what they talk about when they talk about steve burns
for some reason, people often ask us to talk about things, and we often do. below are the fruits of that talking to. if you yourself are a member of the press and would like to contact us, send email to steve@steveswebpage.com
spin magazine
the village voice
newsweek
entertainment weekly
cmj - new music report
alternative press
harp magazine
performing songwriter magazine
gallery of sound
indieworkship.com
phreshwater
pitchfork media
mtv.com
the new york observer
under the radar
diw
interview
urban legend - is steve (the blue's clues guy) really
dead?
and a very special interview can be read in the morning news.
Spin Magazine Feb 2004
Me and You and a dog named Blue by Chris Norris
A life changing experience for millions, Blue's Clues was like Nevermind for preschoolers. But one day a couple of year's ago, host Steve Burns heard The Flaming Lisp and walked away from it all. Rumoured dead of a drug overdose, he's alive and well in Brooklyn, making sweetly damaged music for children of all ages.
One Spring afternoon in 1999, Steve Burns was on his way to a date. He was driving through New Jersey, fighting jitters, primping in the rearview, when something on the side of the road caught his eye; a mailbox with blue cartoon paw prints on it and a message that read YOU JUST FIGURED OUT JONATHAN'S BIRTHDAY! While most rock singers would have shrugged off such fleeting details, Burns recognized them as symbols revered by millions of Americans - Americans under four feet tall and on a first name basis with Steve Burns.
"It was obviously a Blue's Clues party," says Burns, who was, in fact, the host of Blue's Clues, one of the most popular children's programs in television history. He glanced at the toys and props left in his car after a recent charity performance. The khaki pants. The iconic green-and-olive striped rugby shirt.
"I gotta do it," he said.
He met his date, changed clothes, and drove back to the party. "We just showed up with the toys and knocked on the door," says Burns, a slight 30-year-old sipping a latte in and airy Brooklyn cafe. "I was like 'Hey!' " His narrow face and big, dark eyes bloom into the fully dilated character beloved worldwide. " 'Who's Jonathan?' The kids were, like, 'Coo! Steve's here!' " So Burns loped around, clowned with the youngsters, dispensed toys, and refused cash from the bewildered dad. It was a magic little moment - a kindhearted breach in the space-time continuum - and we sit silent for a second, contemplating it.
Finally I ask how the date went.
"Pffft," he says, shrugging, with mock mackadociousness. "Are you kidding?"
Some lives really are fairy tales. Boy moves to New York to seek his fortune, couch-surfs, tries to break into acting. Lands voice-over gigs ("1-800-COLLECT," Burns perkily recites), gets Law & Order role ("I was autistic and died"). Checks out bands, peeps new CD's. Then shows up for an audition at Nickelodeon.
You know how these hand-of-fate moments go. You walk into a job interview, fill out an application, and the next thing you know, you're costarring on a hit show with a blue dog made of felt. Burns sure never saw it coming. He'd grown up in rural Pennsylvania, playing guitar, writing songs, an jamming on David Bowie in a friend's cow pasture. After receiving an acting scholarship to a nearby college, he joined a band called Nine Pound Truck, but soon quit that, along with school. Within months, he was standing in the Nickelodeon office, sporting ill-advised stubble, long hair and earrings.
"I thought it was a voice-over audition," remembers Burns. "And it was not. So I figured I'd better start jumping around." This was, in many ways, the birth of Blue's Clues.
Blue's Clues, in case you live in a cave or are over the age of five, is a uniquely interactive show, featuring an animated blue puppy named Blue and a very energetic human host. In each episode, Blue leaves a puzzle for the host and the viewers to solve together. Ambling around a crudely rendered house on a blue-screen backdrop, the host finds clues marked by a paw print. He often misses obvious ones, then looks pleadingly to the camera for help.
"Look, Blue, the black helicopters are back again":
Burns on the set of Blue's Clues
Herein, somehow, lies kids-TV gold. Soon after its 1996 debut, Blue's Clues was spanking Sesame Street and Barney & Friends in the ratings (watched by more than eight million viewers a week), and eventually, children were shouting out answers in six languages and 60 countries. In The Tipping Point, a 2000 study of how ideas and trends spread, author Malcolm Gladwell posited Blue's Clues as perhaps the "stickiest" - meaning the most irresistible and involving - television show ever. While this had much to do with the format's shrewd child psychology, it also had quite a bit to do with Steve Burns.
Initially, the network suits weren't psyched about the grungy 22-year-old. - "The story was that they were, like, 'No way. We're not putting skate-rock boy on Nickelodeon,' " reports Burns. But preschool test audiences were vocal in their support. "Apparently, it was really obvious that I was the one the kids spoke to," Burns says. "The didn't just laugh. They were talking [to the screen]. It was The Rocky Horror Children's Show." Traci Paige Johnson, executive producer and co-creator of Blue's Clues, says that what made Burns a great children's host was that "he didn't want to be a children's host. Of the 100 people we auditioned, he was, by far, the realest. He love kids, but he didn't want to make a career out of it."
Yet a career is what he got. As the show blew up, Burns became a weird, Clark Kent-ish public figure - superstar to toddlers and parents, unknown to everyone else. He was so immersed in the virtual reality of clues and kids that five years went by before he notices that the rugby shirt (handmade out of scratchy wool and modeled after a stick of Fruit Stripe gum) was beginning to chafe.
"Acting on a blue screen is awful," Burns says. "Ask (Star Wars: Episode I and II star) Ewan McGregor - and he had dwarves and whatnot to act with...I was at a place where I do this forever and make this who I am , or I do a whole bunch of other exciting stuff."
