Steve Wynn is best known for being the founder, vocalist, guitarist and lead songwriter in the legendary Paisley Underground band The Dream Syndicate. Between the years of 1981 and 1989, The Dream Syndicate recorded and released four great albums, 'The Days Of Wine And Roses' (1982), 'Medicine Show' (1984), 'Out Of The Grey' (1986) and 'Ghost Stories' (1988). The first two in particular are towering achievements in underground American indie rock, and have proved hugely influential on the decades since. The Dream Syndicate toured with REM, and while they never quite crossed over to anywhere near the same extent, they garnered an impressive following and made some of the decade’s most enduring music. Steve went on to have a successful solo career, before reforming the Dream Syndicate in 2012 to make more music that matches the passion and flame of their original run. He has a new memoir, "I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True', published by Jawbone Press, which covers his childhood growing up in LA through to The Dream Syndicate’s original rise and fall, and his new solo album, 'Make It Right', a mature and reflective work which was conceived at the same time. Steve Wynn was kind enough to talk to OUTSIDELEFT about his memoir, his new record, and the heady original lifespan of the Dream Syndicate.
OUTSIDELEFT: Your memoir I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True and your new album Make It Right, were written and recorded at the same time….
STEVE WYNN: Yes, that's right. They both kind of came together concurrently, kind of fit together in that way.
OL: Would you be able to tell us a little bit about them and how that that that process of the two of them coming together works?
SW: Yeah, sure. I started writing this book early in 2020, when the pandemic hit. No coincidence there, because I had always wanted to write a book, a memoir, or any kind of book, for the longest time. But I tour a lot, and I just don't write that well on tour. So like everybody else, I suddenly found myself with a lot more time on my hands that I had expected. And there was time to try that book thing, and I dove in, right when the pandemic hit. And just the words came tumbling out once I started doing it. Rather than being daunted or intimidated by the process, I was actually just having a blast with it. And I think I set myself a goal of writing 500 words a day, you know, just kind of making reasonable goals. I was writing more like 2-3000 a day, and it was great. So that was fun. In the morning, I would get up every morning, write the book. In the afternoon, I would just do what I normally do which is pick up the guitar, or noodle around a keyboard, or take long walks and get song ideas. That's what I do. That's my day job. That’s what I’ve done for most of my life. And I was writing songs with no general purpose, just to kind of aim towards a new album at some point. But the funny thing is, once the book was done and I started rounding up the songs that I'd been writing to think about possible record, I realized the songs and the book completely intertwined. The songs were all about the same thing as the book. It's a much more personal record, much more reflective, a lot more taking stock and taking blame or taking credit or pride and things in your life. All those things at the same time. And once I'd seen it, of course, that makes sense. I've been on the psychiatrist couch for the last two years, which is a metaphor for writing a book about your life, and songs on the record did the same things. I kind of like that. I like that they're two of the same piece. The record isn’t the literal, and then I turned 18 and this happened, but it ties into all the same themes and moods as the book.
OL: And is that mix of storytelling and songs going to be reflected in your upcoming tour?
SW: Yeah. I started this tour in the UK in last September, and when I did that, I kind of didn't know what I was going to do! I had a general idea that it would follow the same chronological story as the book, which is basically from my childhood through learning to be in bands through the first go around of the Dream Syndicate till the time the band broke up in 88. I knew the show would follow that a little bit, and I knew some of the things I wanted to touch upon. But I walked on stage the very first night in Oxford kind of very nervous. I knew I'd be doing some reading and story time. But I really didn't know exactly what. And then the first show just came together. And I walked offstage in Oxford and said, well, that worked. What did I just do? And I went back to the hotel and scribbled a lot of notes trying to remember how the show went down. And then since that time, it has been developing. And to oversimplify, the show is an 80 minute distillation of the book. It's a lot of the same ideas. I have a lot of friends who are authors, who write books, and they go on the book tours, and they go to the bookstore, they sit in the chair and read their book, and people ask questions. And that's great. That's a wonderful, long cherished form. But I have the little ace up my sleeve, which is that I can do all that, do reading, tell stories, but then I can play the song that I'm talking about. And that's kind of a fun thing. So I'll say, Look, I'm going to tell you something about this song on The Days Of Wine And Roses. But why just talk about it? I have my guitar. Let me play for you, to show you what I'm talking about. And so that's fun, mixing all those things together.
