In the world of rock, there are musicians, and there are musicians. That italicized item consists of those who derive intense joy from performing and creating music which is ingrained deep within their being and their very soul, transcending the sole pursuit of adulation and attention. I’ve been fortunate to have come into contact with some of those icons who are familiar to those who know of my published interviews and my own musical creations.
There is one equally talented individual who may not be as familiar as those I allude to: musician and guitar virtuoso Steve McKnight. Steve started out as a Facebook contact who developed into a real friendship. Though hard rock wasn’t my forte, I heard some tracks from Steve’s band Cry Wolf and instantly recognized his musical acumen.
I approached Steve when I was assembling tracks for what was to become my first album and my only one to date, Creétisvan. I had written a rocking tune titled “Automaton” where I needed a searing electric guitar solo and felt Steve would be a perfect choice. He did not disappoint: Steve saw exactly what the song needed, and his gift is largely why many cite it as being one of their favorites. Steve also provided his talents on the Billy Sherwood-produced “Different Drummer” and is all over that track; I asked him to use my basic guitar parts in the demo as a blueprint for his performance, and he not only vastly improved on it, he brought his own expert sense of flair, finesse, and style. I’m not being modest in stating I could never have matched his prowess.
After his stint with Cry Wolf, Steve helped form GayC/DC, a tribute band that brought together the many eras of AC/DC, but with a decidedly different slant. As is obvious from their name the band embraces their own sexuality, and even has fun with it, revising the lyrics and presentation of songs with gay sensibilities. Whereas AC/DC can’t be as omnipresent as fans would like, GayC/DC has been successful to the point of attracting hungry core fans, even being embraced by those who may not be gay but who enjoy the music and are not deterred by the sexuality, the explicit theatrics, or the humorous changes in lyrical content.
I knew that I and many others would benefit from learning about Steve’s history, his musical influences, and the challenges of performing in a tribute band while adamantly not hiding who they are. After persistent attempts, he finally consented to a chat where he revealed the breadth and depth of his wide array of styles, influences, and experiences — many of which surprised and enlightened me and will likely do the same for the reader.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity:
MIKE TIANO: Thanks for talking with me today, Steve. Where were you born and raised, and how old are you?
STEVE McKNIGHT: I’m a California native, born in Orange County in 1966. Lived there until the late ’70s, and then my father got transferred to Northern California, where I lived for about 11 years until the late ’80s. I came to LA because the band I was in had management down in LA, we were looking to get signed like thousands of other bands at that time. So we moved down and hit the Sunset Strip and started promoting ourselves to do that. So I’m a long-time California native, a music person, and that makes me 58.
MIKE TIANO: How did music come into your life when you were growing up?
STEVE McKNIGHT: I picked up instruments very early on. As soon as I could sit up in diapers I was moving to commercial music on TV – when commercials would come on I’d start dancing. Then I had the coffee can drum set, where you [play on] the lids of the coffee cans. My first real instrument that I actually studied was accordion, believe it or not. They had a school in Anaheim called the Milton Mann Accordion Studios, where they get these kids’ parents to come in and give them these lessons, but they were really valuable. It was learning how to play accordion: sight reading, playing recitals, learning how to read whole pieces of music. I did that for about four years. That culminated in my entering a talent contest in Anaheim with my best friend from across the street. We had dueling accordions at a talent show in Anaheim in the ’70s, which is pretty funny. But we got honorable mention in that. But that’s where it started, just this accordion.
Then in my early teens, I picked up my sister’s guitar. I’m going to sound like a cliché, but I actually learned “Stairway to Heaven,” I think that is one of the first guitar pieces that I learned how to play. That’s where I was bit by the bug in guitar, and then that started me on the path of practicing eight hours a day and dedicating myself to it.
MIKE TIANO: Can you name four or five artists you see as the bedrock for your musical foundation?
STEVE McKNIGHT: God, that’s such a hard one. If it were to be my musical Mount Rushmore …?
