pepper type album called “Green Jeans Flowers”. It only ever existed on paper.

1969  The Water

I moved from Southern California to New Orleans in February 1967. In my senior year of high school I was in a band called “The Water”. I played guitar and sang. We had a keyboard player, drummer, an occasional bass player, and a pretty good banjoist.

We played live on TV on “New Orleans Night People” in

1969, where we backed up Harry the Singing Mailman

doing “Mustang Sally”. Harry danced on a table during

our rendition of “Born to Be Wild”.

1970-1971 The Ritz Hotel

                                                I met Lynn in 1970 at UNO. She introduced me to a guy she had met in

                                                her English class, Clark Vreeland. We started jamming at his tiny house

                                                on Hayne Boulevard. Eventually we formed  “The Ritz Hotel.” Clark and

                                                I played guitar, with Tommy Youngblood on drums (Tommy had played

                                                in a band called “Yesterday’s Children”). Next, Tommy’s brother Tim joined on keyboards. In the months that followed, the band grew: Bruce Raeburn on drums, Reggie Scanlan on bass, and Becky Kury joined as a singer. The name “The Ritz Hotel” appeared sometime in 1971. Inspiration for the name came from a sign in a dingy doorway near Werlein’s music store on Canal Street. We played at places like The Hideaway on St. Claude Avenue and Danny’s Silver Fox Lounge in Metairie (I also vaguely recall a place called The Nutcracker). I don’t remember The Ritz Hotel making any records. I found a recording of an instrumental called “The Automatic Song”, which I think Clark wrote.

1972-1974 The Calhoun Players Guild

1974-78 Tonewhop

1978-1981 Music From Nancy

1978-1980 The Mechanics

1982 Time Zone and The Show

1980-1988 Projects

1985 Milestone

1989-1994 Happy, Safe & Loved

1975 Graduated from Univerity of New Orleans with a Degree in Music Theory and Composition

1985 Graduated from University of New Orleans with a Degree in Computer Science

While studying Music Theory together at UNO, Tim and I lived uptown. With roommates and friends we created “The Calhoun Players Guild”, staging elaborate puppet shows in our living room, complete with music written and recorded for the performances.

Around 1974 Tim and I got together with bassist Bobby Fonseca and vocalist

Greg Picolo and formed Tonewhop, which was primarily a cover band. The

Tonewhop drummers were Jesse Poimboeuf and later Don Wightkin. Tonewhop

played at my wedding reception in 1975. Tonewhop released two singles: The first

included “Happy Birthday Old Glory” (written by Kim Bertucci), a tribute to the U.S. flag for the 1976 bicentennial and “Give Me Your Answer” by Tim. The second single was recorded at Studio In The Country. Its “A” side was “Nibisco Disco” written by the band, and the “B” side was “Birdbrain Boogie,” which I wrote.

The Mechanics came about as Tim, Bob and I got into New Wave music and reunited with Bruce Raeburn. The Mechanics were active in the New Orleans New Wave scene. We played regularly at Jed’s on Oak Street. The Mechanics released a four-song EP in 1979 called “The Mechanics”. My main contribution to the record was “Soft & Pretty”, which was a compressed medley of punk tunes based on TV commercials. The EP was recorded at Knight Studios on Metairie Road. The Mechanics also had two songs on the 1980 local new wave compilation album “N.O. Experience Necessary”. My song on the album was “The Consumer”, which is similar in theme to “Soft & Pretty”.

                                                “Music From Nancy” was a staged performance art piece produced by

                                                myself, Steve Sweet and Jesse Poimboeuf. Work on it started in 1978,

                                                and it debuted at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans on

                                                November 3, 1979. At the center of the piece is a musical score based

                                                on Ernie Bushmiller’s comic strip “Nancy”. The piece was performed on

                                                a stage set containing life-size cutouts of Nancy, Sluggo and other elements of the comic strip. Steve, Jesse and I performed the score using a variety of instruments and manipulated the cutouts. Other performances included the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Fort Worth Art Museum, and The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C.

The band “Time Zone” was formed in 1982. It included myself, Bobby Fonseca, Damon Shea on drums and Chuck Phillips on keyboards. “The Show” featured a multi-media stage setting and was a collaboration with Steve Sweet. The band and The Show performed throughout New Orleans, starting at a venue called The Beat Exchange. Time Zone had a single containing the song “Try” written by me and “I Wanna Dance” written by Bobby.

My Musical Timeline continued - Steve Cunningham

Throughout the 80s I worked on a variety of projects which included the following.

1. -Created the music for station IDs for New Orleans television WYES.
   

2. -Worked with Steve Winn on the single containing his songs “It’s Christmas Time and I’ve Been Bad All Year” and “Smile”. I played on and engineered the single.
   

3. -Music for “Tublimation”, an interactive installation with Steve Sweet and David Bienn
   

4. -Created a soundtrack for a documentary on the erosion of the TImbalier Islands
   

5. -Worked with Jesse Poimboeuf (aka Racoon Man) on the music for the performance piece “Further Mastications of Procyon Lotor”
   

6. -Created a soundtrack for the short film “From the Paper”
   

7. -In 1987 I appeared on an episode of “Morgus the Magnificent”
   

8. -The “Integrated Circuits Marching Band” was a marching band made up
   

  of home made portable electronic noise makers. It was a collaboration with

  Steve Sweet. The band marched in one of the first Krewe of Clones parades.

1. -Worked with Karen Kern at the New Orleans Video Access Center
   

2. -Worked with Steve Sweet on “67,634”, a multimedia piece performed at half time during a New Orleans Saints game in the Superdome using the jumbo screens and loudspeakers.
   

3. -Worked on songs with country singer Brenda Sharp
   

4. -Worked with lyricist Nat Halpern Jr.

“Milestone” was a cassette release containing a compilation of experimental home recordings made between 1975 and 1985. It was engineered with Jay Weigel.

I performed solo as “Mister Steve” from 2001 to 2015.

In 1983 I returned to UNO to study Computer Science. I graduated in 1985 and started a 26 year career as a computer programmer. I also began getting experience with computer based music and recording.

In 1989 I started work on a collection of lullabies and New Age pieces called “Happy, Safe & Loved”. It remains unfinished.

(the guitar in the picture is a Norma)