FM frontman Steve Overland is widely recognised as one of the best vocalists around and he seems to work constantly. I interviewed Steve back in February 2014 and have been wanting to have another chat for quite some time to talk about the numerous projects that he is involved in. At a quick count I reckon there has been 17 albums released since 2014; where Steve is the lead vocalist or one of the lead vocalists – plus numerous other guest appearances! We finally managed to get a chat over the phone on 20th November – to talk about the latest Overland album “S.I.X.”, other recent releases from FM, Lonerider and Kings of Mercia, his plans for the future and much more.
AC/DC - For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)
KRIS BARRAS BAND – Unbreakable
KOBRA PAIGE - Under One Sun
DAVE RUDE - Hell and Back
OVERLAND - One Touch
Interview with STEVE OVERLAND Part 1 (12 min)
OVERLAND – Together Alone
Interview with STEVE OVERLAND Part 2 (7 min)
FM – Long Road Home
Interview with STEVE OVERLAND Part 3 (6 min)
LONERIDER - Lonerider
Interview with STEVE OVERLAND Part 4 (9 min)
OVERLAND – Disconnected
KINGS OF MERCIA - Humankind
NIGHT DEMON - Escape From Beyond
MICHAEL SCHENKER FEST – Heart and Soul (ft Robin McAuley & Kirk Hammett)
SAXON - Hell, Fire and Damnation
CROSSBONE SCULLY - I’m Unbreakable
EXTREME - The Mask
MAGNUM - Blue Tango
GOTUS - Take Me to the Mountain
CRAZY LIXX - Fire It Up (’23)
FIREWIND - Come Undone
MAMA’S BOYS - Power and Passion
NO HOT ASHES - Come Alive
NI ROCKS – Hi Steve, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. Our last interview was back in Feb 2014, almost ten years ago. We’ve tried a couple of times since.
STEVE – Really! Wow man! (Laughs)
NI ROCKS – I have spoken to Merv and Jim since then, but you’re a hard man to get hold of.
STEVE – Yeah, I probably am actually; but it’s nice to get talking to you again after so long.
NI ROCKS - I wanted to start with your latest release. The new Overland album “S.I.X.” was released through Escape Music on 28th October. All of your Overland albums have been released through Khalil at Escape Music, as well as some of the other albums you’ve released. You must have a great relationship with Escape and Khalil?
STEVE – Oh, he’s great; he’s fantastic. I first worked with Khalil probably about 25 years ago. I went in just to do a session; he was doing a tribute Foreigner album and he wanted singers who could do Lou Gramm kind of stuff. I went in and I met him and I met Steve Morris who I’ve also worked with a lot since. We just got on great. The great thing about him is that, with me, he kind of lets me do what I want; which is quite rare in this industry. He just asks me what I want to do, and he puts me with other writers. He’s great; he loves his music. He’s a real fan and that’s really important these days because a lot of the business is now run by lawyers instead of music people. It’s nice to have someone that is really passionate about what he does, and he really is. Me and him between us have made a lot of records, so I love working for him and long may it continue.
NI ROCKS – The new album sees you collaborating quite extensively with Robert Säll. The two of you had worked together before on the two albums by Groundbreaker in 2018 and 2021. Had you specifically wanted to work with Robert on an Overland album or what was the arrangement?
STEVE – The reason being, to be honest, was that I wanted to make a kind of..….;every Overland album Nigel, because of all the other things I do, I like to make each different from the previous one. I’ve done bluesier albums like “Contagious” (2016), I’ve done, the first Overland solo album was quite, I’d guess you say, quite progy, quite dramatic, the “Break Away” album (2008); I did it with Anders Rydholm, a Swedish guy who is very much into his progy bands. So, I really enjoy the fact that, with the Overland albums, I get the freedom to make the kind of album that I want to make; which is great. Funnily enough, I’d seen Toto, not so long ago live, and I love that band. I thought, I want to make this album like a Toto record; I want it to be a very musical, melodic rock record and the obvious person that you can make those records with is Robert, because he is such a musical person. He gets what you say, we have a great relationship, we’re great friends and he’s probably one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet in this business. He sent me a couple of tracks over and they were exactly what I wanted the album to be, so we just carried on and we wrote an album that I’m really proud of; I think it’s a great record; and he is too. He is the obvious man if you want to make a really musical, Toto style album; unless you can get David Paich or Steve Lukather, he’s your man really (laughs). He came up with all the great stuff and we wrote it together. Really pleased with how it came out.
NI ROCKS - How would you compare it to those Groundbreaker albums? Obviously it had a different focus.
STEVE – Different, because the brief for Groundbreaker was that Serafino, the head of Frontiers, just said to me, look Steve don’t veer off the brief; I want you to make an out and out 80’s AOR record, for the first Groundbreaker record. He said I don’t want any blues coming into it, I don’t want anything; I want “Indiscreet”, I want 80’s AOR and that’s what it has to be. So, that’s what it is. Groundbreaker is totally a hankering back to the 80’s; that kind of big polyphonic keyboard sounds and things like that. I think the approach on the Overland album is totally different to what we do when we do Groundbreaker.
