Today we’d like to introduce you to Steve Wolff.
Steve, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I became a semi-professional musician out of necessity when I first moved to the USA from London UK to get my Master’s degree. This was in spite of learning from my UK next-door neighbor, who played drums with The Kinks, Roger Daltrey (of The Who) and other bands who told me that most of us are better off having a “real job” and making music a paying hobby rather than making music the “real job”. Still, when I got to the US, I had no choice: the meager stipend my UK scholarship to Stanford provided me got even smaller when the investor George Soros shorted/ devalued the UK pound by 50%. With no work permit, my only financial option was to get a band together and play Frat and Dorm parties. Fortunately, that was during the period when British punk and New Wave was starting to creep across the pond to the US. That put me and my band (British Wire Gauge) in a unique position compared to other campus bands. In addition to some much-needed cash, it was a lot of fun, so I kept playing in bands even while forging a professional career first as an engineer, then project manager and finally in several VP roles in a startup company that developed bomb-detection technologies for screening bags at airports. I played at local Bay Area bars and clubs throughout the ’90s.
I moved to San Diego in 2000 and after a couple of tough years (divorce, fires, readjustment), I got back into playing, initially solo under my last name, Wolff. I was told by several musicians that, if you want to play out, play bass, so I spent more time honing those skills. That got me into other bands as well as playing guitar with my band, Wolff, which became a duo, then a trio (www.wolff.rocks). I love the variety of playing bass, guitar and singing vocals and the combination of all these led to me releasing 2 albums of originals: Sins of the Times in 2009 and American Dream in 2016, both of which are on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, etc. Then the pandemic hit, sending both my consulting business and music performances into hibernation so like most of us, I was stuck at home and left with plenty of time. I got into live-streaming performances and I started working on more originals under the name Hindsight: 2020. My plan is to release it as an album in the next year or so..
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Nothing’s ever that smooth; my motto is “you succeed when you run out of ways to fail”. It’s as true with music as it is in product development. Luck – or more accurately, a combination of luck and being at the right place, seeing and seizing opportunities and taking risks to go down a new path – played a big role in seizing opportunities and overcoming many challenges. Key turning points for me have been 1) my parents seizing an opportunity to get me out of a failing UK state school with a government scholarship into a UK public (in the US: private) school, 2) finding a path to getting me into Grad school at Stanford, while securing a way to have the UK government pay for it and 3) with regards music, getting that unexpected boost when George Soros deciding to short the UK pound just when I needed the cash, and that forced me to launch my musical journey in spite of coming to grips with a new and challenging eduction system. Finally, 4) having an old Stanford bandmate years later recognize my name in a job application and reach out, which ended up getting me a position in a small group designing parts of a CT bomb detector that was spun out into a successful start-up that gave me a rewarding career and a wealth of business experience. Finally, after getting laid off ahead of a merger, I started my own consulting business, which gave me more freedom to pursue both work and music.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Following my old UK neighbor’s advice, I prioritized the “real job” over music, but I treat music in much the same way as I do my consulting work; I treat it as a business and I learned that my main business experiences often dovetailed with my music. So while the bulk of my focus has been consulting, there’s definitely some commonality between performing and promoting music and giving presentations to various worldwide security organizations. I pride myself on my ability to focus, analyze and think “outside of the box”. So there’s an odd synergy between consulting and playing music that I would never have expected or predicted.
Professionally, I’m most proud of 2 things: first is the development and worldwide rollout of CT based baggage scanners for explosives detection. The second is work I did for the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to develop risk based passenger screening (in 2011) which IATA presented to the US Senate Homeland Security Committee. This ultimately leading to PreCheck in the US and other improved security measures at airports worldwide. I’ve also been proud to work with over 50 companies to help advance their products. Though many didn’t ultimately go anywhere, the journey was fun and rewarding.
I’m also extremely happy with my bands’ musical achievements; we are “regulars” on the San Diego music circuit, playing our “60s – Todays Pop/ Rock classics from Both Sides of the Pond and Beyond”. I continue to find new, unique ways to entertain audiences, with different musical arrangements and sounds. I’m proud to have released 2 albums and I’m close to finishing up a third. While less fun than playing, I’ve developed new promotion, outreach tools to help our venues gain patrons and I’ve developed close, ongoing relationships with many great establishments in San Diego.
What matters most to you?
I look at this question in several ways. First is what’s important to me musically. I need to play songs that I enjoy but I don’t feel the need to exactly copy the original; as we say in my various bands, we’re a cover band, not a tribute band. Of course being a trio, we lack some of the instruments that are present (and sometimes featured) in the original tunes, so I find it fun being creative and coming up with our own “spin” on popular songs.
Second is having good working relationships with the venues that we play for. I view the relationship as a partnership; we provide services, help bring in patrons and in return, they book us, treat us well, pay us and are pleasant/ responsive to deal with. Any places that don’t meet those criteria, I just avoid.
That leads to the third: reliability. My bandmates and I pride ourselves on being reliable, showing up, putting in advanced PR and fan-recruitment efforts by whatever means work. If venues don’t have their act together or “flake out”, we avoid them; life’s too short. Ultimately what matters is getting out there, playing and entertaining audiences and having fun while doing it.
Pricing:
- Our prices vary depending on several factors.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.wolfflive.com, www.wolff.rocks, www.wolffduo.com
- Instagram: WolffLiveSD
- Facebook: Wolff Live
- Youtube: @WolffLive
