Steve Athanas speaks with Fred about his new book and upcoming book signing this Saturday

Son of a bitch made me walk up two flights of steps and look all over the second floor for him. Apparently he didn't know I had a cow valve put in my heart last week. No, I did not. Thank you very much. Sorry. Oh, wait, I need to settle down that. Don't do this. Steve Athens is in the studio as I told you he would be. Let's start actually as long as we're at. I'm not. Follow the cord down, your headphone cord down, and use the volume control. There I am. All right, there you are. And how long did you work in music? Oh, my God. How old are you right now? 73. Okay, so I'm 75. So let's start with the litany of ills. All right. All right. And I think I may have you beat, but we'll find out in a second. We'll start with the litany of ills. About a week and a half ago, I had a heart attack. Oh, I'm sorry. My doctor said it wasn't a heart attack. My doctor said it was a valve attack. felt like a heart attack to me. Yeah, right? I wet my pants. You know, I went blacked out all I said. So I now have a cow valve where my aorta comes out of my heart. Wow. It went up through my groin all the way up to my body and put a cow valve in. All right, what do you got going on? Because I noticed you moving a little slow through the building. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a, when I get back to Virginia, I got a knee replacement to look forward to, cataracts. Oh. What else? There's something else. Memory loss. The knee replacement shouldn't be too bad. My wife had both of her knees done. They tell me that. Yes. My wife had both of her knees done. You know Ella, Dudek. Yeah, yeah. Ella had her knees done. As long as you do the rehab, the way you're supposed to. Right, right. You'll be up and around. Okay. All right. I'm going to take those words to heart. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. It's amazing how much they could do. I mean, when they told me that they were going to go in and I had the artery, the one that goes out of my heart, was pretty much completely blocked. and they were going to put a bovine artery. I thought, what the hell? And hey, we can do this. My wife had both knees done. She's had a hip replaced, all kinds of stuff. We're at that stage, man. I know, we're both. And the cool thing is that even though, or maybe in spite of the fact that you're 73, you're still putting out. I'm perpendicular. Yeah. You get that, and you're putting out a creative product. Yes. All the time. And I was just online. In fact, if you want to take a look at Steve's new book, you can go to Amazon and find it there. Or you can just type in A-time for burrowing, Steve Athens, and it'll pop up, right? Burrowing as in burying your head in his hands. Yes. And you have two really...

I mean, these are really nice reviews. I don't know if you've seen them or not. Of course I have. I suck up to that stuff. You and Jim Beard. Jim Beard always complains. I wish people would give me more because usually they'd just say, I like this book. Yeah, right. Keep it down. Come on. But they don't say why. Right. Well, both of these reviews really go into what they enjoyed about the book. The visuals, the fact that one of these men knew you from years ago when you were. Do you know who that person is? No. No, you weren't in town. No. Mark Shear. He used to work at IOT. Ah, as Mark Scherer or something else? One of the news guys. Ah, okay. All right. Yeah, because he said he knew you from a band that I had, I'd never heard of that band. It was pre-fred. Okay, so there was the raisins? Yeah, is that what he said? The raisin band. How long ago was that for you? Oh, that was, uh, uh, late 70s. Okay. Yeah, I didn't get here until 1980. Yeah. So, well, we're going to talk about this book. And Steve, as I, as I've mentioned a couple times before, or you got to go again? It's up on the second floor. He's got that problem, too. Exactly. It's a time for burrowing and other like-minded scribbles regarding the human condition. It's a collection of his artwork, his poetry, his observations, and according to the press release, his off... kilter humor. Now, as I mentioned earlier, he's going to be doing a book signing over at the Hudson Gallery in Sylvania this coming Saturday from five until seven. We'll get to all the details here in a second. God, I hope that's where Bill went. Yeah.