Here, if possible, the story becomes even more of a fairy tale. In January 2001, Burns left Blue's Clues, left those secure, highly lucrative two dimensions, and returned to anonymous real life. His departure was so surprising that it prompted rumours that he'd died in a car wreck or of a heroin overdose. The turning pint was significant. Burns had walked into a New York party and heard a record for the first time - The Flaming Lips' 1999 album The Soft Bulletin. "It rearranged my head completely," Burns intones like a '60s acid casualty. "I mean, I haven't had a response like that to a record since, oh, I don't know. Just psssssshoo." Indeed, countless studies - mostly informal, many involving bongs - have isolated a potent quality in The Soft Bulletin, something that bypasses all critical faculties, sweeping listeners into a Spielbergian swoon of aching wonder. Maybe it's the trembling vulnerability of Wayne Coyne's voice or the way the band's tales of heroic scientists and atomic-age love bypass 90s cynicism to hit us squarely in our inner kindergarten.
In any case, Burns was uniquely vulnerable. "Right before then, I was into Radiohead," he says. "But it's so dark. And right then, I needed something hopeful." That night at the party, he got it. He stayed long enough to find the host and ask for the title of the CD. Soon he got a Pro-Tools audio program and started writing songs - a lot of songs. "It was 'Woooooaaaaaa,' "says Burns, mimicking a massive creative vomitus. "I had literally been doing nothing but talking to object made of felt. For six years! There was this weird creative constipation going on."
When you write 35 songs in one burst, something is going on. Call it "the force," channeling your spiritual power - everyone from Scientologists to God-thanking rappers talk about it. But an especially sweet harmonic convergence flows through the 12 tracks on Burns' debut, Songs For Dustmites. The album opens with the Moog-and-bass driven "Mighty Little Man," a vignette about a lone man in a room struggling to draw magic from a small machine - an invention that comes to life. The song was inspired by Thomas Edison, an inventor whose own DIY projects changed human history. "I wanted to write a positive, empowering, exclamation point of a song," says Burns. Less triumphant emotions also surface. "What I Do On Saturday" begins with Burns sighing as he sings , "I'm just a boring example of everybody else." On the gorgeous "Troposphere," he gazes out the window of a plane, pondering the aerial limbo he just entered - the space between Earth and vanishing thin air, where weather happens and no human survives for long. "Have you ever been so tired of yourself?" he wonders.
"It's a dark song," Burns says of "Troposphere." "I had done one huge and great and positive thing and didn't know where I was going next. I was very confused."
"Music is my life - acting's just a hobby." So spake Shaun Cassidy, on his way to "Da Doo Ron Ron" and other infamies. The list goes on: Bruce Willis, Don Johnson, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy - these and other deluded actors-turned-singers are depicted as characters on a board game that's included with the publicity material for Burns' album. Right now, he has a version spread out on the kitchen table of his loft, a decidedly sleek crib in the haute-boho Brooklyn neighborhood called DUMBO. Under the soft glow of recessed lighting, he shows me the starting point of the game's swampy maze: VERY OUTRAGEOUSLY SUCCESSFUL ENTERTAINMENT PROPERTY FOR CHILDREN. From here, the Steve character is guided past such pitfalls such as PROG ROCK BOG and YE OLDE VANITY PROJECT FAIRE. He points out the finish line: VIABLE ENTERTAINMENT PROPERTY FOR ADULTS.
Months after his unexpected creative explosion, Burns cold-called his favourite producer, Dave Fridmann, who'd worked with Mercury Rev, Mogwai, Sparklehorse and The Flaming Lips. The producer's chilly response thawed when he recognised Burns' name (Fridmann had just held a Blue's Clues birthday party for his children) and turned into enthusiasm when he heard Burns' demos. Next, Flaming Lips drummer and arranger Steven Drozd joined them, then came Lips bassist Michael Ivins, who engineered several of the sessions. Finally, even Wayne Coyne wafted into Burns' orbit. But instead of music, Coyne wanted Burns for the movie he was directing called Christmas On Mars.
Overgrown kids: Burns, The Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd, and producer Ed Buller
"He originally asked me to be a crazy man with a bottle rocket in his butt," says Burns , who ended up accepting a less R-rated version of the role. While shooting in the Lips' home base of Oklahoma City, Burns charmed the band's manager, Scott Booker, who eventually helped him sign with PIAS Records (home to Sigur Ros and Mogwai) in late 2002. Thus, he entered the world of legitimate rock music.
So here stands Burns, halfway down the perilous route to a second act. And there, in the corner of his bedroom, sits the red, plush "Thinking Chair" - the meditative perch where he sat and puzzled over Blue's clues. It's currently draped with jeans, underwear, a feather, devil's horns, and a bat wing. Burns admits the request to "do it in the chair" has been made, but not obliged. "I'd feel I was having sex in front of a million parents," he says, although he has received mash notes, even nude photos from the "forward-thinking soccer moms" he says are his most ardent adult fans.
If Burns does become a Viable Entertainment Property For Adults, it undoubtedly will be as much because of the kids' show as in spite of it. "I learned really valuable lessons from Blue's Clues," he says. "I'd repeat them every day. 'You can do things. You are smart.' " And the guy who said them has found a perfectly bizarre avenue to rejoin his own generation, enabled by a band whose concerts feature balloons, confetti and furry animal costumes. It's hard not to see some benign enchantment at work. After all, the goodwill of the kids - especially a few million of them - can be a very powerful force.
Burns points to the little workstation where he made most of his album. It's right there next to his bed. Just a Mac, a keyboard, a guitar and the Thinking Chair.
"Yep," he says, less ironically than he might think. "This is where the magic happens."
The Village Voice - Lalena Fissure
Kids' TV star skidoos onto Yoshimi's Planet, leaves clues
Microscopic Paw Prints
Steve Burns was a rock star long before he recorded an album. Millions of kids dressed like him, in the green striped shirt from Blue's Clues, and bought the stuffed Steve doll with a molded plastic head. Women all over the world wrote him gushing fan letters - mostly lonely suburban moms looking for a fantasy replacement dad for their kids, but still.
Steve himself (my former co-worker - I was a designer at Blue's Clues, making imaginary characters and scenes he pretended to interact with every day) may have still needed convincing. So he recorded Songs For Dustmites, a rock album for himself, about himself, and by……The Flaming Lips! And himself, of course. His favorite band recorded and backed him up. Talk about a manchild's dream come true!