MIKE TIANO: Right.
STEVE McKNIGHT: I think for me, one of the most important early bands was Rush. My sister and her friends were into Led Zeppelin versus Aerosmith. That was a classic rivalry, who’s better or whatever, among people in the ’70s, for like my sister, teenagers in the ’70s. But I gravitated towards Rush and towards progressive music. Then there was UFO, and I went off into Allan Holdsworth, actually pretty early on. I had other stints with a little bit of AC/DC, a little bit of Kiss. Then the big guitar players of the ’80s came around, and it was like Dokken and Van Halen, of course, Randy Rhoads from Ozzy [Osbourne]. But I also had Allan Holdsworth, I had Neal Schon, I had John McLaughlin, a little bit of Al di Meola in there. My palate was pretty broad musically. For bands, it would be Rush, it would be UFO, Van Halen. Those are the three. That’s three of the four. So my ultimate Mount Rushmore would be three starting out.
MIKE TIANO: What Rush album was it that you first listened to?
STEVE McKNIGHT: I first got [the box set] Archives, which was the first three records. It was an introduction, obviously: the first album, and then Fly By Night, and then Caress of Steel. But I was obsessed. Playing to those records front to back, all three of those, was basically my starting musical education.
MIKE TIANO: So that plays into my next question, which you partially answered, which was to list the guitar players themselves who influenced you the most outside of the bands. You listed Allan Holdsworth. … I would think maybe Alex Lifeson …?
STEVE McKNIGHT: Alex Lifeson is huge. Allan Holdsworth is really big. Van Halen opened the door for this next-level guitar playing at the time because no one had heard things like that before. But then for me, it went Eddie [Van Halen] of course, Michael Schenker. Just amazing. And Randy Rhoads. But then came Yngwie [Malmsteen], and Yngwie changed the game again, just in terms of a level of just this fire picking every note, a different approach – and also the neoclassical. They call it neoclassical, but just a classical influence. Randy had it, and in certain elements, Eddie had that, too. But I think Yngwie really opened the door for that type of over-the-top playing, like a Paganini violin mindset to the guitar.
MIKE TIANO: Wow, excellent. Can you tell me a brief history behind Cry Wolf, how it was formed, how you came to be in the band, etc.?
STEVE McKNIGHT: Well, yeah, it has to be brief because I could start with the Paleolithic era of the dinosaurs. So it goes back a little bit. [Both laugh] But if I’m going back, I was teaching guitar at a local music store in Northern California, a city called Dublin. I started teaching when I was 16 after playing for about two years. So I moved pretty quickly on the instrument. And in teaching, word got around that I was teaching some more advanced stuff, like what I was interested in. I started to get into bands of the day at that time, I was using music that kids and people like to listen to and applying that to a guitar lesson: Mercyful Fate, Diamond Head, Metallica, and then came Yngwie, some Allan Holdsworth stuff. I had a range of people from kids all the way up to session guys that were coming to me. I had about 50 students a week when I was working at a music store, so word got around with my playing.
Some local guys wanted to put together a heavy Journey, if there’s such a thing – a harder-edged Journey AOR approach. So they approached me. Ironically, I was talking with singer Chuck Billy and I think the bass player from Testament [Greg Christian], and they were looking for a guitar player. They were just circling around me and saying, would it be possible? But then I’d already gotten a little further along with this AOR band called Heroes. Heroes was the precursor to Cry Wolf. We started up in the Bay Area and had gotten management in LA and had done all that. Then we moved to LA in 1986. At that point we said we’re going to make a go of it. There’s 3,000 bands on a two city blocks space trying to get signed, and we’re going to be right in the mix with them and fight for it. We went to LA to do that. In the midst of that, we changed our name to Cry Wolf and started playing shows on the strip and started doing pretty well. We started selling out some of the clubs. What that led to is our demo tape had gotten a five out of five-star review in Kerrang!, which was a metal magazine at the time, it was a five out of five stars. And off of that and a review of our demo tape in a British magazine some Japanese promoters picked that up and brought us over to Japan.
