Steamhammer - 'Wailing Again' - after 53 years, with a new album!
STEAMHAMMER – ‘Wailing Again’!
Martin Pugh and Pete Sears are available for interviews
Release date: 30 th September, MiG Records www.mig-records.de
Steamhammer’s origins began with the blues. Like many of their peers, they soon experimented
with instrumental passages, introspective lyrics, and ultrasonic guitar effects, along with folk, jazz
and classical influences. After making a name for themselves in the English pubs of the late 1960s,
Steamhammer’s self-titled album debuted on Columbia Records in 1968, with Pete Sears on
Keyboards. It featured their trademark single, ‘Junior’s Wailing’ that sold well in Europe. Status Quo
also released the track on their third album ‘Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon’, featured ‘Juniors Wailing’ in
their live-set for many, many years and was opening track on their classic ‘Status Quo - Live!’ album, released in March 1977.
Steamhammer’s first album proved formative to the band’s memorable sound, with performances
built on a series of complex movements: changes of key and rhythm, one moment delicate, the next,
hard-hitting ‘body’ music. Each instrument – drums, guitar, bass, and flute – alternated lead, the rest
providing a background framework for the solos. These were the qualities that captured blues
legend, Freddie King’s attention, when he asked the band to back him on two European tours.
Co-caretaker of the musical vision born in Steamhammer from 1969-1974, and realized further in
Armageddon, Martin Pugh and his band mates shared studio time with Hall of Famers like Keith Relf
of the Yardbirds and Ron Wood of The Rolling Stones. Martin and the band then caught the eye of
blues guitar legend Freddie King, who invited Steamhammer to back him on two tours in Britain;
King, who Martin cites as an enormous influence on his own personal sound: a gutsy, complex
exploration of raw, wailing tones that come from creative improvisation, intuition, and aggressive
finger attack. It was around this time that Rod Stewart came to watch Steamhammer at a London
club, and hand-picked Martin to handle lead guitar work on ‘The Rod Stewart Album’, Stewart’s first
solo record. After blazing new trails throughout Europe with Steamhammer, Martin then moved to
California and signed a deal with A&M Records, recording the Armageddon album in 1974. When
Keith Relf’s sudden death dissolved the band, Pugh and Caldwell tried to re-assemble Armageddon
in the early 80’s producing a number of songs for a second LP under Capitol Records with Jesus
Christ Superstar’s lead singer Jeff Fenholt on vocals, but never got released.
Martin has since stayed in Los Angeles continuing to pursue musical projects, writing and immersing himself in the American Blues.
Pete Sears was a member of Jefferson Starship from 1974-84, writing, recording, touring and
performing on every show and album. They generated many Platinum hits including the ‘Red
Octopus’ album which stayed No. 1 on the Billboard Charts for 6 weeks. Pete co-wrote songs with
Grace Slick, including ‘Hyperdrive’ on the 1974 album ‘Dragonfly’. The song was used for the 1976
World Science Fiction Convention, MidAmeriCon, in Kansas City, Missouri, and was considered for
inclusion in Carl Sagan’s NASA Space Time Capsule. He also co-wrote many songs for the band with
lyricist Jeannette Sears, & in the ‘80’s they co-wrote the peace and justice, environmental album
‘Watchfire’ He also recorded and toured with ‘Starship’ from 1984-1987 with the hits ‘We Built This
City’ and ‘Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now’. He left in 1987, at odds with the band and its musical
direction and currently plays bass or keyboards with bands like f.e. Moonalice & Lester Chambers,
DNB, Steve Kimock & Zero, Harvey Mandel, Chris Robinson & the Green Leaf Rustlers. Beside co-producing, engineering and playing on the new Steamhammer album, Pete is working on a new recording featuring his own material.
Drummer John Lingwood, who originally joined the band in 1972, subsequently worked with live,
and on albums etc., with : Arthur Brown, Elkie Brooks, Barbara Dickson, Rick Astley, Roger Waters
(Pink Floyd), Brook Benton, Stomu Yamashta’s East Wind, Chris Farlowe, The Pirates, Chris Jagger,
Tony Ashton, Deniece Williams, Paul Young, Leo Sayer, Maddy Prior, Dave Greenslade, Slash (Guns N'
Roses), Roger Chapman, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Status Quo. John went back to Manfred
Mann’s Earth Band in 2016 and is still with them
Singer, guitarist, songwriter Phil Colombatto, originally from the city of Blues, St. Louis, Mo, he cut
his teeth playing guitar and singing downtown at the river city’s legendary Broadway Oyster Bar. He
was heavily inspired musically by his experiences as a teenager witnessing St. Louis greats Johnnie
Johnson and Chuck Berry regularly performing around town. In 2020 his band Louisiana Love Act was
performing at the Namm convention in Anaheim, Ca., for the Sennheiser company when Love Act
bassist and early Steamhammer collaborator Pete Sears introduced Colombatto to Steamhammer
front man Martin Pugh. A month later Colombatto would be brought on as the newest member of Steamhammer.
53 years after Martin Pugh and Pete Sears collaborated on the first Steamhammer album,they have reunited to start work on a new Steamhammer project.: STEAMHAMMER – ‘Wailing Again’!