I'd heard some of his earlier stuff, a couple of recordings he's made at home, which were Beck-like in spirit. Moaning the songwriting was straightforward, and almost secondary to the crafting of the recording. The same is true of the album; it's just different people producing it - people with a very identifiable style.
The first song, "Mighty Little Man," comes at you like a comet. After and explosion of Flaming Lips bass, the chorus blows you high off the ground with Steve's joyous rock voice and goosebump-inducing melody. The less imaginative verses pale in comparison.
His mixed metaphors and non-sequiturs can be impenetrable. In "What I Do On Saturday" he insists "I'm just a boring example of everybody else/I threw out the old one as soon as I found something else." The old what? The cryptic lyric hardly justifies rhyming a word with itself. Then he sees "a great big face" out of the blue. Wait. Blue? Is he recalling the pressures of being a star of children's television? I'm grasping.
Eventually though, "Stick Around" makes you glad you stuck around. Simple but not predictable, its phrases tumble out with natural gravity. You've opened a closet overstuffed with pillows and linens that fall elegantly around you into an instrumental exploration of loving someone so intensely that you ache with the weight of anticipating an inevitable loss.
The wistful imagery of the title track, invoking a microscopic civilization, is more typical. You imagine Steve sitting in his apartment making up songs for himself and the dustmites.
Newsweek - Devin Gordon
Do
You Know This Man?
Need a Clue?
Steve Burns knows why you're here, and it's OK. In fact, he agrees with you. This is weird. For six years Burns was sort of famous. He signed autographs and kissed screaming babies. At one point he was rumoured dead, (untrue). He wasn't just a kids TV star, he was the kids TV star: Steve from "Blue's Clues," Nickelodeon's top-rated educational franchise. It was big news when he quit that job two years ago, but he's now back...only he's become...a rock singer? "But I think it makes the story that much more interesting," Burns says. "Yeah, I'm that guy - the one on TV. That's me. But I'm this guy too." So on May 3, Steve Burns, 30, a man who spent six years talking to an imaginary salt shaker, will release his debut CD, "Songs For Dustmites." And here's the weirdest thing of all: it's really good.
For a kiddie-land expat, "Songs For Dustmites" makes perfect sense. It's an album of adventurous alt-pop with wide eyed lyrics about science and love. To avoid being brushed off as a novelty act, though, Burns recruited some of alternative rock's biggest brains to help him out; drummer Steven Drozd of The Flaming Lips and Dave Fridmann, the Lips' longtime producer. At points, Burns apes his beloved Lips a bit too closely, but if you're going to mine someone's sound, you could do a lot worse.
These days, Burns has settled easily back into anonymity. "I've grown some facial hair and lost some regular hair," he says over lunch near his loft in Brooklyn, NY. "I'm also about 8 inches shorter than people assume I'm going to be." (Burns is 5 feet 6) Size, or lack of it, is a running motif on "Dustmites." The opener, "Mighty Little Man," is about a lonely inventor's eureka moment, but it's also an anthem about inner strength. On the topic of "Blue's Clues," the CD is only faintly allusive - and never disparaging. "To me, that show is one for the ages," Burns says. "I have no interest in murdering Steve." All the same, he's happy to rejoin the world of adults. "I did feel pressure to live a squeaky-clean lifestyle," he admits. "There were a lot of bachelor parties that I didn't go to. But I've realized, you know, I'm kind of a fuddy-duddy anyway." Now there's a man who's ready to rock.
Entertainment Weekly
Steve Burns - Blue's Clues host turned rock star
|
5
YEARS AGO |
NOW "There were definitely moments when I would run into the next room so I could giggle maniacally, jump up and down and clap my hands...I mean, working with The Flaming Lips on my new album was like a dream come true!" |
5
YEARS FROM NOW "I'd like assist on a deep sea recovery effort. But I do intend to be making music so I'll be doing an underwater tour of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge - that giant mountain chain - playing for my crew and whatever else is down there." |
RESUME
AGE 30 HOMETOWN Boyertown, Pa. CURRENT His CD, Songs For Dustmites, drops May 3 EXPERIENCE Hosting Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues, 1996-2002 NEXT The Film Christmas On Mars REFERENCES Toddlers Mr Salt, babysitters everywhere |
CMJ New Music Report - Gerry Hart
What do you get when you mix children's television with an orchestral flair for punk rock and a pair of Flaming Lips? Answer: Steve Burns, who, in the words of the great Flaming Lips producer himself, Dave Fridmann, "is the best ex-children's-show-host-record-making-weirdo I know!"
Steve Burns, former host of our favorite children's show, Blue's Clues, has made an album with Lips producer Fridmann (the man with Soft Bulletin amongst his credits) and Lipper Steven Drozd - and somehow it works beautifully! Steve's new album, Songs For Dustmites much more than the sum of it's famous parts, the music much more compelling than the story that made it.
I sat down with Steve a couple of days ago before he headed into rehearsals with his new back-up band (the one he'll also be opening for next month) The Starlight Mints.
How did Dustmites wind up in the hands of The Flaming Lips?
Dave Fridmann was my hero, the patron saint of album production. My brain was rearranged when I first heard The Soft Bulletin. Through Blue's Clues I knew someone who knew Dave. I had four or five songs already when I just called him at home out of the blue. At first he was like, "Who is this guy?" Then after a minute of talking he said, "Hey, I just had a Blue's Clues party for my kid last night." I seized the moment. I sent him my songs and I'm sure he assumed that they'd suck. It was a great moment for me when he called me back and said, "I may have some time to work with some of this stuff. Steven Drozd is coming up here, would you mind if he got involved?" As creative as those guys are, they're even nicer than they are talented, if you can believe that.
What's it been like setting up the record and working with PIAS?
They were the first ones to really get it. There was a flurry of interest from labels, based on the fact that it was a ridiculous story. But Kevin (Wortis, PIAS label badass) was the first one who sat me down and said, "This makes sense. I don't know why, but there is a thread of logic between Blue's Clues, the Flaming lips and your record."
