Making music in Silves
Four decades after launching his own successful music career in London,
a Silves-based producer wants to help others break into the music industry.
Making music in Silves
Four decades after launching his own successful music career in London, a Silves-based producer wants to help others break into the music industry.
Steve Lima has a record label fuTuRo-Sonic and is currently building what he describes as ‘the best recording studio in the Algarve". “I’m excited to be going back into a big, well-equipped studio. We’ll be offering the whole package – music and video production.”
Surprisingly, the boy who listened for the bassline in every song didn’t pick up his first guitar until sixteen. Within months, he was auditioning for a local working men’s club band in Camberley. His first gig earned him £25, three times his weekly factory wage.
“That’s when I discovered I could sing. I had no idea.” Two years later, Steve formed the suburban punk band The Members with a friend.Fame was never on Steve’s agenda: he preferred production. Still in his teens – and having written a lot of their early songs – he left The Members and pursued a career that would see him producing some of the biggest names in the music industry.
For the next few years, he learned everything there was to know about the industry, working with talent like Dexy's Midnight Runners (on Geno), Dana Gillepsie, Shakatak and Corrinne Bailey Rae. In the 1990s, the legendary Bob Dylan helped find Steve and Dana a manager for their Third Man act. Steve has remained with Bob Miller since.
In the early 2000s, he started experimenting with a new music form – the mashup – taking two (or more) separate tracks and ‘mashing’ them together to form a new song. “One I’ve done is putting 'My World is Empty Without You' by The Supremes over the backing track for 'Maybe Tomorrow' by the Stereophonics."
Another passion is breathing fresh life into classic Motown hits. Steve’s remix of 'My World is Empty Without You' attracted over two million views on YouTube. When his remixed 'Love Child' appeared online, one of the songwriters Pam Sawyer contacted him to say she loved what he’d done. His remix work attracted the attention of US blogger and television personality RuPaul and the story was subsequently picked up by Entertainment Weekly. “That’s how my Motown remixes became known worldwide and why I keep doing them.”
Working on the posthumous demo recordings of Eva Cassidy is a career highlight. As well as manipulating vocals on the original recordings, Steve played the guitar, bass guitar, drums and electric organ on Cassidy’s Somewhere album. It reached number four in the UK charts and his talents won him a gold disk.
Circa 1989 publicity shot for Third Man which was a collaboration with Blues legend Dana Gillespie
Recording the demo for Don’t Push at the BBC which was recorded by The Members for their first album
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