Well, you knew Bill. You worked with Bill Robinson for years and years and years. Every sound check, you know, warming up the system. It was Steely Dan. You could count on it. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Right. He was a good guy. I really liked him. And we've lost quite a few. Actually, John Rockwood just passed away. RIP. Yep. Yep. So. When you hear that, because I know you hit that, even in Virginia where you live now, do you get a sense of time passing for you or do you start counting the days? Does that make your creative juices flow a little bit harder maybe? Possibly, yeah. I'm not counting the days. I'm actually trying to... you know, push that away and keep the days coming. I still got a lot to do, man. I mean, I just come out with this book, but there's still other projects that I've got on the burners. So, yeah, I'm very aware of it. And when we lost John, it was just smack me right in the gun. Yeah, yeah. Does it, does it, does it, spur you at all? I mean, and now that you've gotten away from Toledo and you're living out in Virginia, is it pretty quiet out there where you're at? Are you open the hills? It's unbelievable. I'm staying with my friend Larry Gold, guitar player from the home records. Oh, yeah. And I slept with a window open last night. And it was something my son warned me, but I wasn't really aware of it. When I lived on Georgetown over off of Douglas, motorcycles, sirens, you, it's, it's, unbelievably, beautifully, quiet. And I'm digging that. Yeah. And the visuals ain't bad either. Oh, I'll bet. I'll bet. We'll tell Larry we said hi. All right, man. Now, you're not playing music anymore, right? Correct. No, I'm not. Okay. I didn't know if maybe you're sitting around a house with Larry. I'm like Al Pacino. Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in. Pull me back in. But you haven't stopped creating. But you've always had, apparently, a notebook along with you, even when you were performing. on stage yeah yeah has your stuff changed over the years i i hope so i hope it's gotten better i hope that um there's still a well to draw from and and because like i said i still got projects i want to do so um you know subject matter has changed i'm not that's what i mean subject matter not so much gotten better because it is it's going to be what it is exactly unless you're taking classes so what your focus You know what? One thing I learned that I always thought that whatever, whenever I put my pencil to paper and whatever came out was brilliant. a crock of you. Well, it's brilliant to you, but every artist I talk to and have said the same thing. I do it for me. Whether or not anybody else likes it, I don't care. But does anybody else like it? Right. But I've learned the art of editing. Ah, okay. Which is just, it's enlightening is what it is. So that you go back and you say, what was I thinking? And you tweak it and keep it going. You know who else does that?

And I didn't find out until last night. My wife was watching, I don't know, some Ozzy Osbourne show with his son where they travel all over the globe. Uh-huh. Yeah. And there's Ozzy on the bus. And he's doing something in a pad. You can't tell what, but you can tell it's real detail, tiny little stroke. Yeah. And then the camera panned over. And there's this beautiful drawing. Really? Of nothing but tiny little strokes. The tiniest little like all over the place. And it's just gorgeous. Yeah. So there must be a tie in there. Maybe it's just creative people. Never stop, do they? No, no, no. Even if you're not physically doing something upstairs, hopefully your, you're, you're, well, that's the key. Now, the new book is called A Time for Burrowing Stephen J. Athenus, who'll be signing copies Saturday from 5 to 7 at the Hudson Gallery. over on Main Street in Slovenia. Now, do you have time to hang around for a little while? I would love to, Frank. Good, because I just like talking to you. Me too, Vice-in-person. I don't necessarily care if I talked about the book or not. But we will. I promise we will. Steve's still out there creating. He's got a book called A Time for Burrowing and Other Like-Minded Scribbles Regarding the Human Condition. He's going to be signing copies of this book and selling copies of this book. Saturday from five until seven. Will they have copies before five o'clock? Do you know people get out there? Well, they close at three on Saturday. Oh, okay. They're going to close, set up for the signing, and so I would guess. Yeah. Okay. So they'll open up at five. They'll be open from five to seven, a little reception. Yep. And he'll be signing copies of the book. Now it says here also in the press release, the evening. Ooh, it's an evening. That's a little pretentious, isn't it? The evening will also feature guest readers, including Joel Lipman, the Lucas County Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2014. Now that his term is over, he's free to do whatever the hell he wants. Yeah. He can't degrade himself. Now, did you work with him previously on something? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Joel and I go back. I think I, well, I knew him before from bands, but I took a couple of creative writing classes. Oh, you did? When he was at UT, yeah. Okay, I was going to ask you about that. Did you take writing classes? Did you take any art classes also? Well, I have a degree in art education, which isn't art. That I knew. Yeah. It's, you know, they focus on the teaching aspect of it. So, you know, Of course, you're going to take some art classes, and I did, and I dug it, and, you know...