STEVE BURNS used to host the kids' TV show Blue's Clues, where he ran around with an imaginary dog and spent his days humming something called "The Skidoo Song." Today, he hangs out with The Flaming Lips. "I do think there is some thread of logic there," Burns says with a laugh. Yes, strangely enough, there is. But what's even stranger is Songs For Dustmites, the new album Burns has made with the Lips' Michael Ivins and Steven Drozd. What's weird is that the record is actually really good - so good, in fact, that A.P. phoned Burns to give him a spiritual high-five.
Steve, I'm pretty surprised. Your record is good.
Well, thank you. Really, I mean that. This record has been an absolute dream come true. Doing this record with Steven and recording with [longtime Flaming Lips producer] Dave Fridmann was obviously a big thrill for me. In my opinion, those guys are at the absolute top of their field. There were times where I was shitting my pants, sure, but when an opportunity like that comes up, you just go for it.
Well, duh.
Right. If you can get Godzilla to play drums and have him sit down on the floor and write songs with you, then you're in pretty good shape.
I guess so. Hey, I heard you're in this movie Christmas On Mars that [Lips frontman] Wayne Coyne is filming.
Yeah, I'm responsible for destroying a spaceship and generally looking ashamed. That's pretty much my part. The part that he wanted me to play, though, was that of a man delivering a monologue in which it is revealed that he is not wearing pants and there is a rocket in his butt. I passed on that. It didn't seem like the logical next step from children's television.
No, it's not. Writing a record with grown men who dress up like stuffed animals is.
It is! (Laughs) I really do have a unique perspective on the concept of plush now. I've really run the gamut, haven't I?
Harp Magazine - Fred Mills
Those
of you who caught Steve Burns' occasional low-key Elvis impersonations
during his tenure as host of the kids' program Blue's Clues already
know the dude can sing. For skeptics, rest assured Burns isn't destined
for some future volume of Golden Throats. As abetted by The Flaming
Lips' Steven Drozd and
Michael Ivins plus producer Dave Fridmann, Burns conjures elaborate sonic
vistas clearly informed at times by the Lips' aesthetic - in particular,
opening cut "Mighty
Little Man," a wonderful slice of symphonic prog featuring jubilant
vocals and stereo demonstration LP-worthy mix effects. Elsewhere the Burns
crew ventures into electronica-tinged pop territory (the tingly Eels-meets-Beatles
"What
I Do On Saturday"; the anthemic "A
Snivelling Mess"), with other touchstones ranging from Radiohead
and Bowie to Grandaddy and Air. Nope, no nods to the King here. But it's
only Burns' first album - still plenty of tie for a Lips-afied version
of "Hound Dog."
Performing Songwriter Magazine
After
starring on the popular children’s show Blue’s Clues (yep, the
one with the puzzle-solving blue dog), Steve Burns has returned to his
first love: music. Anyone fearing an album of Pee-Wee-ish singalong songs
can rest assured—Songs for Dustmites was created with adults in mind;
it is lush and symphonic pop music.
The fuzzy, pulsating bass and rock orchestration of “Mighty Little
Man“ kicks off the album, trailing off with a rudimentary harmonica
solo. Standouts include the amazing “Stick Around,” with drowsy
cello and murky trumpet weaving in and out throughout the song, and the
haunting title track, which explodes into a fireworks show of percussion
amidst the pretty orchestration. —AW
For
Fans Of:
Ben Folds Five – The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner
Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour of Bewilderbeast
Matthew Sweet – 100% Fun
Rating: A-
Gallery Of Sound - Nick Green
Steve Burns moves from kids’ show host to avant pop auteur in one scientific swoop on Songs for Dustmites.
America’s children were inconsolable when rumors of “Blue’s Clues” host Steve Burns’ premature death—by auto accident or heroin overdose, depending on who you ask—first circulated over the Internet. A second wave of intense sadness shrouded the land when Steve hung up his green-striped rugby shirt and exited the program after five years of palling around with an oversized blue puppy. Burns’ work on the children’s show was so wildly-successful that he hardly believes me when I let slip that I’ve never actually seen it.
“Nickelodeon is very angry with you,” he admonishes. “You need to get over to Toys ‘R’ Us right now and fulfill your responsibility as an American consumer.”
So brace yourself for the sad truth, kids: Steve never matriculated to college when he abandoned his puzzle-solving ways. Blue’s current caretaker Joe isn’t really Steve’s brother—why, they aren’t even related! And the beloved Thinking Chair that stoked the fires of Steve’s imagination now rests in the middle of his Brooklyn apartment with a mountain of dirty laundry piled atop it. These days, the real Steve Burns is playing guitar in a rock ‘n’ roll band and helping your older relatives understand parasites, nanotechnology, celestial phenomena and the mysteries of the expanding universe.
“The idea for this record actually stemmed from a picture a friend sent me of a dustmite attacking a micro gear, a machine that’s so small that an insect can mistake it for another animal,” the self-described Discovery Channel junkie says. “It’s fascinating that a huge battle between nature and man can be played out on such an epically tiny scale. I think science is totally romantic and powerful. We’re discovering huge things about people and what makes them who they are. These are questions that religion used to answer; people used to get killed for saying the sun wasn’t God. Every thousand years or so, science starts freaking people out, and I feel like we’re getting close to another one of those eras.”
If so, he’s keeping the right company. His new 12-song debut Songs for Dustmites was made with the full cooperation and assistance of space-obsessed weirdoes The Flaming Lips: drummer Michael Ivins engineered the record, while multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd played guitar and arranged the strings. Considering that Burns became obsessed with The Soft Bulletin while working on the acoustic demos that eventually became Songs for Dustmites, he scored an even bigger coup by coaxing frequent Flaming Lips collaborator Dave Fridmann into producing most of the record. “Steve called Dave Fridmann about making this record while I was staying with Michael Ivins,” recounts Drozd. “And it instantly seemed like such a cool idea.”
