Simon Green interviews Steve Summers, Blues in Britain issue 294

Blues in Britain last spoke to guitarist Steve Summers when the band Long Road Home released their debut album in 2024. Since then, although the band has currently taken a hiatus, Steve Hims has kept busy, recently releasing an album, Rewired, a selection of remastered tracks from his two previous solo albums and four new recordings.

Surrounded by guitar cases in preparation for an imminent house move, Steve finds the time to talk to Simon Green.

Before we talk about Rewired, can I enquire about the health of Long Road Home's singer, Mike Sebbage? We knew he had been ill .

Mike actually had a cardiac arrest on stage. it was pretty hairy; we were playing to a packed house, with everybody really getting into the music and the next thing you know, Mike's fallen over, I was playing a guitar solo and suddenly there he was, on the floor. I thought maybe he'd tripped over the cables or something. We stopped the gig and fortunately there were two nurses in the audience, and they saved his life really, gave him a heart massage, the kiss of life and everything. It was terrible to see the treatment they gave him, but man, they saved his life. It was touch and go for about three months. He couldn't speak for about three or four weeks because they had this tube down his throat.

He's an old friend of yours, so this was doubly tragic for you

We played a load of music together in the seventies, with keyboard player Vic Martin, so I've known Mike for a long time. Luckily, he's recovered physically very well. He's lost a lot of weight and he looks great - the best I've seen him for years - but sadly, his voice is just not there. We tried, you know, we did a few gigs without him, with me on lead vocals, but it didn't feel the same at all because i didn't write the songs. I wrote the music, but not the words, which Mike wrote. The songs didn't really suit my voice, so that wasn't working We started working to get him back into the band but, unfortunately, his voice was way off. We did the Cambridge Rock Festival last year and he joined us on stage for a couple of songs. While everybody was so glad to see him back, he just can't sing like he used to at the moment, so we've put the band on ice. It's not over - I mean, he and l have written an album which is ready to go, but we can't do it without him, until his voice gets back to normal.

We're waiting to see what happens. I hope he'll come back because I think it'd be great for him to do it. He'd be heartbroken if he can't do it anymore, he's a terrific singer. Long Road Home without Mike is not Long Road Home.

So, in the meantime, I've resurrected my own band with Derek White on bass and Simon Needler on keyboards - both from Long Road Home - and Scott Hunter on drums. Scott is actually a well-known author. He writes crime novels!

lan Salisbury was originally on keys with Long Road Home. Why did he leave? 

lan's a dear friend. He's a great guy but he just didn't want to travel anymore. We played the Blackpool Blues Festival last year, and he said, I'm just done with this, and before that we'd done the Isle of Arran Festival, which was rather haphazard because there'd been a fire at one of the ports, and the festival itself was a little bit of a mess. We thought, why are we doing this? Simon came into that band and he was only in the band five minutes before Mike had his situation up in Darlington. I've always loved Simon's playing. He's a great Hammond player. It's just such fun having a real Hammond on stage with a Leslie speaker.

Let's talk about the new album. What was the thinking behind Rewired?

We put out an EP first of four new tracks. including a cover of (Jethro Tull's) A New Day Yesterday' - which we've been playing live from day one - because there was no physical product people could buy at gigs. Based on that experience, I remastered everything, which I must admit I'm very happy with. I did all the production on it myself, and the mixing and mastering, which I normally get others to do. It took me a while to get the mastering right. but I'm really, really pleased with the results.

It seems to me that you've chosen the tougher, punchier tracks from your previous albums, to make a powerful collection.

The tracks that I put on the album are all tracks I really like and really stand by. The two previous albums were done as a power trio to which I added keyboards to improve the sound. Now the keyboard is an integral part of the band I can write a little bit more diversely but still very bluesy. 

Were you deliberately trying to showcase your guitar playing?

There's three sides to what I do: I write songs, I play guitar and I sing. The old songs were more guitar-focused because it was a three-piece band. I'd always intended to keep my band going anyway: it's got my name on the tin, it's my music. For a couple of years Long Road Home was centre stage and my band would do an occasional gig, whereas now we've got loads of gigs in the diary, we're going full steam ahead and it's centre stage for me.

Did you go to a mastering suite or was this something you could do in your own home?

I've always done my own mixing, although typically when I've done an album, I've used someone else to do the mastering. For me, it's a final mix. I can mix to a good standard, but the secret I found is that it's really about the loudness of the track. All the tracks have got to sound the same on an album. A couple of tracks on the album were recorded back in 2012, with different musicians and so on.

To make them all sound the same, you tweak the EQ, add a bit of compression here and there, a little bit of this, that and the other. Play it back and ensure it sounds coherent.

It's much easier than mixing, but it is like an esoteric art. I now feel I know what I'm doing, so I'll probably always do it in future. It's a combination of technical and artistic skills, to get a balance between the two. I used Derek as my soundboard; he'd come back with feedback, which was good to get from someone with a good pair of ears who's been around the block and knows what he's listening for. The way we record now is,  I write the songs in my studio here, add the vocals and guitars, then we go to the recording studio, record Hammond organ and drums and the bass as needed.

You've written all the songs on the album: do you find it easy to come up with ideas?

I'm quite eclectic in my taste really, although blues is my core value. Some of my earlier stuff is quite jazzy, but that's not right for what I'm doing now. It's got to be straight down the line blues rock, as far as I'm concerned, I'm a riff man; I love Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple and all those great riffs from those bands in the early seventies, when I was a young teenager.

You take all those musical influences and it comes out in the blues, albeit from a different route.

You've mentioned that the band has a busy gig schedule!

Yeah, we're doing quite a few good gigs at the moment. We're doing some pubs, some festivals and some clubs. We're getting more and more dates. Derek's got his own agency, as you know, he's a handy contact and well-connected in the blues community. He knows everyone, and he's a lovely fella, as well as not a bad bass playerl We had his birthday party last December, I think it was, and everybody was there for him. He does so many gigs and plays in so many bands and he was very keen to play with this band. It surprised me a little bit because I thought he might be wanting to do something else. It's great to have Scott and Derek and Simon. They're really good musicians. I feel really privileged because the sound of this band is bloody amazing!

Simon Green

BLUES IN BRITAIN ISSUE 294 JUNE 2026