We went to Japan twice, the first time in 1989 as an unsigned band. We got signed to Epic Sony while in Japan. And then we did an American version of that record, we got signed in the US and then started touring by 1990. While on that first tour under the first record, we had all of our equipment stolen in Houston. We had seven shows left on the tour, had all of our equipment stolen, and then also got dropped by the record label. That was a fun week because we had to find our own way home. We weren’t even on the roster by the following Monday [laughs]. So we had to pick things back up, do what we could, and it dissolved. And then after quite a bit of time in like 2006 or 2007 there was a lot of chatter online, on social media [saying] “You got to get back together. We’d really love it. There’s people basically all over the world [who want to see you].” So we said, why don’t we give a go of this? The drummer that was in Cry Wolf moved to Minneapolis: “Why don’t we fly him out and we’ll have a reunion show in the Bay Area, where we started?” People came from Japan and New York, and they came from all over. The reaction was really good. And so we got back together for a good eight years and Cry Wolf had a second act.
In 2010, we released Twenty Ten, which was a collection of songs that never made the second record. We were writing for a second record, but obviously got dropped. These were songs that had a bit of a different tone, a bit darker – I guess you could say heavier, but just a little more introspective. The lyrics were a little deeper, I think. We released Twenty Ten and played shows [supporting] that. We got up to the point of being special guests to UFO, Queensryche, the Tubes, Lita Ford, Dokken, and Foreigner. We’d be the local special guests when they would come into town. But then that dissolved again right around 2012, 2013.
MIKE TIANO: I’ve seen Cry Wolf being described as a hair band, a glam band. Would you say those descriptions were fairly accurate?
STEVE McKNIGHT: Yeah, we had hair. But while we were playing on the strip, we really never talked about getting drunk, getting high, fast cars and chicks, that kind of thing [chuckles]. We never fit into that thing. We were always a bit deeper. Not to cry in our beer, but we came from broken situations at home and had a lot more to talk about. There was a party element to what we had, but we also had a deeper thing. We had a song called “Face Down in the Wishing Well.” That’s not a song you normally associate with big tits.
MIKE TIANO: Probably not unlike Rush, where they started out with, “Hey, baby, let’s screw” type songs and moved on to more, as you said, introspective type music.
STEVE McKNIGHT: Yeah, and we called it the journey within. It’s getting through all of the stuff that didn’t work in your life, all the turmoil you have in your head and trying to make sense of it.
MIKE TIANO: To close on Cry Wolf, what is your affiliation with them today?
STEVE McKNIGHT: I’m still great friends with them. We support each other in our musical endeavors. The singer [Tim Hall] is in his own trio. It’s a mix of a ’70-ish with a rockabilly vibe band. He writes all the songs and is doing very well. He’s played with different tribute bands on tour. Occasionally we talk about maybe we should get this back together again and see what happens. Drummer is still in Minneapolis and would be open for it in terms of the original lineup. So we’ll see. But we’re great friends. The fact that we’ve been friends since we were in our late teens and still in the same vicinity and still great friends is amazing.
MIKE TIANO: A very deep connection there then.
STEVE McKNIGHT: Yes. When you’ve been through some of the shit that we’ve gone through as a band, we’ve done a lot of living and growing up together. So, yeah, we always pick up where we left off. It’s amazing.
MIKE TIANO: That’s awesome. I understand GayC/DC was the brainchild of Chris Freeman, and I was surprised to learn that he was in the iconic Pansy Division back in the 1990s.
STEVE McKNIGHT: Yes. amazing that one of the first queer core band, probably the only queer core band to play Madison Square Garden opening for Green Day.
MIKE TIANO: Oh, really!
STEVE McKNIGHT: And having bottles thrown at him, and people flipping them off and spitting on them.
MIKE TIANO: Yeah, it was a different time, though there’s no excuse for that behavior.
