Steve Poltz on Sun, April 29, 2018

Steve Poltz is not normal. He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada) but has lived most of his life in southern California, and those geographic poles are quite likely responsible for his unhinged genius. Over the course of his life he’s met Elvis Presley (who hugged his sister for far too long), trick-or-treated at Liberace’s house (each finger had a diamond ring), was Bob Hope’s favorite altar boy (according to him), bravely traveled the world busking before he knew how to do it, famously co-wrote “You Were Meant For Me” with Jewel, pissed off David Cassidy, and can count some of the world’s coolest people as fans. He’s also an ex high school wrestler (98-pound class), an obsessed baseball fan, a yoga practitioner, a hopeless romantic, a smart-ass philosopher and a child-like adventurer/observer with an absurdist’s view of this crazy world and the various life-forms that inhabit it. He’s interested in it all—the big and the small, the sublime and the ridiculous, the terrestrial and the cosmic. As good as his albums are (and they’re very, very good), Steve positively owns a crowd when he’s on stage, where the proverbial rubber hits the road. His shows are the stuff of legend—no two are alike—and can take an unsuspecting audience from laughter to tears and back again in the space of a single song. He is a master of improvisational songwriting and works without a set list to be free to react instantly to the mood of a room. He is quite possibly the most talented, and engaging, solo performer on this planet. Whether he’s Canadian, or American, or simply from space, there’s no denying there’s only one Steven Joseph Joshua Poltz, and to know him is to love him.