OL: Yeah, for sure. One of my favourite things about the book is that you talk a lot about your experience with songwriting and how you personally put songs together. For those of us who are fans of the band but don't necessarily make music ourselves, it’s really fascinating.
SW: Yeah, thanks for saying that, because it's kind of my favourite part of the book. And I think if and when I write another book, there'll be more of that. It’s something that I don't often see in rock memoirs. And everybody has their own way of doing it. Some people write about their love life, or their parents, or this or that. But because I am a musician, because I make records for a living and tour for living. I enjoy hearing other musicians talk about how they do it and what goes into the songwriting and how they do what they do when they walk on stage. Not just musicians. I've enjoyed books by artists and actors and directors and all those kind of people. Tell me how you did that. What was the thought process? Demystify it a little bit. I'm okay with that. I've become friends with and have been a fan of Stewart Lee, the great comedian. We’re doing an event together in Wales on this coming tour. We did a show in London a few months ago. But Stuart mentioned that about my book, he said he liked that part of my book. And I have been reading one of his books, which is mostly just by a transcript of a stand up routine he did in Glasgow with footnotes throughout. The footnotes were longer than the routine itself, where he tells you every bit of the show, what he was thinking, why he chose to put the words that order, what worked and didn't work at different shows, and why. And I love that, I eat that stuff up. It’s the kind of thing I want to do in my book. And the last chapter wasn't actually at the end of the book, the last thing I wrote for the book was in the middle. It was a chapter about jamming, about collaboration on stage, about spontaneous interplay, and I detail how that works. And I had so much fun writing that, because it is kind of a mysterious thing. If you think about, to say the obvious, the Grateful Dead, when a band like that goes on stage, what are they doing? What happens? It comes out a certain way. It's fun to think about why you do the things you do and making it universal and understandable. Thanks for noticing that. I enjoyed that part of the book.
OL: Yeah, and that’s a really interesting that section, because you talk about the Dream Syndicate being, in essence, a jam band, which is the kind of term that you wouldn't use to describe them normally at all. But listening to those records or live albums, it's absolutely about the interplay of all those instruments and how the different elements work together to make a something that's more than the sum of its parts.
SW: Yeah. I think labels oversimplify thing. I mean, from the very beginning with the Dream Syndicate, I would say, not only we were jam band, I said, we're a jazz band. People would laugh and I would say, I'm not kidding! It's easy for people to say with the Dream Syndicate, I guess you must have been into the Velvet Underground, and we were. And they’d say, I guess you must have been into Bob Dylan or Neil Young, and yeah I guess we were, sure. And then people say eventually, and I guess you must be into Americana? I said, Well, hold the phone there. And what is Americana? Does Americana mean Gram Parsons in the desert with acoustic guitar? To me, it means John Coltrane playing on stage at the Village Vanguard. Americana to me means Muddy Waters, in the Chicago studio. For me, it means so many things. And I think that, when I say that Dream Syndicate were are a jam band, and you think, Well, you're not Phish, for God's sake! I say, we're a jazz band. They say, what do you mean, you’re a jazz band, you don't hold saxophones. Yes, but it's not about the symbolism. It's not about the cliches. It's about the intent. And I think our intent has always been, on our best days in the studio and our best days on stage, our best times, is to channel something, to connect with each other, with the audience, with the moment, and have something happen that couldn't have happened in any other moment. That's exciting to me. That to me, that's what it's all about. Everything else is just window dressing. To me, capturing a moment in a true and honest and transparent way is when the good stuff is happening.