STEVE McKNIGHT: It was the ’90s, and that’s what they felt about being gay.
MIKE TIANO: Tell me how you came to be involved in GayC/DC.
STEVE McKNIGHT: Chris, [rhythm guitarist] Karl Rumpf, and [drummer] Brian [Welch] were in another band called the Gay Gays, a tribute to the Go-Go’s – they had befriended Jane Wiedlin. They played some shows but thought, well, what’s next? And Karl, actually, just blurted out GayC/DC. And they went, oh, my God, that just writes itself. Holy shit. Chris connected with me on one of the pickup sites and we started talking. He said, “I saw that you were in Cry Wolf and we’re putting together a band. It’s an AC/DC tribute band. AC/DC is probably the straightest beer and cigarettes type of rock and roll band you could have. And we want to turn on that here and make it as gay as possible.” I thought, oh, that’s a great idea. [They said] “We need an Angus [Young, AC/DC lead guitarist and founding member].” So immediately I went to Britney Spears’ “Oops! … I Did it Again” as a naughty schoolgirl and a beer maiden, a German beer frau. That’s where I went in terms of the look, and I immediately said I think I could do this. We all had a similar sense of humor. We grew up [loving] AC/DC. We wanted to honor it, but honor it for our community, and flip it a bit. So that’s how it started, in 2013.
MIKE TIANO: Tribute bands face their own set of challenges. But I imagine presenting yourselves, honestly, from a gay perspective must be a bit daunting. How do you reconcile that?
STEVE McKNIGHT: Well, for us, it’s natural because all our lives we’ve had to do that. I mean, it’s just a natural extension of being in a society that somehow thinks that people with the same plumbing shouldn’t be together. And so we’ve all had that. We also had the tongue in cheek punk rock attitude of saying, we’re going to throw it back in your face with entertainment. And there’s an underlying purpose. We said, as long as people keep throwing other people off of buildings for being gay, and shooting and beating people up, we’re going to be a band. So we’re here. We’re here, we’re queer, and you’re going to have to work with it.
We did notice that there is a bit of a rainbow ceiling, I’ll call it. And even though there are people who want to be inclusive, it’s to a certain limit. [These include] concert promoters, stage managers, etc. at the venues, the special themed “jam nights” at clubs, want to be inclusive to put an all-gay band like GayC/DC on the bill, but in terms of promotion for gigs like Monsters of Rock Cruise, festivals, there is a limit that we see. We do notice that, and we thought, oh, well, we’ll never play any gay pride festivals. They just want drag queens that lip sync, and they want DJs [who use] laptops. But we played many gay pride festivals, and it turns out they like this entertainment and what we stand for. So it’s been an interesting ride. And then we thought, well, we might not be able to play in any straight places because they end up throwing beer bottles and starting fights. But we ended up going to many straight places, and we find that some of the better crowds are more integrated, and there hasn’t been really any violence that we were expecting.
MIKE TIANO: Have you encountered any outright homophobia at your shows?
STEVE McKNIGHT: Not to our face. During COVID shutdown, we did a Bon Fest, which was like a Bon Scott AC/DC era festival that’s normally in Scotland, about 20,000 people show up, right? And different bands play, and they honor that energy and the legacy of AC/DC, the first incarnation. And so they did a virtual version. And so we were featured with some video segments and an interview because the people that run that organization really liked us and got it. So the fallout was really funny because a lot of those 20,000 people that subscribe to it, there were a certain amount of people that were hating it. So there was homophobia going on [but others indicating] don’t do that to my band. … The other majority of the crowd that was online shut those people down. So we had our own people, that group was backing us up. I thought it was interesting. And if it’s controversial and it serves those kinds of conversations and people shut them down, they can be heard. But then they get another opinion right within the group. I think that’s great.
MIKE TIANO: People tend to think of the interest of gay people as all Barbara Streisand and show tunes, but they’re just human, and they like a diverse number of artists like anybody else.