“Fridmann knew exactly who I was because he had just hosted a ‘Blue’s Clues’-themed birthday party the night before,” adds Burns. “Largely due to the guilt of having hundreds of dollars of ‘Blue’s Clues’ merchandise cluttering his house, he agreed to listen to my demo. That poor man—he probably gets pestered all the time. But I sent him a copy of the CD, and he called back—with a hint of surprise in his voice—and said, ‘This is good.’ It’s really strange, because he is literally my favorite producer and the Flaming Lips are my favorite band. But they are as nice as they are brilliant, if you can imagine that,” he says.
And
though Burns hasn’t auditioned for an acting role since he left “Blue’s
Clues,” he answered the call when Wayne Coyne—the only member
of the group who doesn’t play on the record—offered him a part
in the long-rumored Flaming Lips movie “Christmas on Mars.”
“Wayne’s pitch went like this: ‘Your character is designed
to give the audience a sense of intergalactic space melancholy. And just
to show how truly screwed up things have become on the space station where
it all takes place, you won’t be wearing pants… and we’ll
see your butt.’ As much as I loved him and his music, I had to pass.
So he came up with another role for me; now I help to break the space
station through extreme ineptitude,” he sighs. “Once again,
I’ve been typecast as an incompetent fool.”
IndieWorkship.com
Steve Burns makes me smile, he always has…I’ve probably seen all one hundred episodes of Blues Clue’s he taped. But then again, I’m the mother of a toddler. She loves him too by the way. If you watch the show, you could always tell he could sing and there’s something about his demeanor that portrays a deeper more creative side than merely a children’s television show host. Maybe it’s his smirk or a twinkle in his eyes or something…but I’m so glad it’s out now. It’s time, however, for me to get over it and move on, he’s trying to. But it’s so hard, Steve…I like you so much better than Joe! Regardless of how I feel about his successor, Steve Burns has moved on and created a deeply layered pop album worthy of an unbiased and objective listen.
This is an album for adults, as he reiterates in every interview I see…but it doesn’t mean the sensitive, unpretentious side of him got erased. It’s there too, and it’s perhaps Burns’ most likable trait. He just strikes me as the kind of guy you’d want to know. And his melancholic, lush brand of pop makes him seem even more accessible and human. His music is modest, in the best way, despite the big name collaborators and thick, intricate orchestration.
There are so many textures and layers on each track that it becomes the kind of album where each song can fill a room. In that same sense, the songs flow into each other, as different facets of a whole piece, creating an organized arrangement. The attention to detail feeds even further into the scientific theme, along with the dustmites to which Burns devotes the album. He says, "I literally started writing this album because I was obsessed with a picture someone had shown me of a dustmite fighting with a micro gear.” How’s that for a muse?
But he had another muse worth mentioning. I caught a glimpse of an interview with Steve Burns on MTV2 recently and he said that when he heard The Flaming Lips’ Soft Bulletin it “changed the way he thought about music”. And yes, the Flaming Lips connection does mean what it suggests, they aided in the creation of yet another quirky poppy album…but it’s not the Flaming Lips, you must remember.
The opening track, Mighty Little Man, is the kind of song you want to build a mixtape around…. which I guess is my version of a compliment. It’s in and of itself a perfect example of everything I’ve said of the album so far, making it the ideal first song. From there he slows down and allows for more subtlety but still doesn’t let go of the lush backdrop the songs are built upon.
Songs For Dustmites as a whole is very symphonic, it's huge (an irony in relation to the title)...but like I said, it’s modestly huge. It’s not an overzealous or over confident debut, but it is an ambition one. Much of the album is self-effacing, full of melancholy with lazy, understated vocals that not only compliment the music but also dig themselves a niche amidst its thick layers. At times Burns’ soft voice almost gets lost in the mix, but they’re never buried too far beneath the surface.
So,
I’m thinking that in the case of the former Blue’s Clues host,
his pop debut isn’t comparable to fellow actors and singers branching
out into different medias. Songs For Dustmites isn’t Steve Burns
attempt at a “triple threat” (or double in this instance) a
la J. Lo…it’s more like an artist expressing himself in his
natural element. And for Burns, music seems to be his ideal creative outlet.
Phreshwater Music News and Reviews - A. Nelson
Yes, that Steve Burns, the one who used to consort with a blue puzzle-solving puppy. Yes, that Steve Burns, the one who once sought advice from salt and pepper shakers made of felt. But now allow your brain to handle the fact that this is also the same Steve Burns who colluded with the likes of Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips and record producer David Fridmann to create a lush, imaginative, off-center album for adventuresome grownups called Songs For Dustmites. Or, as Burns himself describes it, "It's an album of sweet songs about science and love."
You can hear the kind of playful, metaphysical rock Burns and Fridmann and Drozd are after from the album's opening track, "Mighty Little Man," a buoyant, space-rock epic propelled by an overdriven bass line that buzzes somewhere between Ween and Radiohead. "Steve Burns' approach to music is so strange that I had to work with him and I'm glad that I did," says Fridmann, who has added his otherworldly touch to albums by the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev and Mogwai. "Steve is the best ex-children's-show-host-record-making-weirdo I know," he adds. Go deeper into the album and you’ll uncover Burns' Bowie-like desire to push the boundaries of music. The sweeping "Troposphere," which was written on an airplane pondering the layer of the atmosphere before you hit outer space, builds from a contemplative little ballad to a sweeping rock dynamo flush with strings. A similar orchestral flair comes to light on "Stick Around," with its elegant use of trumpet and cello.
For Steve Burns, the shift from children's TV into the world of rock music isn't much of a leap at all, considering he's had the music bug ever since his dad carved him a toy guitar more than 20 years ago. But growing up, Burns found more opportunities in theater than in music. The acting remained a focus for Burns for years, leading to an audition in 1995 that changed everything. "I auditioned for Blue's Clues in camouflage pants, long hair and earrings. I thought it was a voiceover audition," he says. "When we started it was kinda like being in a punk rock band," he explains. "We had all these crazy ideas no one knew if it would work or if kids were going to talk to the TV screen, but we all really believed in it."