OL: Yeah. And that's what I've loved about the recent Dream Syndicate remasters on Fire Records that have the bonus discs, so you can hear like the band trying out different approaches and the rough takes. It's really exciting to hear a bunch of musicians playing with the ideas, maybe not quite getting it right, but sort of moving in the right direction.
SW: Yeah. I agree. I love that with other people's music, too. Hearing the wrong take. And thinking, there's a reason why take three of that song wasn't as good as the one we know. And yet I hear something in that take that really explains to me why it all happened. I eat that stuff up.
OL: The Dream Syndicate were part of the Paisley Underground, so you had your contemporaries like the Rain Parade, the Long Ryders, and the Bangles, all of whom crop up in the book. And you have REM, who you toured with. But at the same time you were very much going against the flow of the mainstream music of the time. And there's that sense that, had the Dream Syndicate come around maybe five years earlier or five years later, would things have been completely different? So how did you feel, sort of looking back on that and the out of time elements of your music?
SW: Well, that was kind of our badge of honour, to our credit, and eventually, I think in some ways, to our detriment. I think when we began, we were proud of the fact that we weren't like other bands, that we were doing something that we liked, and we didn't care if you liked it. In fact, we would challenge you not to like us, even people who liked the Dream Syndicate, even people who got what we were doing at the very beginning, we’d go on stage and try to confound them. Kendra Smith always had the expression, “I'm not your monkey.” I love that. We would often say, Oh, well, you think we're this? Well, we're going to be that. And that was because we didn't want to be part of what was going on. We formed our band because we didn't like what was going on at that moment. We wanted to be something we were hearing in our head. But as time went on, became just brattiness, to say we're gonna refuse to be part of any club that would have us as a member, as Groucho Marx said. We took pride in that. And eventually, I've learned over the years that to do that is as much of a cop out and a sell out as trying to be number one in the charts. You shouldn't play those games, but we did, because we were young, we were brash. But I think we were always out of step. The interesting right now is, we're working right now with Fire Records on a box set of a reissue of Medicine Show,
OL: Oh, excellent.
SW: We just got the rights back to the record. It's gonna come out in the fall, and it's gonna be a remastered version of the record. But there's also a lot of live material, some of it from when we opened for REM on the tour for that record. When we went on tour with REM, they were, at that point, the coolest and most rapidly rising band in that scene. And what we were doing wasn't a million miles apart from what they were doing. So it would have been very easy for us to channel the side of our band that was most like them, and try to win over their fans We could have, maybe should have done that. We instead went for a more kind of elaborate, showy, piano driven, almost classic rock type of thing. We emphasized that because at the time we felt it tied into that record, and also because we were into that at the time that their audience actually liked it. But it wasn't the easy, obvious way to go. The funny thing is, now that we're working on the box set, I'm listening back to those live recordings, and as often happens, in hindsight, it doesn't sound that radical or weird, it just sounds like the Dream Syndicate. So it's funny how over time things make sense, but we were at that time to our own ears, and I think to a lot of people, doing something out of step, always. At this point in the band now, where we are, I feel like we continue to just indulge ourselves and be ourselves. We also enjoy entertaining our fans, and it’s, I guess, some sign of maturity, if we have any at all!
OL: That's really exciting, and I'm definitely really looking forward to hearing the Medicine Show remasters when that comes out.
SW: It's gonna be really good. I've been crowing about everybody I run into because I think the new master sounds fantastic. It really brings out things about the record that I heard in the studio and hadn't heard since. And that's so exciting, it just takes me back to making the record. And then all the bonus tracks, most of which I had no idea existed. There’s some really, really wild stuff. A lot of this from Dennis Duck the drummer. It’s from his collection. And I’m like, Dennis, you had the stuff and didn't let me know? It's crazy! There's gonna be a lot of great stuff on there. I wish was coming out tomorrow. Can't wait.
OL: Yeah, I love that album and one of the funny things about the book is that it sounds like it was an absolute nightmare to make from your description! But you listen to that record, and for me, anyway, I don't hear any of that. I just hear a great record.
