ON the Beat | Born to be Re-born, Blues and Pedal Steel on the Town

Tab Benoit, I Hear Thunder tour | Photo: Jean Frank

Two years back, the Lobero Theatre found its timbers shivered with the sound of Louisianan blues-rocker Tab Benoit, who tapped deep into the Houma, Louisiana-born guitarist-singer’s bayou roots and various shades of true blues and the rock-flavored blues muse. The steamy hot Lobero show also featured a cameo by Santa Barbara–born-and-bred blues-rocker Alastair Greene as special guest. They swapped riffs, meatily, in a pact which led to Greene touring with the veteran Benoit, on his signature thin-line Fender Telecaster.

It’s bayou blues time again at the Lobero, on Friday, August 29, with the return of Benoit, whose mantle includes several Blues Music Awards trophies and the glow of Grammy nominations. Benoit is presently on the road (an endless road) under the moniker of the “I Hear Thunder” tour, in the wake of 2024’s album I Hear Thunder, released on Benoit’s own Whiskey Bayou Records label. For a hearty taste of what he delivers live, also check out the recent live date Live at the 2025 New Orleans Jazz and heritage Festival (listen here).

The Steppenwolf Saga, on the Germany/Canada/Hollywood/805 Express

John Kay and Nick St. Nicholas the Lobero, 2025 | Photo: Josef Woodard

As part of my due diligence in researching the 2024 documentary Born to be Wild: the Story of Steppenwolf, screened at the Lobero on Saturday and presented as a benefit for Steppenwolf leader and longtime Santa Barbaran John Kay’s activist work preserving elephants and other wildlife, I went on a deep dive into the work of its director.

German Oliver Schwhehm’s filmography includes such offbeat and very German titles/subjects as Fly Rocket Fly, Kalanag-Hitler’s Magician, and the quirky jewel Cinema Perverso: The Wonderful and Twisted World of Railroad Cinemas, about the tradition of post-WWII “bahnhofskinos” — humble movie theaters in West German railway stations from the’50s through the ‘80s. These theaters showed “trash cinema” (similar to the “grindhouse” circuit which so fascinated Quentin Tarantino), as well as proto-indie film, soft porn, Bruce Lee–spawned cinema, and, no doubt, a film like Easy Rider.

And so we come full circle to Born to be Wild, the film and the iconic song — made immortal through the Dennis Hopper–directed and starring counter-culture sensation of a flick — which propelled Steppenwolf into its heyday of mega-fame and lasting fame. It turns out this doc ties in neatly with Schwehm’s interest in peripheral German subjects, in that the band’s twin forces — John Kay (born Joachim Fritz Krauledat) and bassist Nick St. Nicholas (born Klaus Karl Kassbaum) — were German youths in the post-WWII turmoil, whose families migrated to Toronto. This led to the musical partnering of the pair in St. Nicholas’ band the Sparrows.

(One tasty tidbit savored in the film is a focus on the actual songwriter of “Born to Be Wild,” the musician who became known as Mars Bonfire. It was originally written more as a folk ballad, more about a desired “wildness” in an ideal closer to Euell Gibbons than Dennis Hopper.)

Long story short, the Sparrows made headway in Toronto and headed to California, some success and then a breakup. From the ashes was born Steppenwolf (the rather pretentious band name was suggested by their producer — none in the band had read Hermann Hesse’s novel). A record was made, a star was born, thanks to Easy Rider. A mercurial rise and fall led to a split give years later, a fractious split with St. Nicholas, a legacy of shabby bogus versions of the band diluting the brand, Kay returning with the official John Kay and Steppenwolf. The franchise continued until a “retirement” gig in 2018. Since then, Kay has focused on his activist work, geared around the Maue Kay Foundation he leads with his longtime wife Jutta Maue.

