Seasick Steve , his real name Steve Gene Wold , is an American blues musician born in Oakland, California in 1947 to a boogie-woogie pianist father and a stay-at-home mother He leaves the family home at the age of thirteen, driven by the desire to travel and escape a monotonous and narrow life.
It was in the 1960s that the future Steve Seasick began to frequent a band of bluesmen and regularly rubs shoulders with Janis Joplin, with whom he becomes a friend. Travels in Europe, especially in Norway, make him meet the one who will become his wife and with whom he will have five sons. It is also in Norway that the pseudonym Steve Seasick is given to him by a friend who notices that Steve Wold could not get on a boat without experiencing a serious seasickness.
Returning to live in the United States, he moved to Seattle in the early 1990s. By creating his own recording studio, he met Seattle's burgeoning rock and grunge scene. Groups like Modest Mouse and Bikini Kill record songs at home. Kurt Cobain befriends the "old" bluesman.
After a very low-profile musical career, Seasick Steve released a debut album with the Swedish band The Level Devils in 2004, called Cheap. We find blues dear to the musician, but also folk, even some riffs influenced by the grunge.
