Dublin’s Grafton Street has been hammering barefoot buskers into world class musicians for decades. Glen Hansard (The Frames) and Damien Rice kicked off international music careers peddling their guitar-vocal talents on the bustling shopping strip.
Dublin may be the throbbing heart of the Irish music scene but Grafton Street is where the strength of its pulse is measured.
Irish singer-songwriter Steve Reeves cut his teeth playing Grafton Street every weekend in the early 1990s while still at school. Then in 1995 Steve’s debut album “Eyes Of Pearls” was an instant hit in Ireland and named Album of the Month with widespread radio airplay and TV appearances. Steve began touring on the back of that album and now he tours the globe, performing his original songs in venues large and modest from New York to Berlin, Krakow to Paris to Frankfurt to Portugal and back to Dublin.
Reeves authentic story-telling and stunning acoustic performances soon had him playing packed houses on Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village – at The Bitter End (Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Nora Jones and even Lady Gaga all performed there), the Sun Mountain Café (Suzanne Vega) and The Red Lion (Joss Stone, John Mayer).
Back home in Ireland Steve has toured with The Furey Brothers, The Dubliners as well as popular Irish TV personality Tom O’Connor, attracting critical and public acclaim from every quarter of the Irish music scene.
For almost two decades Steve has been tirelessly touring the northern hemisphere, up to 200 shows a year, interacting with audiences, with his fans, reworking his set lists, his key changes, his tunings, and climbing up through the ranks of international touring musicians with every show.
“I write songs and perform in order to reach people, to give them a hand up if they’re down, to give them hope. When you hear a good song for the first time, it comes alive inside you, offers a sense of understanding. Only some songs, some music can give people that feeling…”
Steve lists his musical influences as The Beatles, U2, Leonard Cohen, James Taylor, Sting, Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen. But one of his influences, Chris de Burgh, singled out Steve’s “Eyes of Pearls” CD as the work of a real singer-songwriter talent.
“We keep in touch,“ Steve says. “He wanted his own copy of my first album and since then he’s kept up-to-date with everything I’ve released.”
It’s the sort of acknowledgement, support and industry respect that a fresh-faced young busker could once only have dreamed of.