Schwehm has fashioned a refreshingly quirky variation on the tired old “rock doc” formula, not only through his skilled interweaving of archival footage and stills and serpentine narrative and getting juicy quotes from Alice Cooper, Jello Biafra, and Cameron Crowe, but also through a clever and slightly subversive double-perspective storytelling method. This is not simply the John Kay story but is willfully inter-stitched with the alternate view of the goofy-witted St. Nicholas — a Venturan — in “he said/he said” fashion. St. Nicholas also provided invaluable private footage to flesh out the history in visual terms.

Schwehm’s feat is key to the film’s intrigue: It’s almost as if the irritatingly one-sided view in the documentary Once We Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band had slyly folded in Levon Helms’s vantage instead of relying solely on Robertson’s sage/bossman’s testimony.

Another novel twist in the story of the film is its mediator function, bringing old friends Kay and St. Nicolas together for the first time in decades, at the film’s premiere in Munich. And there they were, hand in hand, on the Lobero stage for a post-screening Q&A. Kay said they had rekindled their lost friendship, and that, “we’re a little longer in the tooth now and certain things aren’t as important as they used to be … this ogre from the past needed to be gotten rid of.”

St. Nicholas, onstage, lived up to the eccentric personality he projected in the film. “I’m happy to be here,” he said, and after a pause, “I’m happy to be anywhere.” When an audience member asked why they weren’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, St. Nicholas dryly, wryly replied “part of the reason is that the Hall of Fame is in Cleveland.” Rim shot.

We never got much of that kind of humor in Steppenwolf’s musical persona, although the band is part of the tough rock culture spoofed in Spinal Tap. A little might have gone a long way. All in all, the Lobero’s Saturday night outing was an unexpected and multi-layered treat.

The Years After

Pete Yorn has been around, and back. The handsome and now 51-year-old singer-songwriter (and sometimes bandleader), who made his first splash with his 2001 album Musicforthemorningafter and other public splashes along the years (including a project with friend Scarlet Johanssen), paid a return visit to SOhO after many years away as part of his “You & Me” tour. The Hard Way is his tenth and latest record, a short but mighty validation that he’s still “got it,” on whatever show biz level he traffics in these days.

Yorn hit the SOhO stage with only guitars (six- and 12-stringers), his sturdy clean voice and a treasury of well-crafted songs in tow, under a baseball cap turned fashionably backwards (or is it fashionable anymore?). Plenty of diehard fans were in the house, happily singing along, and hollering out requests (at his behest, usually) and wisecracking (which he gladly fielded).

Yorn meandered through his alternately moody and perky song catalogue over a 27 (count ‘em) song set list, opening with the new song “Don’t Keep Me Waiting,” and closing with his old hit “For nancy (‘Cos it Already is).” He got Elliot Smith-y broody on “Turn of the Century” and dipped into punk popcorn with his take on the Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love (with Someone You Shouldn’tve?),” as heard on the Shrek soundtrack.

Speaking of Shrek, Yorn also played a moving tribute to Jeff Buckley, “Bandstand in the Sky,” presaged by the disclaimer “I can’t play like him. I’m a simpleton, musically.” Yorn does play mostly the old school, singer-songwriter rules, draw on the usual six-ish pack of chords and no fancy stuff, guitaristically. But he arrives at his own private mode of inspired simplicity, with surprise elements tossed into the song salad, along with clever turns and personal insights which morph in meaning over the years.

TO-DOINGS:

I wasn’t familiar with the act/artist known as Twin Shadow, headed to SOhO on Friday, August 29, but it/he had me at what I was told would be “two pedal steel players.” Being an avid and hopeless fan of his great American instrument, the prospect of hearing not one, but two, pedal steelers on a single stage is too tempting to miss.

Twin Shadows is the nom de plume of George Lewis, Jr., whose latest album is the stripped-down and often steel-brushed Georgie (hear here), partly an introspective memorial to his belated father. For the “Georgie Goes West” tour, the setting includes L.A.-based steel player Zena Kay, a k a Steel Witch. Come for the inspired singer and the songs, stay for the steel, if you’re one of us.