Burns
treasures his five years on the show, but eventually, the time was right
to make a new start. The music bug was beckoning -- as well as some other
bugs.
"I literally started writing this album because I was obsessed with a picture someone had shown me of a dustmite fighting with a micro gear," he says. "There are these tiny machines that are so small that dustmites, these microscopic animals, assume they are competing for food sources and do battle with them."
Starting from a single, combative dustmite, the album took on a life of its own according to Burns. "It all happened when I got a decent computer. I used to have a 4-track and now I can have a one hundred and four track. When I was 14 I would get my brother-in-law's bass and beat the hell out of it until I sounded like Fugazi or something. I did the same thing with the computer, having no idea how to use it I just pounded on it until I sounded like Boards Of Canada or Radiohead or whatever."
From those sessions of messing around with loops and noises and ideas, a few songs started to emerge. But what to do with them? "In my wildest dreams I thought 'who are exactly the people I would want to work on this with' and I actually got to work with them," Burns explains. Through a friend, Burns called Fridmann, sheepishly explaining who he was, and how much the Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin (which Fridmann produced) changed his life, to ask if maybe Dave would be interested in listening to a few of his songs. As fate would have it, Fridmann had just thrown a Blue's Clues party for his kids the night before. All of this led to David Fridmann's Tarbox Road Studios in upstate New York becoming home for some of the key tracks on Songs For Dustmites. "It's the Mecca for uncommon production value," says Burns. "It's a cabin under 40 feet of snow at all times. It's sort of like The Shining with vintage audio compressors."
With Fridmann¹s help, the album shares much of that cinematic psychedelia the Flaming Lips are known for, with more sonic color and wonder added by the Lips' own Steven Drozd. "When I met Drozd, it took us about 10 minutes before we were sitting on the floor writing fake rock songs like a couple of high school kids," relates Burns. " Drozd can rock out as hard to Zeppelin as he can to Air Supply and that's what makes him a genius." For Drozd, the feeling is mutual, calling Burns the "smartest, funniest, and sweetest man I've met in 10 years."
Pitchfork Media - Brad Hurst
Rating:
7.8
Let's go ahead and get this part over with: Yes, this is the debut album
by the guy who, along with the titular blue dog, used to host Blue's Clues,
the insanely popular children's show on Nickelodeon. And yes, Steve Drozd
of The Flaming Lips backs him on this album, with the bulk of production
duties held down by Lips producer Dave Fridmann. The indie A-list backing
hasn't made much of a dent in the guy's street cred, though-- it seems
everyone's been gunning for the guy to fall flat on his face. Nobody wants
to acknowledge this album. I can't blame them-- the guy's impossible to
watch. I had some trouble, myself, swallowing that this character with
doofus hair (guy should pay Moe Howard's estate royalties for that shit)
had gained affiliation with one of the best bands going today, in indie
rock or otherwise.
But doubts about Burns' talents are dashed instantly, with the phenomenal
opener "Mighty
Little Man", a colossal wallop of orchestral guitar-pop that's
leagues beyond most of Fridmann's recent production work. It's perhaps
the best example of Burns' lyrical style, relaying the tale of a television
addict who transforms (under mysterious circumstances) into a superhero.
Recent Lips material aside, space-rocking epics of this sort aren't the
most original thing going these days, but you'd have to be a hardened
cynic to deny the track's ebullience-- over a year since I first heard
it, I'm still surprised at its grandeur.
Burns falters slightly on "Maintain",
which, for all its catchiness, dives into dreadful Jack Johnson-ish plucked
acoustic territory at its outset. The song's mindless hippie jauntiness
is thankfully ameliorated by Drozd's trademark drumming and a sparkling
chorus, but even these assets can't save the unfortunate lyrics, which
go so far as to steal a line from obvious influence They Might Be Giants:
"And I'm standing on the corner/ Gonna jump out of my skin/ Gonna
float above the buildings/ See which one you're in."
Fortunately, Burns regains his composure with the symphonic, sweeping
cello and trumpet of the tentatively optimistic "Stick
Around" and the loose, airy guitar workout of "Super
Strings". Elsewhere, an upbeat, likable slice of indie-pop called
"What
I Do on Saturday" ambles along in definite Lips-like fashion,
while ">1"
stands out as a plaintive downtempo number. Featuring standard-issue Fridmann
backing effects-- subtly whirring synthesizers and gauzy strings-- the
song works a surprisingly swampy guitar solo into the song's intimate
environs.
Many will surely grouse that Songs for Dustmites succeeds only thanks
to Burns' star collaborators. But while Drozd and Fridmann's influence
is undeniable from the start (they're clearly responsible for a good deal
of the album's sparkle), Burns' lyrical insight and gift for writing and
arranging endlessly listenable pop songs consistently manages to steal
the show. Given the Flaming Lips' penchant for animal costumes and general
childlike weirdness, it's no shock that these guys chose to record with
Burns-- the surprise here is that, rather than the update of Fred Rogers'
"Won't You Be My Neighbor" many indie snobs might have been
expecting, Songs for Dustmites manages to remain true to Burns' legacy
as a nice-guy kid's show host despite having made an unabashedly adult
record that deals with familiar themes of love and loss.
MTV.com - Jo D'Angelo
Ex- Blues Clues host an indie rocker at heart
"I took ['Blue's Clues'] about as far as I could, I guess. It was a really difficult decision." — Steve Burns
After more than five years as host of Nickelodeon's "Blue's Clues," Steve Burns is passing the leash to his successor and passing the mic to himself.
Burns, who along with animated canine Blue has solved nearly 100 puzzles since the children's show premiered in December 1996, is now facing a quandary that has baffled just about anyone who ever wanted to form a career around picking up a guitar: how to get signed.
The 28-year-old Brooklyn, New York, resident has recorded 11 tunes, some of which are posted on www.steveswebpage.com, for an LP titled Songs for Dustmites. That was the easy part. The hard part is getting a label to release his stuff, which combines the sweeping orchestration of the Flaming Lips, whose Steven Drozd assisted in the album's production, with the DIY-aesthetic and detached spookiness of Chicago's homegrown indie rock.
