An Introduction to
First landing
by Steve salett by craig finn
I’ve known Steve Salett long enough that I don’t remember our first meeting. I do know that we met in Minneapolis, where he had a post college band called Deformo that I really dug. He sang better and more musically than the singers of other local bands. Sometimes he’d switch from a low baritone to a bratty higher register in the same song- the affect being like a conversation between two different characters. Our bands played a few shows together. One year Deformo was named “Best Band in the Twin Cities” by mainstay local weekly City Pages. Their song “Mr. Saturday Night” was a Minnesota college radio hit.
Despite the band’s local popularity, Steve and his future wife Estella left the Twin Cities for NYC in 1998. They married in NYC and eventually became parents, with two kids born two years apart in the mid 2000s.
I moved to Brooklyn in 2000 and ran into Steve sporadically. He had started a new band called The King of France. He also started building and renting out rehearsal spaces in a building in Dumbo. In 2007, he opened Saltlands Studio in the basement. The spaces and studio put Steve at the center of a vibrant music community in Brooklyn- clients included Sufjan Stevens, Sharon Van Etten, Josh Ritter, Dawn Landes, Josh Kaufman, Thomas Bartlett, and many more.
In early 2011, he emailed me to tell me about the record he’d been working on, called The Poison Tree. He was very proud of it. It was a musical move forward, and felt more natural to him than being a part of a band. The record came out in early 2011 and garnered strong notices from music and culture publications.
Around the time of the release show for the album, Estella was told that she had cancer. It spread quickly. Only months later, at the end of 2011, she lost her battle with the disease. Steve was now a widower and a single father of two young children, aged 4 and 6. As the family tried to navigate their new life without Estella, making music was put aside for a bit.
One night after a show in NYC in 2014, Steve and I huddled at the side of the bar and caught up a bit. It was my first time seeing him after Estella passed, and I tried to express condolences. He talked openly about grief, about trying to move forward. He said he was starting to write and play a little bit.
So it is with great pleasure that this album has arrived into my life, and plays as a triumph of music and life. I hear it as a reentry of sorts, a rebuilding -the songs contain specific wisdoms alongside sadness, elation, and wonder. To me, it is the sound of someone moving forward, while still acknowledging the things they have to carry to get there.
The oldest song on this record is “Little Ones”, which was started in 2015. It asks the question “What should I say to the little ones now?”, a fittingly heavy and human place to start the process. But I also hear a lot of light in tracks like “Heavy Shoulder” and “J’Amore”, which consider the possibility of new love and a life ahead. “First Landing” is about a horse, but also feels like tentative steps in a new atmosphere. Finally, the inclusion of a live audience on “Torn to Pieces” underscores the overall feeling of reemergence the album gives me.
The last decade has changed us all. Steve is remarried now. He met Dara in 2016, they moved their kids in together in lockdown and married in 2020. His voice still speaks to me, but it does so in a different way than it did in the mid-90s, when our biggest heartbreaks were still up ahead.
I’m thankful to be listening to this record right now. I’m happy for the comfort and familiarity of an old friend’s songs and voice. I’m excited to see all that he has (re)built. But I’m mostly ecstatic to see what comes next, to see how these songs greet the world, and what they might have to say to us all.
