I Started Out With Nothin' and I Still Got Most Of It Left

Steve Wold (Seasick Steve) is an American bluesman, but would rather would be called “a song and dance man.” He plays broken guitars and sings the blues. When asked about his nickname, Steve said: “because it’s just true: I always get seasick.” Lately Evan and I have been really into blues, along with other members of the Blacksburg community, we've become regulars at "Blues Night" downtown at The Cellar (Norton and Bobby even play sometimes.) Seasick Steve is a genuine trainhopping, jailbirding, cowboying, carnival working, migrant farm picking, occassional tramping, near-fatal heart attack surviving, old hobo. He's legit. And hes 69 years old.

Seasick Steve's 2008 album "I Started Out With Nothin' and I Still Got Most Of It Left" is fantastic. The opening song "I Started Out With Nothin' " and "Thunderbird" hit hard, and "Fly By Night" is a slow heartbreaker. Seasick Steve's voice is raspy and soulful, his first album "Dog House Music" was recorded in his kitchen on a microphone from the 1930's and "I Started Out With Nothin' " was recorded in a actual studio. The songs are new and fresh, narrative gems, deeply personal yet universal, howls or whispers of joy and despair, and they are always blues songs. Steve loses none of the grittiness that makes his music unique. He even commentates at the beginning of most of his songs explaining what they're about (chiggers for example) or how he should have thrown the guitar he's playing with away a long time ago haha, it has given Evan and I great joy to quote him the past few days.

Point is, its a great blues album, check it out. Listen to it while: cooking soul food, driving on a nice day with the windows down, or washing dishes in a sudsy sink

Here's the track listings:

1. Started Out With Nothing
2. Walking Man
3. St Louis Slim
4. Happy Man
5. Prospect Lane
6. Thunderbird
7. Fly By Night
8. Just Like A King
9. One True
10. Chiggers
11. My Youth