"I really don't care who puts it out," Burns said. "At the end of the day, I just want people to like it. I want as many people to hear it as possible, and I hope it finds a happy home somewhere."
Music isn't a new direction for Burns, who's played in bands since high school, when he was a member of Sudden Impact. From there, he rocked with Nine Pound Truck and the Ivys, his "Morrissey rip-off band." "It's back when I wanted to be [guitarist] Johnny Marr, 'cause you gotta do the Manchester shoe-gazing thing," he explained.
He had been working on material for Songs for Dustmites for nearly two and a half years, ever since he got a computer with sound recording and editing capabilities. His method for making the album was similar to the way he took up playing music as a teen: he just messed around, trial-and-error style, until he found something he liked.
"When I was 14 I would pick up my brother's bass guitar, and I would just pound on it, having no idea how to play it," he said. "I would just pound on it until I sounded like Fugazi. And I do the same thing on the computer. I pound on it until I sound like ... Boards of Canada. I just beat on it until I get it to comply."
The Steve Burns who no longer spends his mornings being shown up by a little blue beast hardly resembles the Steve Burns who did. For starters, he shaved his head the day after his final episode was in the can. It was something he'd wanted to do for years, but "Blue's Clues" wouldn't let him. And it's highly improbable that he'd be caught wearing khakis and that trademark green rugby shirt at his local indie-rock watering hole. Now Steve is closer to being a guest on MTV2's "120 Minutes" than any program broadcast on Nickelodeon.
The opportunity to work with Lips drummer/multi-instrumentalist Drozd was an amazing experience, said Burns, who first heard the band's most recent album, 1999's The Soft Bulletin, at a party and immediately left the shindig to purchase the LP. While recording his own album, on which he plays most of the instruments, Burns figured he'd at least ask the Oklahoma City band for some advice, but what he got in return was a dream come true.
"I started trying to do my own music at home, and I was like, 'You know what, I can play the guitar, sort of. And I can do these things, sort of. And I can make these crazy noises on my computer, sort of. But I need a ridiculously good drummer. I need someone to help me with string arrangements,' Burns said in a rhetorical fashion similar to the way he thinks aloud on "Blue's Clues," though in a hoarse, breathier tone.
"I was thinking, 'Who would be first to choose from? Well I would like to work at Tarbox Road Studios with the Flaming Lips.' I made a couple phone calls and it happened. We hit it off instantly. ... We sat around college dorm room-style with his trusty keyboard and my acoustic guitar and in a very short time polished the arrangements to what you hear now."
Drozd assisted with six of Songs for Dustmites' 11 tracks, and Lips bassist Michael Ivins engineered the LP. David Fridmann, producer of The Soft Bulletin as well as several other Flaming Lips albums, also worked on the album, though band frontman Wayne Coyne did not. Coyne did, however, cast Burns in his film about the first Christmas on Mars that he's been working on for several years. In the flick, it's Burns whose actions give rise to the red-planet holiday.
When Burns first immigrated to the Big Apple from rural Boyertown, Pennsylvania, he had aspirations of being an actor and landing a role on a crime drama like "Law & Order." However, he scored the "Clues" job almost upon stepping off the bus, and it's been his main gig ever since. And while he's somewhat worried about being typecast as the "Blue's Clues" guy — though without the green shirt and dorky haircut you'd never peg him as such — his tenure at the long-running program has left him with proud memories.
"I took this about as far as I could, I guess," Burns said. "It was a really difficult decision, too, because on one hand, if I wanted to, I could do this for a really long time. The show is extraordinarily popular in several countries. I could be like Fred Rogers ('Mister Rogers' Neighborhood'), which I consider a very noble profession. But I thought, 'Well, is this really what I came to New York to do? Why not quit right when I'm at my peak.'
"I just don't think it's true that people can't do something else after they've done something that seems so permanent," he added. "I hope I'll be remembered for that show for the rest of my life. That will always be a part of my identity, and I'm totally cool with that."
The New York Observer - Mac Randall
Burns Sans
Blue: He’s Got a Clue!
Steve Burns used to make his living as the television sidekick of an animated blue dog. The job entailed, among other things, breaking into a goofy dance whenever the mailman arrived and engaging in long, pregnant pauses while searching for an answer to simple questions. For six years, the fresh-faced and admirably patient Mr. Burns was the only live human to appear in every episode of Blue’s Clues, and thus he became a minor deity to the preschool set.
Now Mr. Burns has put that experience behind him and returned to the vocation he was pursuing before children’s-TV stardom intervened: composing and performing pop songs for a slightly maturer audience. The profile gained from his time on Blue’s Clues—coupled, no doubt, with the major-league money one assumes he received for his efforts—helped him recruit a few ringers. Mr. Burns’ debut album, Songs for Dustmites (PIAS America), features three men normally associated with those lovable neopsychedelic crackpots, the Flaming Lips: drummer Steven Drozd, bassist Michael Ivins and producer Dave Fridmann.
You can understand why a band that named its last full-length CD Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots would want to work with someone of Mr. Burns’ pedigree: The concept’s too off-the-wall to resist. But off-the-wall concepts can easily lead to off-your-head reality, and I must admit the words "self-indulgent vanity project" lingered in my mind as I prepared to listen to Songs for Dustmites. Luckily, what I heard was something else entirely: one of the most pleasant musical surprises of 2003 so far.
It turns out that Mr. Burns is a gifted songwriter with a knack for simple but effective melodies and self-deprecating wit (the key line of the infectious "What I Do on Saturday" is "I’m just a boring example of everybody else"). He’s got the courage to call a song "Troposphere," and the skill to give it an airborne chorus to match. And though his voice is nothing special, it captures the spirit of these tunes perfectly: a little raw, a little geeky, but ready to take on the world.