NI ROCKS – So, other than yourself and Robert, who else has been involved in the new album?
STEVE – We’ve got an old friend of mine called Bob Richards on drums; he played with Asia and plays with all sorts of people.
NI ROCKS – He’s in Keith Atack’s new band.
STEVE – Yes, he is. He just plays with a lot of people. He did a little bit of playing for AC/DC when they were looking for a drummer. He’s just a real good solid…he’s like Cozy Powell…very solid. Because the songs are quite technical, he is a great choice because he keeps things simple; if you know what I mean! He just holds it all together. We’ve got this bass player called Chris Cliff, who plays with Jim a lot. I’ve played with him many times in the past on various albums and stuff. Chris is just one of the best bass players, really in the country; he’s kind of like really technical and he can do anything. He’s a great all-rounder – he’s a great guitar player and great everything really. It gets on your nerves! (Laughs). He’s a great guy, and as I said, he was a good choice to do this particular record, because it is quite a technical record to play.
NI ROCKS – Once again, there is some great artwork for the album and a nice yellow flame vinyl version, which I’d pre-ordered. Do you get involved with that side of things, or do you leave that all to the Khalil and the label?
STEVE – No, we do everything together me and Khalil. The thing with me Nigel is that I come from decades ago; I’ve been doing this for a long time, and for me, making an album is still the same as it always was. I know it has all changed and I know people often don’t buy albums, they just download the audio from wherever they want to download it from. But, to me, it is still the same process. I still want the sleeve to be great, I want all the presentation to be there that was there when I was making albums 35 years ago. I think it’s important and I think rock fans love that. It makes them want to go out and buy the stuff and if you do it to a really high standard, which I have to say Khalil is second to none on his quality of his stuff; he really does go for it. Khalil said to me, what do you think about flame red vinyl, or what do you think about this. He is great with that side of things. We always make every decision, even on the songs for the album; I write them and then we talk about what we want to do. We’ve been friends for a long time and we never really have a disagreement – we come to the same conclusion. So, yeah I have a say in everything which is fantastic.
NI ROCKS - The Escape website is great and I pre-order quite a lot of your stuff and others through it. And it’s not overly expensive compared to some vinyl. It’s always a great package – with signatures and whatever else.
STEVE – Absolutely. Because he is old school as well, he has this thing about ripping off the fans. He doesn’t like it. He has a massive vinyl collection, and his record collection is massive; second to none. He’s a proper rock music fan – or just music fan really. So, it’s great to work with him because he is so enthusiastic about everything. It’s not just all figures and numbers and what can we make. He is in it for the music, which is great.
NI ROCKS – When we spoke back in 2014 you’d just released your third Overland album “Epic”. So roughly an album every three years since. Do you write specifically when you know you’re about to record an album or are you writing songs constantly and thinking that’s an Overland song or that’s an FM song. How does that work?
STEVE – What I do is I talk to Khalil, because I’ve got Kings of Mercia, I’ve got loads of different things with different labels that I do with different people. When Khalil wants me to do an album; I’ve just finished another Lonerider album, Simon Kirke is doing the drums in America at the moment. He will tell me when he wants me to make whatever record and then I basically talk to him about who I’m going to make this record with. We decide and we contact them, as we did with Robert or Tommy Denander or Simon Kirke and Steve. We just make a plan and I then start; although I’m probably writing for another two albums at the same time, I start writing songs. I’m in the middle of the new FM album now and we’re trying to get that done. I like the fact that I can just veer off and do different records. It takes you away from the other album, and you come back to it and you’re not repeating yourself. You get away from things; so if I go away and work on Kings of Mercia which is like detuned heavy rock, three piece stuff, it’s so totally different from an FM album. It takes me away from that genre for a while, so when I come back I’m excited about it again. Much to my wife’s and family’s dismay I’m a workaholic, I just like doing as much stuff as I possibly can. I’m doing some stuff for a gaming company tomorrow, singing on video. I just like doing everything. I love it. Keeps it interesting.
NI ROCKS – Talking about being busy. Is there any chance of doing some Overland tour dates or are you just too busy?
STEVE – No, absolutely not. Me and Khalil have talked about this a lot and I’ve already put Firefest in for next year, which I will do with the band that is playing on this record. Robert is going to fly in from Sweden and I just want to get it up and running. I was asked to do it and I said yes. Now that’s a good benchmark for getting Overland up and running. I can run it alongside FM. When FM are not going to be touring I can go out and do some festivals in Europe with the Overland thing, because it is high time that I did. For Khalil as much as anybody else, because as we know you have to make rock music a living, breathing thing. There are so many things that are just put together that come out as projects aren’t there. I don’t want Overland to be that. It’s just finding the bloody time to do it. I will do and I’ve said next year – put it in, because it’ll make me get the band together and it’ll mean we can make a little money going out and touring as well, which would be great for everybody.
NI ROCKS – We’ll play a track from the “S.I.X” album now. Would you like to pick a track and tell us something about it?
STEVE – There’s a lot of them that I love. “Together Alone” is a good rock track so let’s play that.
Parts 2, 3 and 4 to follow.