Al Steele

NEWS!

A BRAND NEW ALBUM IN THE MAKING!

I am doing things a little differently with this album. I want you folks to hear it as I am writing it. YES!… that will mean free downloads, which will each be attached to a Newsletter. You can hear the album grow as we add each new layer.
I will be explaining, the lyrics, the music and the production, all with links so you can pick and choose your own blend. Below this section will be an individual section for each song. These will grow as the album grows.
**Of course there will be a chance to buy the CD - or maybe even the vinyl - when we get to the other side, but you don't have to. Each person enjoys music in their own way and that is cool!** **SO PLEASE, SIGN UP HERE** **/sign-up**
**and I promise to never send you junk**

THEY ARE HERE! COFFEE IN NEW YORK & LET'S PLAY THE GOD GAME

LET'S PLAY THE GOD GAME is the latest all original album from Al Steele & Friends. As always Al is pushing the boundaries and asking the question: What if we are all living in a giant game and the Gods are merely having a laugh at our expense?! Like some unholy mixture of The Matrix and Sister Act, this rock laden album is peppered with luminaries. The main players are Danielle Nicholls as GOD, Elaine Gilmore as EVE, Lyndon Morgans as ADAM, Paul Smith as THE NEPHILIM, Lorna Darknell as DEMETER, and of course Al himself as the upstart god GORDON. As in The Life of Brian, we expect it to be banned and us all catapulted to instant infamy!

COFFEE IN NEW YORK is the brand new album from the Korgis to be released primarily for the American market. With a luscious string laden version of the title track and a brand new version of Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime - again with a lovely string orchestra, we are excited to see if we can make some headway Stateside. The rest of the album draws from the back catalogue of The Korgis, Joe Matera and Al Steele. There will be some copies filtering onto the Store here as the cost of shipping from our record company in America is a little eye-watering!

New album and Live gig from Al Steele!

ALIENATED NATIONS

As the 3rd in The Korgis UN-United Nations series comes Al's own ALienated Nations. Of course there are a few familiar faces on here... in fact the album opens with James Warren singing Al's 'Thinking of You' and they also include one of their first ever co-writes 'Long Way Down'.
The legend that is Andy Fairweather Low plays some down & dirty guitar on 'Neverland' performed by Al's alter ego Wolfman.
Danielle Nicholls joins Al on 'The Last Song', this rather lovely song written for Mental Health Awareness Day.
Ian Cooper (Someday Charlie, Someday & End of an Era Feeling) features on the very Floydian 'The Calm Before the Storm' co-produced by Chris Hopkins (Exhibit-1).
One of Al's favourite songs that is just about to see the light of day is 'I Change' featuring Lucy Lawson. Lucy & Al go way back and there was even talk of forming a band called Dumb Blonde. Although Lucy is neither dumb OR blonde, there may be a chance to resurrect this idea!
Of course there are many more brilliant musicians who joined Al to make this eclectically fabulous album... will shout about them in time!

GET YOUR COPY!

LIVE AT CHAPEL ARTS BATH, JAN 18TH

Al Steele is stepping out on his own for at least one gig! He has put together a show that includes: New Korgis Classics - Songs from his 2 highly acclaimed solo albums.

During 2024 The Korgis released their epic 2-album set UN-United Nations, and this spawned several side projects. Fitting such beasts into a Korgis show was untenable, so Al has put together a cracking band including:

The Korgis Drummer The ‘Mighty’ Paul Smith - Top jazz bass player Alun Vaughan - The Korgis Multi-instrumentalist Danielle Nicholls - Keyboard virtuoso Nigel Hart - Renowned solo artist Elaine Gilmore - San Francisco born Saxophone king Sean McBride

This will be a multimedia rich show and Al is always big on entertainment value, so expect to laugh and cry!

GRAB A TICKET

Going Off Grid with Lyrics

The RED album is in the final mixing stage!

UN-United Nations is a double album released in 2 parts.
The BLUE album has already had some rave reviews and we reckon once it is put together with the RED album it will blow peoples socks off!
Put your garters on now!

Joe Matera heading for the UK late October

Joe will be doing a few dates with The Korgis in early November.
Check it out on https://thekorgis.com/gigs

THAT'S HOW WE ENDED UP HERE - Al Steele & Friends

If we are indeed at the 'end of the world' a pertinent question might be, 'How have we ended up here?'

As the album isn't just discussing the fate of the world, but how it relates to an ordinary man in the street, I figured this song could look at the journey from 3 different angles.

Verse 1 looks at a bloke that had everything and thought it would never end. But all good things DO come to an end and this guy missed his wedding because he wanted 'one more beer'.

Verse 2 is about a woman he let a guy in and…

AT THE END OF THE WORLD - Al Steele & Friends

Although this track was always destined for the very end of the album, it is also where I began writing. We had been touring with The Korgis at the End of the World, a title that leant itself to the gradual winding down of the full band, but I then began to think about what that could mean for an album. Had we kept the creative process going it may well have been the next Korgis album, but that was not to be.
Adding ‘you and I’ to the title made me think of it differently. The chaos that exists globally is…

LOADED TONGUE - The Korgis

When I was about 18 I lived in Sheffield but I travelled to Leeds Tiffanies at least 3 days a week to play bass in the resident band. On each journey we would pass Woolley Edge Services on the motorway and I always thought it was a great off-the-wall name for a Motorway Services.

Cut to decades later and as I was driving through Yorkshire again, when the lyric '25 miles from Woolley Edge, left the fuel gauge in the red'. This sounded like a very rock and roll line and I immediately rhymed it with ‘Got a…

THIS IS THE LIFE - The Korgis

One morning somewhere in 2018, I was just about to get in the shower when a groove appeared in my head. By the time I had exited the shower I had all the lyrics for both verses. Later that day I went into the studio and wrote the chorus.

As we began writing Kartoon World I suggested this song as a good fit. James had always liked it and it seemed to fit with Magic Money Tree. Later on we ended up with too much material but for some reason this song stayed.
The lyric 'hold on' kept coming back and it seemed to…

LETTER TO GEELONG - The Korgis & Joe Matera

In the days of the £10 Poms many families emigrated to Australia. It had opportunities, work and sun.
My family, while not strictly £10 Poms (especially as they were Scottish and the term Pom refers to English) they certainly went in search of a better life after the war. So when Australian born Joe Matera sent me a guitar tune to work on, I thought it would be nice to explore our heritage, as his family hailed from Italy, with a similar story.

At this point this was not really to be a Korgis song but…

MUD HUTS - The Korgis

There are many remnants of high civilisations in the short history of man. The Inca Cities, the Pyramids of Giza, the mighty ancient cities of Rome and Athens. Standing in the ruins of our ancestors we made somewhat surprising decisions such as 70's tower blocks and a bewildering array of car parks. They called it progress…
As Joni once said... You pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

While on holiday in Greece I had two ideas. One was inspired by our plane as it suddenly broke free of the cloud layer -…

MAGIC MONEY TREE - The Korgis

In 2021 I ended up writing a lot of the lyrics for The Korgis. In this series I will analyse some of the lyrics on Kartoon World and who knows what else?! I have often said that the world does not need any more love songs, though I still do occasionally write one if there is something eating at me! Instead I would prefer to find something more relevant or at least more interesting.

We were just coming out of Corona Virus lockdown and we were itching to create. On a late night Messenger chat with Chris…