SW: Oh, good. You got the easy route! Yes, when the record came out, the underground scene we were part of was still a new thing, and there were still certain rules about what kind of band you're supposed to be. Some people, when it came out, didn't focus on the music itself, but focused on the rumors of how much it cost and how long it took. I said, Look, man, it only cost you seven bucks, right? And it takes you 45 minutes to listen to, so count your blessings! You got the good part of the bargain. I think it's a wonderful record and but I will say that in the book that I wrote and the show I'm doing, it's really the centrepiece of it all. Because I think in most books or movies or whatever, you have to have some kind of moment of tension, a moment of danger and redemption; that’s the formula. And my book is mostly wonderful, it’s these kids growing up loving music and discovering music and getting in bands and your band out of nowhere becomes really popular. But Medicine Show is the tension of the book. Experiencing that, what we went through to get where we were going, and what we learned from that, and what I've taken forward from the experience, is really the heart of the book, and I made that part of a big part of the show.
OL: Yeah. And like you said, it was the early days of being underground bands, and people hadn't quite figured out all the the rules of what you had to do yet. So there's that sense that you guys were having to learn the ropes as you went along.
SW: Yeah, we were, everybody was, that's the funny thing about that time. I'm actually having to speak to you right now from Peter Buck's house. I'm staying here for a couple days. We talk about those days all the time, because for all of us, be it bands that were rising quickly, like REM or the Dream Syndicate or the Paisley Underground bands, there was really no roadmap for what we were doing. There had been punk rock and New Wave, but if you really look at that, that scene, I know there were Indie labels like Rough Trade and Postcard and all that, but for the most part, bands from that era were still kind of plugging into what was seen as a mainstream formula for doing your thing and rising up in the ranks. Our little scene in the early 80s, especially in America, was kind of figuring out, how do you tour like this? How do you find bands like this? How do you make people know about what you're doing? What kind of shows do you play? What's accepted and not accepted? And that was a fun thing about it. Speaking of REM, we did a tour together for eight weeks after each of our second albums. I remember on that tour, we were playing every night to two or 3000 people, and their record was on the charts. So it was really kind of all happening for them in particular, and for us to some extent. But I remember playing Boise, Idaho – middle of the country, nowheresville. And I remember we got the daily paper backstage. We all looked at it and said, “New Wave comes to Boise!”. And we were just like, oh my God, we're still playing New Wave night, even after all this time! it just showed you, it was happening slowly and in real time, changing rapidly.
OL: That initial lifespan of the Dream Syndicate was, what, only like eight years? It was a really short time.
SW: Seven years actually! Yeah even shorter. And, you know, we reunited in 2012 so we've been a band now for 13 years, and we're approaching double the length of the original with this current band! It was mind boggling. But, you know, it's funny, like anyone over a certain age, you think back, how a month when you were 21? Well, that's like 10 years now. And something that amazed me in writing the book is how much happened in such a short amount of time, how quickly the three years of the time we had our first rehearsal at the end of 81 to when we split up with our guitarist, Karl Precoda at the end of 84. Those three years, so much happened. That arc that happened, that time in my life was crazy. Going from being a record store clerk to making a record like Medicine Show, being pampered by big labels and jet setting, and to crash and burn. That whole crazy thing happens so quickly, and when it was all over, I was just 24. It's insane. I shouldn't talk too much about the show, but when this show ends, when the book ends, it’s 1988. I make a joke saying, well, that's the end. And of course, it's not the end, because a lot happened since 1988. But it was never like the first time. The first time everything happens is dizzying, exciting, scary, confusing, enlightening, all those things in ways that after that point is never the same. After that point, you just spend the most rest of your life fine-tuning and figuring it out.
OL: And as you say, the book does end in 1988, so are there plans to have a have a follow up on covering the next years?
