Singled Out: Steve Hill's Devil's Handyman

10-21-2024

Steve Hill just released 'Devil's Handyman' as the lead single from his forthcoming album "Hanging On A String,' that arrives on November 1st. To celebrate we asked Steve to tell us about the song. Here is the story:

That song was the last one I wrote for my previous album. It didn't fit the vibe so it didn't make it on Dear Illusion but I knew I had something good that I eventually would use. That first version was acoustic and had more of a Johnny Cash/ folk vibe than the heavier version that I just released. It came about in an unusual way. One of my oldest friends is Rocky Laroche who's been the bass player for Canadian Metal legends Voivod for the past 10 years. Before that, he played in my band, in the days before I became a one-man band. As a matter of fact, he's the first bass player I ever played with, way back when we were 14 years old. So anyways, I was thinking about Voivod and their use of what is called the flat five or augmented fourth and their use of diminished chords which is central to their sound.

The flat five is commonly known as the blue note and also as the devil's interval. Think of the riff in Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath, probably the best example.
I had my acoustic guitar tuned to an A minor open tuning. I decided to tune the big string to the flat five, which is E flat so that I had the devil's interval on the two big strings, A and E flat.

The rest sort of came by itself. It took about half an hour and I had the chord progression and the melody. I think I even had the lyrics from the first verse, even though I still didn't know what the song was about.

For days, I had the melody in my head, non-stop! I sent the demo to my songwriting partner Johnny Pilgrim and we exchanged a few ideas and the story emerged out of the music.

It's the drug dealer talking to his client. In one verse, a teenager looking for pills, in the second verse a Hollywood starlet with a waning career and in the last verse an old junkie. It starts with the line « Hey there buddy, good to see you again » and ends with « I'll be there until you start to lose your soul and fall apart ».
Pretty dark stuff but it fit the sound of the music. It's very important that the music tells the same story as the lyrics and I think we really nailed it on that one.
It was recorded at Studio 606 on the first day of the album's recording, January 8, 2024.

I played all the instruments at the same time and the footage of me playing in the official video is the actual recording of the track!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here