–Craig Finn
Single 1 “See Your Light Disappear” release June 1, 2023
Single 2 “Spun the Wheel” release June 22, 2023
Album “First Landing” release July 13, 2023
listen
watch
Steve Salett - First Landing
lyrics
Lost My Mind
I should have taken every step
Oh I should’ve known a little better
Because I’m so bitter
I swear I lost my mind
See that man
He’ll be sewing up the rest of time
Oh my love, my lover you can’t break it
This little thread of mine
Should’ve taken some time away
Take every little step around it
Still there’s no coming down from this
No my love, my lover you can’t waste it
And it’s on my mind
No i don’t need a reason
I don’t care much
Maybe they all went to Jesus
Or some other crutch
Ooh look at all those people
We should’ve taken our last escape
Use the river like all desire
Oh my love my lover you can’t break it
And it’s on my mind
Steve: guitar, organ; Josh Kaufman: electric guitar, drums, bass, piano; Thomas Bartett synth strings
Heavy Shoulder
That’s the weight of my heavy shoulder
you’ve got to choose my love
better leave the stage before I lose control
I can see you fall in slow motion
my baby can play the role
Oh you left them all back home
They never understood you’re like water
Careful when I ask you did I try
Did try too much
Was I kind
Was I kind enough
Did I hide
Did I hide my love my love my Love
5x That’s the weight of my heavy shoulder
Steve: organ; piano; bass, electric guitar; Ray Rizzo: Drums; Dean Graham: Yamaha synth;
First Landing
There’s a lie in the meadow
and it falls through the trees
and the moment I wake up see it’s buried in me
Still I wait for the world falling on me
Oh I let it pass by
wait for my whole life
Something I never got
still back to my old fights
Hey— a fist in my hand
gonna walk on me?
I was born in the Meadow
the son of Hildene
who was blind to the shadows
that fluttered in me
still I was hopeful for some
other side to turn to
but fast times they followed me
I turned on the clover
and tied to the weeds
And let the rain fall on my poor Hildene
I was over my head and
as much fool as you’ll ever see
That was the last time that she was aware
There were holes in the roses
and I fell down the stairs
still I held her head in a cradle
to be the man she wanted in me
then she left me
Steve: drums, electric guitar, synths, piano; Josh Kaufman: bass, percussion; Thomas Bartlett: Op1; Stuart Bogey: saxophone
Spun the Wheel
Do you ever just tire of the sycophants
There’s a better way to say that but my mind forgets it
My turn is over I spun
A thorn in my shoulder
A twist my heel
Last time I saw you
I remember laughing
Some of those good times were real but most were imagined
What is the matter
What’s the price to pay
When something you never wanted
Still you let it get away
oh you say know her
just a kiss on the cheek
I can’t imagine
that you see me so weak
My turn is over I spun the wheel
A thorn in my shoulder
A twist my heel
I wish I could see myself
when we were still kids
But I close my eyes
and stare at the back of my lids.
What is the matter
What’s the price to pay
When something you never wanted
Still you let it get away
I couldn’t hold her
A soul turned to steam
The turns of a vulture
A stitch of a seam
My turn is over I spun
A thorn in my shoulder
A twist my heel
Last time I saw you
I remember laughing
Last time I saw you
I remember laughing
Thomas Bartlett: piano, Op1, synth
Skipper on the Reef
[Steve- Forgot what that thing was — Josh- Start with other part… 1 2]
Oh when they sent you on your way last night— you just had to ask— you could’ve made it through.
Out of luck and sense, you rose, and laughed —still you had to ask gentle favors you keep pushing like a little babe.
Huh! You oughta know it’s very to hard to fake— all the wishes that waste away when you want them staying on your side.
With no where to go oooh
It’s an unpaid debt it’s a fools regret
You keep fishing yet.
Like a skipper on a reef. Like a zipper without teeth you keep pushing
With no where to go Aah
Oh you came and left oooh
See they laughed and waved
Oh they’re calling out your name right now. Ooh ooh
Josh Kaufman: drums, bass, piano, percussion; Thomas Bartlett: synth strings, Op1
J’amore
Before I met you
I was working at the magazine
And when I met you
I was cooler than I should’ve been
I was counting the seconds
I was working frame by frame
Before I met you
I didn’t count on anything.
Oh that’s not everything still it’s everything— you know what I mean.
I know it’s my nature
Some things are hard to find
And the memories that I crumbled
I keep them tangled up in my mind
There were no calculations,
no angles to play —
when I met you—
I couldn’t help but play it straight.
Where you go
Steve: guitar, organ: Josh Kaufman: drums, electric guitar, bass, piano, atmospherics
Little Ones
I’m working the wheels
I’m breaking the tide
Stay if you will
No I’m not that kind
Look at how far you’ve gone now
What should should I say
What should I say to the little ones now.
