Reviews
Rocky Road: Chuckanut Drive draws from scene's roots
By Tony Staciek, The Bellingham Herald, June 10, 2004
Sure, he was born in Texas, reared in Tulsa, Okla., where the eight-track player in his uncle's Cadilac blared Willie Nelson’s "Poncho & Lefty," circa 1982. But Steve Leslie picked up his twang at Cost Cutter.
"My car had just broken down, and I was walking home from the store to my house when I wrote this tune 'Worn Out Shoes,'" says the Bellingham singer/guitarist, whose band Chuckanut Drive, plays the Wild Buffalo next Thursday night. "It was the kind of song when I realized, 'Wow, I can be a songwriter and not just someone who plays an instrument. I can do this.'"
He's had help from friends, too – including bandmates such as drummer Erik Anderson, bassist Aaron Ansley and Wastelanders guitarist Loren Huggins, who replaced the band's original guitarist about a year ago. There's also Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson and The Band, who arrived for a quarter from Goodwill and spent the past month chillin' on his turntable.
All have a say in Chuckanut Drive's two CDs, from its initial "Juanita Demo" (featuring "Worn Out Shoes") to the self-titled EP it released this past September with help from Seattle's Unsmashable Records. Some may be more vocal than others. But the influence? There.
Observe the galloping giddyup and scorned-city name-checking on "Mexican Daydream." Or the Wilco-like self- loathing, with gentle easing from over imbibement, on "Can't Stand." Or "Black-Eyed Blues"' black eye.
They’re lonely tales sung in tongues whose heyday has passed, but they’re shared by numerous roots-rockers – from Kasey Anderson to the Wastelanders to Gus and Kati – that shape the scene in Bellingham. Which, Leslie adds, is about as far from the Mason Dixon Line as a twanger can get.
A Houston native, he ended up down the road in Lake Stevens by his teenage years. There, as a 17-year-old, Leslie played bass for his first band with older brother Sam – the two passed as twins so the younger Leslie could perform in bars.
Then it was onto another band, Bloomsday. Then a record deal. A tour, and another. A breakup. An entrance into Western Washington University’s journalism program. A degree. Underemployment. Unemployment. Cost Cutter. The twang.
"I think people in Bellingham relate to this kind of music because it's very people oriented, worker oriented," Leslie says. "People here have to work really hard to survive. It's like what I heard (local songwriter) Robert Blake say once: 'Bellingham is a dead end with a good view.'"
So Leslie has stuck around. He plans to make his next Chuckanut Drive CD a concept album whose songs detail a disgruntled dude who leaves town, comes on hard times, reconsiders his move and ends up done wrong and jailed before he can do anything about it.
It's a liberating way to work, he says. And it's rooted in his own experiences: The towns in "Mexican Daydream" are ones he’s passed through for various reasons. "Can’t Stand" is dedicated to Sam, whom Leslie visited in Spain shortly after WWU graduation and with whom he was kicked out of bars for entirely different reasons than during his teen years. And "Black-Eyed Blues," Well ...
"Let me think. When was the last time I got a black eye?" Leslie says. "I'm not a fighter, so I’m not sure. But you know, you don't have to write about yourself to be honest. And right now, I'm finally doing the stuff I want to do with the people I want to do it with."
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