This is part of our ongoing series on musicians who perform in The Berkshires.
If you have spent any time at live music shows in The Berkshires, you’ve probably had the pleasure of seeing Steve Ide perform. He is a guitarist and vocalist in three Berkshire County bands: Hot Sauce, The BTUs, and The Eggmen, and also sits in with other bands when the opportunity presents itself. We had the opportunity to catch up with Steve over Zoom this past week at his South Egremont home. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Music in the Berkshires (MITB): Tell us a little about how you started as a musician.
Steve Ide: I was just a little kid. Both of my older brothers were musicians. I have this great picture of me, probably about four years old, holding my brother’s big white jazz guitar. I can’t even get my hands around the neck, but I used to just love sitting there and holding it.
My parents used to let my brothers jam with their friends in our basement, where there was always a set of drums, a guitar amp, a keyboard, and a bass amp. When they were done, I would go down and just play everything. I got bit by the bug really early.
At 17, I was just a hobbyist, strumming some chords and just playing for my own enjoyment when some friends of mine who had a band lost their bass player. They said, “We want you to be our new bass player,” and I said, “I don’t play bass.” And they said, “Well, we want you to give it a try. And we’re rehearsing tonight.” And they came up with a bass and a bass amp for me, and we just sort of started messing around with some old Cream tunes.
One of the guys was Ed Mann, who I went to high school with. He went on to play with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The other guy was Bob Williams, who was a phenomenal guitar player and still is. He’s living in Nashville. He’s done session work with a lot of people – one of his first gigs when he moved down there was playing in Dolly Parton’s band. The Berkshires have always been a very vibrant music community.
MITB: I read that you’ve played with some notable people, including Arlo Guthrie and his former band Shenandoah. Are there other notable people that you’ve played with over the course of your career?
Steve: Well, there are a lot of people that that we had momentary experiences with. When my wife Carol and I first joined Shenandoah, we went out to one of our first gigs in Aspen, Colorado. We were playing a relatively small club, two shows a night.
At the end of the first show, Willie Nelson was in the audience. Arlo called Willie up, and he joined us for Amazing Grace. And at the end of the first night, Arlo saw John Denver in the audience. Arlo asked him to join us for a couple of tunes. Carol and I were looking at each other, saying “What is going on here.”
It was pretty nuts because just two weeks prior, Carol and I were finishing up some gigs with our band that was breaking up that was called Boogity Shoe, and we were up in a club in North Conway, New Hampshire, playing for about 14 people. And then, all of a sudden, things changed.
There were lots of people we met briefly along the way. And we did a lot of work with Pete Seeger and got to know him really well. Amazing man.
MITB: Do you play other instruments?
Steve: I play drums a little bit. I play bass, although I don’t do it with any regularity. I played trombone from the third grade all the way through high school. I actually did a little bit of trombone playing with Arlo Guthrie and David Bromberg. I did some tours back in the day with David, and he recruited me and Terry Hall to join him. He was doing kind of a bluegrass thing. He had Terry come and play drums, and he would have me come and play guitar, but he also had the horn players with him. So he asked me to play trombone and be part of his horn section for part of his show.
MITB: What keeps you busy when you are not performing or rehearsing?
Steve: Three days a week I teach guitar down at a school in Connecticut. I’ve got about 10 lessons a week there. And then I have a handful of private students that I see here at our home. And the rest of the time I spend with family – we have two daughters who live relatively close, and we have three granddaughters. It’s nice.
MITB: One of the things that we’ve been really impressed with is how you and some of the other musicians jump into new bands and play really well together.
Steve: Part of the original idea for Hot Sauce was that Tom Major, Benny Kohn, Miles Lally, and myself all knew each other, and we’d all played together, but never all at once. And we always really liked playing together. A few years ago, Tom Major approached me and said, “I’ve got this idea I want to run by you.” His original idea was to put together a band that was going to do all instrumental music. We’d cover John Scofield, Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Donny Hathaway. He asked who else I thought should be in the band, and I said without hesitation, Benny and Miles, which I thought would make a really cool lineup.
And we did several gigs, just doing instrumental music. But at every gig, someone would come up to me and say “Why aren’t you singing” or “Should you be singing?” So we started doing a few vocal tunes. It’s still, for the most part, an instrumental band, but I wind up singing half a dozen tunes, and Benny sings a couple of tunes.
With The BTUs, it’s almost always Bobby MacVeety, Rob Putnam, and myself. It’s a great band, and we have such a great pool to fish from. We’ve got two or three drummers, Tom Major being one of them. Conor Meehan is a fantastic drummer. There is a drummer from over in the Pioneer Valley named Sturgis Cunningham. There’s also a great young drummer who lives in the area named Tim Morrison.
We use various drummers depending on who’s available. There’s certainly some cross-pollination where different members of different bands will show up to be a member of whatever band is in need. A lot of us know each other’s materials. So it’s very easy to cross over.
MITB: How are the three bands you play with – Hot Sauce, The BTUs, and The Eggmen – different?
The Eggmen do Beatles covers. Compared to Hot Sauce, The BTUs are more blues-based. The Hot Sauce repertoire is a little more varied. Both are geared towards playing dance music. But The BTUs stay a little bit closer to the blues and funk repertoire. With Hot Sauce, we certainly do some blues, but we do some soul music and a couple of ballads. But both are really geared toward getting people up and dancing.
MITB: How does it make you feel when people first get up and start dancing? Is that an affirmation that you’re doing the right thing? Do you find that some nights dancing doesn’t happen?
Steve:
The dancing always happens. And yeah, that’s when this communication starts between the audience and the band because they’re giving us that energy and that appreciation, and it just fuels you. When everybody’s on the dance floor, it’s like everybody in the room is part of the band.
MITB: What makes the music scene in the Berkshires special or different from other places around the region or the country?
Steve: There will be people that will come to gigs that are from either the city or they’re here visiting friends. And quite often, we will get the comment that “there’s nothing like this going on where we live.” I think it’s a very special place. It’s always been a special area.
MITB: Do you know why The Berkshires are so special in that regard?
Steve: I think that The Berkshires has a well-deserved reputation of being a very, very arts-oriented area. Whether it’s music, museums, dance, or authors. Actors and actresses live here because it’s just a very special area for people that are pursuing their art. I think it draws people to this area. I think young people like Glori Wilder that are coming up in this area are exposed to all of that. And I think it’s just a very nurturing area for people that want to express their art in all those different areas. And not every area is like that.
I think The Berkshires has the vibe and the reputation of being a nurturing and creative area.
MITB: And does the music community get along well with each other? Is there a lot of camaraderie, or is it more competitive?
Steve: No, I wouldn’t say it’s competitive. I think everybody has a real mutual respect that we’re as we’re all in this together.
MITB: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming musicians in the Berkshires?
Steve: Just follow your passion. Do what brings you joy. And just always keep moving forward. Keep trying to get better.
MITB: So and what is it that keeps you going after all these years?
Steve: I just love it. It’s therapy. It really scratches an itch that nothing else does.
No matter what’s going on in your life or what’s going on in the world, you get together with your people to play music, and everything else goes away.
It’s very therapeutic. And it’s a feeling that I’ve never gotten from anything else. It’s very rewarding.
You can see Steve Ide perform at these upcoming shows: The BTUs at Egremont Barn this Friday, April 28; The BTUs at Firefly Gastropub on May 6; The Eggmen at Egremont Barn on May 20th; and Hot Sauce at Egremont Barn on May 27.
Watch our Events page for future dates to be announced.