“Ooh it’s over oooh”
I’m okay but I spin it
In a couple years worlds end
Where the edge is sharp we walk in it
Ah forget about it anyway
What should I say
What should should I say
What should I say to the little ones now.
I’m working the wheels
Breaking the tide
Look at how far you’ve gone
Look at how far you’ve gone
And what should I say
And what should I say to the little ones now.
“Ooh it’s over oooh”
Steve: baritone guitar, Josh Kaufman: drums, percussion, synth, bass; Thomas Bartlett: synth strings, piano
Pictures on the Table
In a minute gonna tell you the way I feel tonight
There’re pictures on the table that I left out just so we could fight
On the bottle there a paper
You up and say you’re too sad
But I’m asking from the pedals
Just where the shadow ends
I wanna hold you babe
Still I’m never gonna understand.
Steve: guitar; Josh Kaufman: lap steel, drums, bass
See Your Light Disappear
I know the facts are rough
And I can’t hold on
Speak to me through the flight of dove
We’re tied to a stone
If you lie down
some bitter fool
Still I’m the only one
who didn’t leave
See your light disappear
See your light disappear
I know the way to go back
but I’m just so far you know
Speak to me through the eyes of another
Some bitter lonely cold and lonely lonely.
See your light disappear
See your light disappear
See your light disappear
Steve: piano, guitar, bass, synth; Matt Barrick: Drums; Thomas Bartlett: Op1 and other synths; Annie Nero: backing vocals
Simplify Us
Don’t ask so many questions
There’s a fog on the other side
Your hair (You’re here) by the window
You left it there to hang
And I’m only half kidding
But you kinda knew
What you were doing
Still it got me through
And I’m sorry now
And so are you
We broke on passengers
Oh we told them lies.
Where the pavement bellied
And the cars went by
I wish I was kidding
I know all the rhymes
And I followed you
to where the fog turned to vapor
And my sweetness to vice
Still won’t simplify us
Steve: Guitar, field recordings; Josh Kaufman: Drums, acoustic guitars, piano, drums, bass, synths, electric guitar
I For One
Little ruin
Did I have too much to show
It shouldn’t matter
Oh I for one
Can only say that
To let you go
Was the only way back
Til at last it all disappears
Did I ask her
“Oh I might be over you at last”
Falling backwards
through the pavement
Oh I for one
can only say that
To let you go
Was the only way back
‘Til at last it all disappears
Little ruin
Oh I might be over you at last
It shouldn’t matter
Oh I for one can only say that
To let you go
Was the only way back
Til at last it all disappears
Steve: whistle doodles; Thomas Bartlett: piano, frogs, synth strings, Op1,
Torn to Pieces
[Steve- And it’s just wonderful to play music with your friends as well— I wish they were here]
I was born from the ass of the Paris Hilton
They chucked me on the street
And I barely had to ask before I got a beating
‘til there’s nothing left of me.
In the center of the city where they pulled the sinners high lifted to the balcony oh those souls careful what you ask of me
Why do you ask
why do you ask
why do you ask this if me. Huh
When I turned my back you were barely breathing but I felt so obliged and the shadow that I cast some call it treason but it swings side to side
Watch what you move
It’s torn to to pieces
It’s torn to pieces
Watch what you move
It’s torn to pieces
It’s torn to pieces
Watch what you do
It’s torn to pieces.
Parts of this recorded live at (le) poisson rouge Burgundy Stain Sessions Sept 5, 2017
Steve: piano; Thomas Bartlett: wurlitzer, outro synths; Josh Kaufman: electric piano
about
photo: Allison Michael Orenstein
Steve Salett is a song-writer, producer, and musical advisor whose work has been praised as “Picturesque songs about the broken-hearted” (BrooklynVegan). From early work in The Kelley Deal 6000 and Deformo to the pop stylings of The King of France and heartbreak of The Poison Tree, Salett has honed a songwriting craft steeped in authenticity. A believer in musical community building, Salett runs Reservoir Studios in Manhattan and the Saltmines studio complex in DUMBO, Brooklyn. With the founding of Historical Fiction Records Salett hopes to continue to support exciting and creative musicians by constantly striving to answer the question “What if?”.