Little Steven - Soulfire (2017)

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Little Steven - Soulfire (2017)

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Little Steven has announced his first solo album in almost two decades. Soulfire will be released on May 19. The last time Steven Van Zandt released a record on his own was in 1999 with Born Again Savage. But it’s not like he hasn’t been busy the past 18 years. In addition to his regular gig as Bruce Springsteen‘s right-hand man in the E Street Band, he’s starred in a couple of TV shows (including The Sopranos), hosts the weekly syndicated radio program Little Steven’s Underground Garage and formed his own label, Wicked Cool Records.
Van Zandt is backed on the album by a new lineup of the Disciples of Soul, the band he put together for his first solo record back in 1982, Men Without Women. The new LP is preceded by “Saint Valentine’s Day,” which you can listen to above.

“I’ve always been very thematic with my work, very conceptual,” Van Zandt said in a press release announcing Soulfire. “I need a big picture, I can’t just do a collection of songs, that doesn’t work for me. In this case, the concept became me. Who am I? I’m kind of my own genre at this point. So I tried to pick material that when you added it all up, really represented me. So there are a couple of covers, a couple of new songs, and some of what I feel are the best songs I’ve written and co-written over the years. This record is me doing me.”

He’ll hit the road with the Disciples of Soul this summer with a tour. Most dates haven’t been announced yet, but he’s scheduled to play New Jersey’s Paramount Theatre on April 22.

“I have very little interest in the modern world, and I’m not in any way conflicted about that,” he says of the new album. “I grew up in a renaissance period, a very lucky time when the greatest music ever made was also the most commercial. We’ll never see that again so for me, there’s only one criteria, which is greatness. That’s all I care about. Is what I’m doing reaching for greatness? Whether I achieve it or not, that is one hundred percent of my criteria.”