STEVE McKNIGHT: Yes, that’s the point. It’s really funny. The irony of this is that within the band we were jokingly saying all of you closeted rockers in the gay community should just come out from the covers and go see these shows. Support your rock bands. You know you like it. I’ll tell you, there is a crowd. [Like] the bear community is really prevalent in Coachella and a lot of metal festivals and stuff. There’s a whole group of people I know that go to like 100 concerts a year.
MIKE TIANO: Have you attracted AC/DC fans who don’t mind you rewriting the lyrics from a more LGBTQ+ perspective, but they love the music enough to overcome that?
STEVE McKNIGHT: Yeah, they’ve actually embraced it. There’s people that are long-standing. They had Back in Black tour T-shirts they bought themselves, and they wore it. Like recently they would show up and go, “Oh, my God, this is the most fun we’ve had of a show in a long time. I love what you guys do. You guys really listen to the music. We really appreciate your attention to detail. And we’re just cracking up once we heard the lyrics. It’s just such good fun.” I always preface that by saying AC/DC’s first televised appearance was in 1975 and Bon Scott dressed up as Pippi Longstocking. The very first time, he had the girl dress, he had a ponytail, he had big circles of blush on his face and freckles. And he said, that’s the spirit right there. That’s the tongue-and-cheek wink at you that we try to carry forward too.
MIKE TIANO: Do you play any AC/DC tunes verbatim, where they’re faithful to the originals, without you rewriting the lyrics?
STEVE McKNIGHT: “Big Balls.” That writes itself. You I don’t have to write anything. I mean, when there’s a good opportunity to tell the story we switch the pronouns and switch the situation. It just depends on the song. There are some where we don’t really change it too much. That’s a good example. They’ve always had a tongue and cheek approach that has been sexual anyway. Sometimes the songs just don’t need it because it could be ambiguous enough where it could work, and it’s just filthy enough to go there. Others, we just change it. I mean, instead of a “Heat Seeker,” we call it “Cock Sucker.” Instead of, “I put the finger on you” [we change it to] I put the finger in you, and it’s a proctology exam. So there you go.
MIKE TIANO: And you have that one where you skew it towards party and play instead of “TNT.”
STEVE McKNIGHT: Yeah. Instead of a “TNT,” it’s “PNP,” party and play.
MIKE TIANO: Do you play anything outside of AC/DC or do you stay faithful to the catalog?
STEVE McKNIGHT: Well, GayC/DC is strictly an AC/DC celebration band. We do both Bon Scott and Brian Johnson eras. Personally, I connected more with the Bon stuff, just because of its rawness and raw sexuality and all that. But there’s so many great songs with Brian Johnson, too. Amazing, iconic tunes. For those, from the guitar standpoint, those guitar solos that you can sing, nobody’s going to do them better. So I try to be really faithful to how he does it down to the hand vibrato and everything. I really try to stay true. When they have vamps at the end of songs or in the middle where there’s no real guitar solo you can sing, I might take some liberty. So that’s where we really stay faithful to it because you’re not going to do better than those songs. You’re not going to do better than Angus. I really try to celebrate what’s just awesome about all of that stuff, especially for Angus. And then where there’s open sections, I might have a little bit of artistic license to throw my own shit in there.
[In a rare departure, GayC/DC recently covered Argent’s “Hold Your Head Up” which producer Timothy Eaton states “is dedicated to anyone who’s ever been bullied just for being themselves.”]
MIKE TIANO: [Second guitarist] Clint Yeager unfortunately died suddenly last August. What is the current status [of his replacement]?
STEVE McKNIGHT: Well, Clint was actually the Malcolm Young. We think of Chris as the Bon Scott, Brian Johnson’s illegitimate kid [chuckles] as the singer. That was a pretty heavy blow because we had just come off a pretty successful tour. He wasn’t doing well health-wise, but he kept his chin up and he fought for every one of the shows. It’s just amazing. We had a privilege of playing with Clint, but it kind of got the best of him. There’s a guitar player that was in Pansy Division for a good amount of time. He was originally based out of San Francisco, now in Denver, and his name is Patrick [Goodwin]. He came in in a pinch to fill in for some shows. We had a show in San Francisco where he filled in. He did such a great job. We just had one rehearsal; we ran through the tunes and we just went, “Oh, you got this. We can go ahead and do the show.” And it was great. So he was cool enough to say, “Hey, I want to take this further and play more shows with you guys.”
