Widely considered as one of Canada’s most prolific guitarists, Steve Hill has consistently delivered wildly ambitious performances and albums. Heralded where he goes, the guitarist, singer, drummer, harmonica player, songwriter and accomplished producer is a music force to be reckoned with.
Further to the facts that Steve has won a Juno Awards, played concertos with Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphonic Orchestra, won enough Blues Awards to fill a bathtub and walked the boards of too many stages to count throughout his 30-year career. When you stop and start listening to his music, you know you’re listening to the real deal.
Already playing the bar circuit at the age of 16, Steve turned pro two years later when he joined the Bob Harrisson Blues Band. He left two years later to pursue a solo career. He released his first album in 1997. Real Blues Magazine proclaimed, “Steve Hill is for my money the best your blues guitarist on the North American scene today.”
He spent the next fifteen years touring across Canada and Europe, released albums with different line-ups, and became a one-man band in 2012. Following the success of his Juno nominated Solo Recordings Volume 1, which also won at the 2013 International Blues Challenge, Solo Recordings Volume 2 Won the Juno Award and 7 Maple Blues Awards in 2014-2015.
It was followed by Solo Recordings Volume 3 in 2016 which has had close to six million Spotify streams to date. In 2018, he released The One-Man Band Blues Rock Band. The Live album shows an artist at the top of his game. It comes to no surprise the Montreal Gazette has referred to Steve Hill as “the meanest guitar player in Canada.”
A guitar stylist with a wide music vocabulary, he has performed over 2,500 concerts in many configurations. For the past 10 years, he has toured extensively throughout Canda and Europe supporting his critically acclaimed solo records album trilogy and his One-Man Band Show.
When it comes to one-man bands, Steve Hill has no limits. Anything goes. He is the true exponent of a one-man band. Steve performs standing up while singing and playing guitar. His fee plays bass drum, snare drum, and with a drumstick fused to the head of his trusty guitar to hit the hi-hat and cymbal. Germany’s Gitar Magazine proclaimed Steve as being, “the most spectacular one-man band on the planet.”
Over the years, he has shared the stage with many of his heroes, 8including Ray Charles, B.B. King, Hubert Sumlin, Jimmy Vaughan, and ZZ Top, to name a few. He has explored everything from rock, country, folk, metal, jazz, while continuing to fuse it all with his first love, the blues.