WAXING LYRICAL ABOUT THE PAST By Keith Platt Steve warner is a journeyman musician. Versatility and a readiness to try anything connected with playing and performing has enabled him to make a living in what is a very fickle industry. He’s felt the adulation of fronting a band wearing colourful clothes onstage and he feels satisfaction when he hears interpretations of the knowledge he’s passed on to his students. In between those two ends of the musical spectrum, Warner has scored for TV shows, recorded for advertisements, weddings, and performed at parties and everything and anything else in between.
create their own sounds. Musical passages are handed down like stories and fables. “Your theory [about passing on influences] is a true one, and what a wonderful thing it is. That an essential part of our culture, our heritage, and in a way ourselves, is being transmitted through the generations via music and song,” Warner says in one of many emails we trade while preparing this article.
Quietly spoken and reflective, Warner has undoubtedly had an influence on the Melbourne music scene.
“I was influenced in my early years by my brother Tim and his guitar playing mates, six or eight of them, who were into the folk revival in the 1960s. They’d all go down to Fisherman’s Beach [Mornington] on summer’s nights with a guitar and a bottle or two, light a fire and start playing,” Warner says.
The music that influenced him is passed on to his young students who then use that knowledge as raw material from which to
“They’d play Bert Jansch, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Donovan, Davy Graham, Big Bill Broonzy and Leadbelly. They’d be doing all those
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leading bass lines that connect the chords and lots of finger picking, Travis picking we call it now.
Lawrence Greenwood [playing in Whitley], whose music I love. To think I used to teach him baritone uke at primary school.
“This is at the roots of so much alternative folk and quite a lot of mainstream stuff that I work on a daily basis with the guitar students. I love it. Everything old is new again.
“The interesting thing is that you could sense, even as kids, that something significant would happen with each of them, no two ways about it.”
“Sometimes I see an old student playing somewhere, maybe in a fresh new band, and I see my guitar style hidden away in there among all the new sounds.
Warner compares this thread to “passing on a burning flame, which can ignite lives and ideas down the years.”
“Music is so amazingly adaptable. You can show someone a song or a pattern, or a technique, and you hear it later transformed and adapted to a new setting.
“I used to gig weekly at a bar in a rough neighbourhood. They booked me to play in the lounge, but really wanted me to play in the bar. I wondered what the problem was and why they were not being straightforward with me.
“Casey Benetto - who wrote the musical Keating! - I taught for a long time up at Montsalvat, then at our place at Warrandyte. Talk about The Human Dynamo as a kid. “And of course it’s a special thing when I hear
He says music can be powerful and subtle.
“On the third week they took me in to see the bar and I was not happy as it was very rough, very seedy and had a very sticky carpet. I agreed to play with a big bouncer each side of bayside & mornington peninsula