Randy Steele Shares 'A Golden Smile'

06-18-2023

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(Dreamspider) Randy Steele is an award winning banjo pickin' singer/songwriter from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Randy's creative music ranges from character based narratives to deeply personal and revelatory. Emotionally powerful, Steele can wake you up with a hard-drivin' song, draw you in with deep lyrics, and have you laughing (or crying) with a compelling confession. Steele independently released a new single, "A Golden Smile," today!

"Bright banjo tones and Randy's smiling vocals and a poppy click track set the tone for this tale of woe," wrote Americans Highways in their premiere of "A Golden Smile."

The song, which landed him as a finalist in this year's Kerrville Folk Festival's Grassy Hill New Folk Competition and a semi-finalist in American Songwriter's Song of the year 2022, is based on Randy's remembrance of his own self doubt and fear when he first started dating his wife; they have been married for 22 years.

If I had a heart of stone
Ventricles of granite
Pumping gravels thru my veins
I don't have a heart of stone
So it don't matter anyways.

Randy says of "A Golden Smile," "The click is an old Seth Thomas metronome that is sitting in front of a microphone. This very metronome sat on my Mom's piano for decades and she recently gave it to me. It's one of those crank up styles that will hold time for a bit but eventually slows then just dies. It does have a more aesthetically pleasing acoustic sound than most of the modern day metronomes. I've played banjo and guitar scales with that old thing for so long now that the song feels like a duet with an old friend."

Steele's songwriting is often storytelling in nature, Randy says, "As of late though, the songs that are more personal are tending to be the ones that mean more thus they end up on the recordings."

Randy's high-energy bluegrass band, High Cold Wind, brings out the best in his charisma and superb storytelling and they are set to independently release a 5-song self-titled EP this August which will also contain "A Golden Smile."