SW: Yes, absolutely. In fact, my publisher, Jawbone Press, which is a great company there in the UK, when they took on the book, they had seen the first two thirds the book. I hadn't finished it, and they picked it up based on an unfinished book. And I was writing to my editor over there, and I said, I'm trying to figure out where the book is going to go. And he said, Why don't you stop when the Dream Syndicate breaks up in 88 so you'll have something for the next book? Now bear in mind, I'm 64 and had never written a book before. And when he said that, I kind of lit up in excitement at the idea of the next book. So yeah, there will be another one. I’m actually writing it. But I think it'll be kind of a continuation. It'll be a very different book, because it won't be like what I was just talking to you about. It won't be that the first time everything happens, it'll be a matter of more about, and now what happens? And I think that's in some ways, as, or more interesting than the confusion and punch drunk thrills of your youth. It's gonna be interesting.
OL: The Dream Syndicate reformed in 2012, the Rain Parade have reformed, the Long Ryders have been touring over here. Back in the early 80s, when you're playing in small clubs in LA, did you have any idea that some 40 years later, you'd all come back round to this in the end?
SW: I would not have expected this at all! If you would have told 22 year old Steve, making Days Of Wine And Roses, that he'd be starting a new four month tour 40 years later, I'd have said, you must be high. What are you smoking and can I have some? I We couldn't imagine it. I think if you would have told me at the same time that not only that, but Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger would all be planning the next tour well into their 80s, I would also say give me some of that too, because you are still high! We couldn't imagine this sort of thing. But it's great. You mentioned the Long Ryders and Rain Parade and but also many my other friends from that period, you know, Vicky Peterson from the Bangles is out on tour right now, Peter Buck, I'm here Peter's house, but Peter's on tour in South America with a project he's doing. And I will say this for my friends and contemporaries, but also I'd say this probably without knowing for sure, but I can easily guess with someone like Dylan or McCartney or Mick Jagger, we're all doing it, not just because what was our job. And I guess we got to go to work every day. Also, we all started out as music fanatics, just loving it, loving it as as fans, loving it out of curiosity, loving the possibilities. And there really is no thrill – well, actually, if there are thrills like it because everybody has this in everything they do – but there's such a thrill when you go on stage and have your best show. Or you go into the studio and record something that you can say, that really connected. Or you write a new song and say, Wow, I didn't see that coming. That is just the biggest dopamine rush, it’s just the biggest thrill. I think we're always also chasing that. If you're a musician who grew up loving music, I can't say this for everybody, but for most people I know, that's still the thrill. I had a really good show here in Portland last night, and new things happened at the show that had never happened before, which is what happens to me on my favourite nights. And I walked off stage thinking, huh, that worked. That was cool. And why does that work? And that’s fun. It's what we do.
OL:You have the new tour coming up, both in the states and in Europe. You have the reissue of Medicine Show coming out. What’s next for yourself and for the Dream syndicate?
SW: Well, the tour is a long one. I'm focused on that right now. I'm looking forward to the UK tour. I'm touring with Jamie Perrett, who's wonderful. He’s the son of Peter Perrett, and he's very good songwriter and guitarist in his own right. This tour ends in Ireland on May 5, and two days later, I'm gonna be on a cruise ship from Miami to the Bahamas and back for what's called Underground Garage, a radio channel here on satellite radio. I'll be on that cruise with The Baseball Project and my solo band, but also X and Mark Lindsay and Paul Revere & the Raiders, the Fleshtones, and so many interesting people. That's kind of a little treat at the end. Yeah, I don't know. I'm kind of excited with the Dreams Syndicate to get the box set out and touring behind that. We'll be doing a tour where we play Medicine Show, and like I was talking about earlier, the style we were doing that seemed out of step, and now it sounds really exciting, we're going to play a tour in that sort of sound and style across Europe and the US. And then, who knows. It's nice having so many bands in play right now. So whichever, whoever has free time, that's what I'll make the next record with.
Thank you Steve Wynn for talking with us.
Main image by Tristan Loper (Wiki Commons)
