Steve Canty

Steve Canty

First band was in the late 60’s doing the clubs around Burnley, Bradford and Leeds playing rhythm guitar however the bass player could not sing and play bass so we kept swapping which ended up with me playing bass.

The band was called THE OVERTONES and I was the young kid which meant that I learned a great deal from the experience of the others.

I then did a residency playing bass and comparing at the Spinning Jenny cabaret night club at Accrington before taking a break from music having got married( the first time ).

I was then in and out of various bands before starting up FLAMINGO ROAD getting into high tech midi gear working around the infamous Wigan area. My last band was a three piece called NO TURNING BACK doing mainly covers with a girl front singer.

I have recently played the Great British R&B Festival at Colne with a band called THE LOST CITY SINNERS doing lesser known blues music which was an opportunity to stray away from the norm for a while.

MUSIC

Musical influences go way back to the early Simon and Garfunkel and folk through to bands such as YES, FREE, LIZZY, Gary Moore and later Stanley Clark, LEVEL 42 , QUEEN and even GREENDAY but the new bands out now like MUSE, RAZORLIGHT and THE KILLERS are still a source of inspiration.

For my sins I have been a DJ for the last 5 years and just love all sorts of music but the COOLERKINGS have the right mix of rock, blues R&B and soul so here I am out of retirement having a ball playing guitars again instead of CD’s …Marvelous.

GEAR

I have collected a quite a few guitars and basses over the years but my main guitars on stage will be the 1973 Fender jazz, the Custom 5 string Fender Precision and my home made Jaco Pastorious Fretless Jazz tribute through an old 4 X 10 Trace Elliot combo which is still as good as anything around at the moment. My back up amplifier is an Acoustic 220 from the 1970’s which really kicks out power. I have always loved Fender jazz basses and the Bender Collision bass is unique as it is the only Jazz style that Brian Eastwood has made but there are only 7 Bender basses anyway so they are rare.

For FX I use a Nomad bassman but only on a few tracks.

The Strats are a Big Apple and a Roadhouse which between them cover all styles of music.