Time is, you know, looking back on it. I wish I'd taken more classes, art classes, because it's never too late. I know, I know. It's a field you can never say, well, I know it all now. Right. Yeah, because, and just like music, at least to my way of thinking, just like music, you can't break the rules until you know what the rules are. Exactly. You know? Yeah. So you can't do jazz until you know what everything else is supposed to sound like. Can't really do your own creative art until you know what art is supposed to look like originally, right? Yeah. That's one of my favorite saying is the lonious monk. There is no wrong note. I've heard that. In fact, and Miles, I think, told somebody, somebody said, oh, man, I'm sorry, hit the wrong note. And Miles said, What do you mean you hit the wrong note? It's the note that comes after that note that determines whether or not that was a wrong note. And you know, that makes total sense to a musician. And I think it was Herbie Hancock relates to that story, that he had a bad note. And he thought, man, Miles is going to kill me. And he talked to him afterwards. And Miles said, I don't know what you're talking about. You know, it's what I do after you do that. Right. that determines whether it's bad or not. So this book is full of your drawings and little, well, they call it musings. Yes. Drawings, some poems. I originally coined the term poem, P-O-M-E-S, because there's no way that that stuff is up there with Heets and E.E. Cummings. Are you saying that nothing here rhymes? Oh, no, that's the problem. There's nothing but rhymes. Okay. It takes the priority is rhyming, but... That and my two-dimensional work reflected on the pages. I mean, I had a riot doing it. It's an accumulation over the years. I was going to say, how much is new and how much have you been collecting for a while? Very little is, I would say, new, new. But the stuff has been around and I wanted to do this. the thing that triggered this for me finally was I was in a gallery once and someone came up to me because as is reflected in this book Some of my works have poems on the actual painting. And someone said, nobody wants to spend that much time in a gallery sitting here reading your stuff. And I said, it is a good point. And I thought, well, how do I solve that? And I thought, B-O-O-K. Unless they actually buy the piece. Exactly. They're not going to, because when I came to the Hudson Gallery at one of your shows, I thought, wow, he's got a lot of cool stuff, but I'm not going to stand here and read everything. Right, right, yeah, yeah. And I'm not offended. Because then it looks like you're being pretentious because you're like, oh, this is. That's an interesting corner. Exactly. So, man, this is great. And it's what, about 200 pages of stuff? Yeah, yeah. And it's the tip of the ice. You draw. I just love your drawings. Some of your drawings are just, they're just nutty. Thank you. You know, this one about the guy with the mayonnaise. Would you honor me with a reading? I will read this one, yeah. Okay.

If mayonnaise were my pet, I'd guard it with my bayonet, for I'm sure that every knife would want a glob of sweetie's life. Yes, it's true. She's not a dog, a cat, a bird, or a little frog, but I will cry and write a ballad if she ends up in potato salad. I love that. Let's hear it Radio Lance. Come on. That's perfect. And he's got a little drawing here of a guy. A very muscular guy with a David Faircloth signature watch. Holding his jarbony close to his heart. This is from 2002, that one is. Yeah, it goes back. I love the idea. How did you hook up to come back here and work with the Hudson Gallery again? Well, it's always been the case, always with my bands and whatever, that... Toledo has offered me open arms. Yeah. You know, and so I've, I've tried to escape a couple of times. I moved to New York City. I moved to Florida. But as far as getting a band going, it's easiest here because I have a reputation. And because of that reputation, I can pick the cream of the crop musicians and hit the ground running. If I start in, you know, say, West Palm where I live for a while, you got to go to square one, you know, so. It took the easy way. Did you find that it held you back at all that people look at you and say, oh, well, he's a guy in a band. He's the lead singer in the band. I don't know what his art is going to be like. Right, right. And I, fine. Again, I'm not any Keats or Walt Whitman or Picasso with my art. It's primitive. I pride myself on the primitiveness. It probably would fall into that category, wouldn't it? Like a grandma roses. Or roses. Yeah. Grandma roses. It is just that primitive. In fact, it was weird because when I first asked you when we sat down to go through our list of ills. In my head, I was already seeing a page in your next book. two of your goofy old drawings of two goofy old men going through their litany of ills until one of them either, you know, claims the victory or, like you just did, keels over. Yeah. And the other one goes, hey, you win. I'm making a note of that one, buddy. I'm making a note of that one. So. In Virginia, because you're in Virginia now. Yes. Is there an artist community near where you live that's embracing you? I am living in a small town called Lovitzville, which is next to a small town called Leesburg, which is about an hour from D.C. And it's surrounded with all these little... Not mechas, but little towns of artistic presence. Okay. And so, yeah, there's a lot of... Like a Gatlinburg type vibe? Frederick, Virginia. Fredericksburg. And so I intend to tap into that as well as going into, hopefully, D.C. and Baltimore.