Messrs. Fridmann, Ivins and Drozd, meanwhile, do their best to turn each selection into a symphony, piling on strings, horns, cacophonous percussion and—on the opening track, "Mighty Little Man" - pounding, speaker-busting synthesized bass. The result isn’t that far removed from a Flaming Lips record, and the wall of sound sometimes threatens to eclipse the front man’s personality. But to his credit, it never does. Songs for Dustmites suggests that the Kermit the Frog–level crossover move is within Mr. Burns’ grasp.
"Bein’ Green" was a big hit, after all.
Under The Radar - August Brown
If a B-List movie cowboy like Ronald Reagan can get elected president twice in one decade, then why can't a children's TV show host write a really solid album of fuzzed-out, thoroughly endearing pop songs?
Though his path to credibility may be lined with anthropomorphic kitchen utensils and mystery-solving dogs, the former Blue's Clues host gets the last laugh with Songs For Dustmites. Granted, through the laser sight of a cynic, Burns is a can't-miss target. But the newly unshaven, leisure suit wearing multi-instrumentalist has a head full of melodies far bigger than the egos of critics who won't take him seriously.
The sticky, candy-colored fingerprints of The Flaming Lips are all over Songs For Dustmites. That's no surprise, given that Lips' producer Dave Fridmann and drummer Steven Drozd both pitched in to help Burns flesh out his ideas into patchwork arrangements of scuffed-up guitars and implacable vocal harmonies.
But the skewed world of Songs For Dustmites is all Burns' own. He seems right at home bashing out thickly layered sing-a-longs like "Troposphere", but is equally believable humming through flickers of trumpets on "Stick Around". Burns' voice has a strange kind of reserved enthusiasm in it, like a kid who's happier pretending to be a stegosaurus than suiting up for a Little League game. He's definitely enjoying himself, but none of the songs on Dustmites ever get too cute to relate to.
Though remarkable in its diversity and pacing, there aren't many real moments of flat-out brilliance on Dustmites. It's a flawless album in the sense that every song is worth listening to, but it's easy to get distracted after the album's halfway point. Being consistent certainly isn't grounds for a demerit, but it's not going to win that big promotion into the upper echelons of pop artists.
Music is sorely lacking in intelligent, big-hearted artists like Burns. The fact that Dustmites is as good as it is comes as one of the biggest surprises of the year, and will assuredly win him some much-deserved artistic credibility. This isn't his Soft Bulletin, but it's a lot closer than you'd expect.
7 Blips out of 10
DIW - John Everhart
Even though Steve Burns is probably tired of talking about his most popular venture to date - the 29 year old was the original host of Nickelodeon's "Blue's Clues" - he's the first to admit it aided him in making his debut LP and one of this year's most arresting releases, Songs For Dustmites.
"I called David Fridmann one day, and coincidentally he was having a Blue's Clues party for his kids that night," explains the Brooklyn-based Burns, "So that sort of facilitated working with him."
Fridmann eventually introduced Burns to his heroes The Flaming Lips, whose leader, Wayne Coyne, gave Burns a part in the upcoming film Christmas On Mars. "Wayne wanted me to play a role in Mars that entailed full frontal nudity. I declined," Burns says, laughing, "fortunately he was able to find something else for me. It's small, but it's a part, and it was a lot of fun, traveling to Oklahoma City and hanging out with those guys."
Considering that Flaming Lips performances include balloons, confetti and dancers hopping around in bunny suits, it's not hard to see why they befriended a man who used to solve puzzles with a blue puppy.
On Dustmites, the trademark Fridmann sound is prevalent, especially in the Soft Bulletin-esque drum sound (supplied by The Lips' Steven Drozd), though the producer's hand is a bit less visible in later songs that are no less stunning in their austerity. The record closes with the gorgeous "Henry Krinkle's Lament," a ballad showcasing a simple piano melody supplemented by a gentle wash of synths and Burns' plaintive vocals. This is perhaps a result of Burns' newest fascination, the early works of T-Rex.
The charisma that endeared Burns to legions of children is exactly what makes Dustmites such a stunner. So does he think it will attract the attention of anyone in the Blue's Clues demographic?
"No," Burns answers flatly, "This isn't a record I made with the intention of appealing to children. That was great, but I've done it and moved on to different things, namely recording and playing music for adults."
Interview - Jarrett McNeill
Given his former job as host of the Nickelodeon show Blue's Clues, no one could have anticipated that Burns would have more in common with Badly Drawn Boy than Kermit the Frog. But this muffled guitar opus - an off-kilter fairy tale about science and love that Burns cooked up while reading a biography of Thomas Edison - is at once bizarre and alluring.
Is Steve (the Blue's Clues guy) really dead?
- from UrbanLegends.comDear Guide:
I don't have any direct experience with this one, but a coworker mentioned that he was watching the Today Show or Good Morning America or some other breakfast TV show, and heard that there was a rumor going around that Steve Burns (Steve from the Nick Jr. show Blue's Clues) was dead.
Apparently, panicked parents were calling and emailing the producers by the hundreds. The morning TV show had both the producer of Blue's Clues and Steve himself as guests to debunk the rumor.
Dear Reader:
Nothing puts a crimp in your day like finding out you're dead. Steve Burns has attested to that on The Today Show and in other public appearances he has made since 1999 where the Internet scuttlebutt was brought up.
According to the producers of Blue's Clues, the story first began popping up on the Internet around Thanksgiving in 1998. No one knows why. At one point it was spreading so fast that Burns' own mother heard it and phoned him to make sure he was still alive (more from E! Online).
The whole episode is strikingly similar to actor Scott Baio's experience earlier that same year. His parents called him, sobbing, after hearing rumors that he'd died in a car crash the same day that comedian Chris Farley passed away. Everyone seemed to be convinced of Baio's death except the "deceased" himself.
"After a while I started answering the phone, 'I'm not dead,' " he told New York Times Magazine.
If
it had been me, I'd have left a message on my answering machine and refused
to pick up the phone until the hysteria passed. How many times a day do
you want to have to tell people you're not dead? Even once is too many.