We have an alternate right now just in case he can’t make it because he’s based in Denver. We all have full-time jobs when we do this. So we balance a lot so that we can play and tour and keep going. And sometimes schedules don’t commit. So he’s going to be doing a lot of shows in this upcoming tour. And then we have another gentleman out of Portland, Oregon: Christopher Latham-Ruby, who’s going to be filling in for some shows where Patrick can’t fill in. We do all of this in honor of Clint, because he was an amazing force of nature, and he was in the band maybe just under two years. But we were really privileged to have him in the band, and he’s just sorely missed. He was a long-time bartender at the Eagle in L.A. for about 17 years. He’s sorely missed by the L.A. community first, and then, of course, us. We miss him terribly.
MIKE TIANO: As far as [replacing Clint], you’re still trying to sort that out.
STEVE McKNIGHT: Well, yeah, for the Malcolm role on second guitar, we’re sorting that out. We would love to have somebody that’s local here in L.A. We were featured in Guitar World as looking for a guitar player, but also I did an interview with them, and we didn’t really get any bites for that off of the articles. But what we did get was that some of our friends we’ve known who came forward.
MIKE TIANO: In terms of instrumentation, what are your guitars of choice?
STEVE McKNIGHT: My tastes outside of GayC/DC are pretty broad. So I play a wide range, anything from classical finger style guitar, gut string to steel string acoustic to all different kinds. So Gibson is a player there, PRS is. I’ll be getting into Solar Guitars, which is Ola Englund’s brand. He’s a YouTube artist, but he’s played in many bands. He was with Washburn for a while, and he has a great build on his guitars. They’re made out of Spain, and they’re really good. So there’s those. But in GayC/DC, definitely it’s the Gibson SG, because it’s Angus Young. You can’t separate that pointy guitar away from Angus. I use this special version that was released in 2012 for about two years called the Diablo Premium Plus, which is a hot-rodded SG. So yeah, it’s uncommon. It’s got 24 frets. It only has one volume, one tone, a toggle switch, the input jack on the side of the guitar, frosted top. … I have a few of those that I use on the road.
MIKE TIANO: I really appreciated your contributions to my own music. Are there any other artists you’ve worked with that you care to divulge here?
STEVE McKNIGHT: Yeah, that was a lot of fun because it got me to flex a little bit more of the progressive fusion-like playing. I have occasion to do that once in a while, but that was a really great opportunity. I did a session with Dweezil Zappa. He did a kind of Guitarmageddon [laughs]. He wanted to get 75 of the top guitar players, and then he took an interest in me. He was doing this after Frank Zappa died. We had common ground because both our parents passed. He said he really liked the [Cry Wolf] demo tapes for the second record that we never released until 2010. But he liked the guitar playing. He said, “I’d like to put you on this record.” It was going to be the ultimate guitar jack-off record with 75 guitar players. He put me in between like Brian Setzer, and then there was Steve Morse or somebody else – maybe it was Warren DeMartini. And so he gives me this piece of music that has four or five stylistic changes in a short amount of time. True to the Zappa legacy, it was challenging musically, but it was great. I got to go to Barking Pumpkin and do a day’s worth of just experimenting with these different style changes and stuff.
I’ve done stuff for other people’s records, solos and different things. There’s a friend of mine [Brent Heinze] who was doing interpretations of hard rock tunes, but in an industrial synth-based format [Probe 7]. So I did a Queensryche tune there as an example. So I’ve done that kind of stuff. I did music for a short film that was entered into a gay and lesbian film festival, an ambient film scoring.