I'm going to be the next Shell Silverstein, damn it. Hey, that's good with me because Shell Silverstein was a king, man. And actually, a lot of your stuff does remind me of, you know. Yeah, I take that as where the sidewalk ends and the giving tree and things like that. You know, boy name Sue, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, those were all silverstein things. So now, where else will this be available? Have you talked to, like, local bookstores? I know it's on Amazon right now. In fact, if you just go on Amazon, type in Steve Athanas, it'll pop up. Isn't that impressive? It is pretty cool. You know, the chicks dig it. Hi, I'm Steve Athenus. I'm kind of a big deal on Amazon. I don't know if you saw my, I don't know if you saw my review yet or not, but this one guy says, man, beyond the visuals, woo! I'm laugh out loud funny. Yeah, buddy. I do like this. Beyond the visuals, it's laugh out loud funny. His poems range from lighthearted, tongue-twisting observations to poignant reflections of life and mortality and offers a tongue-in-cheek take on the thankless task of inanimate objects. Yeah, that one cost me $40. Did it? I don't know. He gave you a wow. Yeah. So he must have really liked it. That's pretty cool. And it's a verified purchase. Exactly. Which means that you sold at least one copyright. Right, yeah. All right. And to your question, right now I am looking for a new... publisher. You know, Jeff Bezos is a hungry man. Yeah, no crap. I am selling these Saturday at no profit. I'm selling them at cost because the hardcover is 34 and the paperback is 25. I'm not going to screw my audience. Yeah, yeah. You know, Jim Beard here in town has his own little publishing company. Okay, I need a number. So write that down and I'll give you his phone number. Okay. He has, and I don't know if he would be interested in something like this, but he normally works through comic books and things like that. And he has a ton of books on Amazon. And he has his own publishing company now called Becky Books, named after his late wife. And you might want to talk to him. Absolutely. He knows people to do illustrations. He knows people who can do the layout, all of that stuff. I got all that covered. Well, his collection of stuff that's out there is pretty incredible, actually. I'm definitely going to call him. And he's on Facebook. And I'll give you his phone number also. I know he's heading out. some kind of comic con thing this weekend or pulp fest maybe because he writes a lot of pulp oh okay uh you know film noir type thing uh huh cool yeah you'd like right up my alley oh god you and him are you and him would hit it off exactly and he loves music

What's not to like? That's exactly right. What's not to like? Do you miss being on stage and not doing that anymore? No. When did that go away then? I mean, once you stopped, when did you stop missing it? Well, I didn't stop till I, you know, it wasn't an intentional thing, but I knew I was done with it. You know, again, we go back to our stature in life, and that's polite way I'm saying it. But, you know, my knees, I screwed up my knee one time back when I was in my 20s. You were bouncing around like a maniac. I jumped off a stage, Fred, and tried to do a James Brown. Oh. And I noticed like the following week, I couldn't, I went to a movie and my niece started bothering me. And it was a pretense to the end. Oh, man. No, I don't miss it. It was fun while it lasted. But the thing, you know, people have asked me, they wanted to do another Love by Millions reunion this year. And it's just, you know, if I can't give them my best. Right. Yeah, you don't want to be like Phil Susan Collins sitting in a chair and doing yourselves. No. Yeah, that's not going to work. And I don't know if you've seen David Lee Roth or Frankie Valley. Yeah. Yeah. Not for me. I mean, and even Barry Maniloh, I watched a video of Barry Manilow the other day. And while the choreography is great for the people behind him, he's just like, well, like you with the knees, he's like, Yeah, yeah. Across the stage. I can't do that. You don't want that. So he's found another way to be creative and it's called a time for burrowing. Not Barry Manlo. No, not Barry Manlo. And other like-minded scribbles regarding the human condition. Saturday 5 to 7 at the Hudson Gallery, book signing and selling copies of the book. You don't have to set up any kind of reservations or anything. Just show up. And there'll be some special readings too. If you need to reach out to Steve, you can hit them up at Stephen. stephenus at gmail.com stephen dot athenus at gmail.com i look forward to hearing from you are you on facebook and all of that kind of stuff yeah yeah easy yeah you're not getting any hate on facebook are you i think once that's directed at me yeah that's what i heard yeah you got a reputation i do thanks for coming in man thank you fred always