MIKE TIANO: Music and the guitar are really part of your DNA, and that really comes through in your playing.
STEVE McKNIGHT: Well, thank you. It’s just an extension of me. It’s like I felt most comfortable playing guitar, and I felt that had a much wider vocabulary to use music than I did with words.
MIKE TIANO: I ask people what tune they like best on my album and they consistently reply it’s “Automaton,” and you’re no small part of the reason for that, I believe.
STEVE McKNIGHT: I really appreciate that opportunity because it was fun and it was challenging, but it also gave me the opportunity to stretch, which was cool.
MIKE TIANO: You really helped me out there because I asked you to do something that was probably a cliché, and you said, no, I’m going to do this instead. And it was great. I’m glad you challenged me on that.
STEVE McKNIGHT: Yeah, if I’m hearing it, if I’m hearing it and feeling it, I have to at least try.
MIKE TIANO: Are you content with GayC/DC being your sole musical conduit, or do you aspire to do something original and independent on your own?
STEVE McKNIGHT: Well, actually, we’ve already done that. So there’s been a couple of other bands that formed out of the nucleus of GayC/DC, but into other things. So the bass player from GayC/DC Glen [Pavan], singer Chris, and myself, worked with a drummer from Switzerland called Carlo Ribaux, and we formed an all-gay hard rock band called MARY. We have a whole album’s worth of tunes that we did. They were song structures that were meant for Cry Wolf, but never really had any interest from the other band members. It’s just because they’d moved on to other musical things. So I took the music and I sent it over to Chris and I said, “Would you be able to work with this stuff? I don’t know if you have any interest, but maybe we could take a shot at doing something original,” and it started to pick up. We did four or five tunes so far of those. Carlos is based in Switzerland, unfortunately, but when he’s in town, we’ll play shows.
The other one is called the Doberman, [who] is Frank Meyer, who’s the lead singer and songwriter for the Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs, and he’s also now the guitar player in Fear. He said, well, why don’t we work on doing some original stuff. He threw some ideas in. Our drummer [Brian Welch] had his first foray into writing lyrics and melodies and song structure. We did a few tunes as the Doberman, and that’s got a kind of nasty rock and roll vibe to it, a little bit more modernized, but we did some songs and videos for that.
So do I have aspirations to do other things musically? Absolutely. It would be great. All different styles to branch out. If it was more progressive, a little darker sounding, a little heavier, I’d like to go in those directions. All that’s good.
MIKE TIANO: What can GayC/DC fans expect on your upcoming tour?
STEVE McKNIGHT: Well, you can expect us to be pretty unpredictable [laughs]. It’s going to get right in your face, it’s a nice, glorious, loud mess. So we have confetti, we have streamers, we have lube, we have dildos, we have inflatable dicks, we’ve got lots of stuff coming at you. But we love the music and we love to get people into the party, and we like to have [our audience] jump right in with us. So there’s shows through September that go all across the country.
MIKE TIANO: Do you get into what are termed deep cuts, more obscure songs?
STEVE McKNIGHT: We have a few in our arsenal that we do. But in the AC/DC catalog there are so many that aren’t, that lurks. Even to just cover those, everybody knows the song somewhere. Even “Heat Seeker,” while that might be a blue-chip thing by AC/DC but it’s still an amazing fast tune. It’s great. Early, early AC/DC, too. We cover a lot of that stuff. But again, changing some of the lyrics and just making it really funny and tell a different perspective from our community. But yeah, we can’t wait to get out this year. We feel like with the guitar players that we have on board, that it’s going to be a great show, too. We’re going to be coming to new cities we hadn’t been to before. So that’s the other thing, is new places, like Bellingham, Washington, Cincinnati, Brooklyn. So we’re going to hit some new places, which we’re still looking forward to – Denver, Colorado Springs. So, yeah.
GayC/DC information including tour dates can be found at gaycdcofficial.com.
© 2024 Mike Tiano. All Rights Reserved
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