Steve Overland is one of the classic voices in melodic rock through his work with FM. He has teamed up with Fates Warning guitarist Jim Matheos to form Kings of Mercia and explore a harder edge to his music and voice. The band just released their second record Battel Scars and Steve took some time to talk about it.
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On how he teamed up with Jim Matheos – Well, it’s a strange one, really. There’s a famous journalist in the UK called Dave Ling. He writes for Classic Rock Magazine, he wrote for Sounds, he’s written for Kerrang, he’s very well known over here. Jim also knows Dave from the past, obviously done press with him or something. Jim had this idea to merge two styles together. He was looking bluesier melodic rock singer to merge it with his kind of detuned heavy guitars that he has with Fates Warning. He had this kind of idea, didn’t really know if it was going to work, but I was at the top of that list. So basically he contacted Dave and said, “Look, I’ve been trying to contact Steve Overland. Do you know him?” And he said, “Yeah, he’s an old friend of mine. He sang at my wedding”. So basically Dave contacted me, put me in touch with Jim. Jim ran the idea by me.
I said, look, Jim, “I don’t really know what you do. I think Fates Warning are a great, but the two styles are very, very different”. I said to send me one back in track and I’ll write a song to the backing track. If it works, fantastic. If it doesn’t, we’ve not lost too much time, it’s one backing track. So he sent me this, this backing track, which was absolutely amazing. It turned out to be the song “Humankind” from the debut album. I took the backing track, wrote the song, the title, and the melodies and stuff, and put a vocal on it in a studio down the road from me. Sent it back and Jim just said, “It’s like you read my mind, this is exactly what I want”. And he said, “I’m going to play it to my record label, Metal Blade”, and he ran it past Tracy (Vera) and we got a three-album deal on the strength of that one song. So. It definitely worked.
On if the band has ever met in person or just worked remotely – No, remotely. We’ve tried to get it together to shoot the videos together. It’s very tough because I’ve just had a year on the road with FM. We started in February in South America and we, as I was just saying before we came on, the interview. I came back from Greece last night at two o’clock this morning I’ve just done another month in Europe and it’s been a very busy year for all of us. So obviously Simon (Phillips) is very, very busy playing on everybody’s records, if they can get him. Joey (Vera)’s very busy. Armored Saint is always doing stuff. But the great thing is I talk to Jim on Zoom, me and Jim are constantly in contact about every single aspect of Kings of Mercia.
It’s very much a collaboration in every way, shape, and form. I’m very fortunate, when I’d written the first album in lockdown with Jim, we just got my vocals on Jim’s backing track demos, and then, Jim said, “Look, I’ve been thinking about the band, Steven. I think I might ask Joey to do it. I said, “Great, fantastic. If he wants to do it”. Then when he came back and said, “I’ve managed to get Simon Phillips to play the drums.” I’m like, “really?” Then obviously from the demo stage to when they did the master bass and drums on the record, the first record. It just became, for me it was a surprise because I wasn’t in America when they did it. Jim was, I wasn’t. It just blew my mind. It was just astounding. That’s been the main thing now with me and Jim is that Kings of Mercia has to be the band. It has to be this band. It won’t be a different drummer, there won’t be a different bass player because this band has kind of evolved and developed its own sound and identity. I’m very proud of it. I’m really proud of it. It’s been great fun to do.
On if he enjoys the challenge of singing outside his comfort zone – Absolutely. I love it. It’s a fresh challenge. Obviously, when Jim sends me something, some of the stuff on the new record is quite dark. Like “Aftermath”, and it’s very dark and it kind of suggests what the song should be about to me. I can’t write, “I love you, darling. Aren’t you marvelous?” I can write love songs forever for FM because that’s the kind of market it’s in, but you can’t, the music’s got far too much attitude to it, and I love that challenge of thinking outside the box of what I’m going to write the songs about. I’ve had to change the way I (sing), I couldn’t sing that kind of Paul Rogers, bluesy style the same in Kings of Mercia. I’ve had to kind of think about how I want to sound as the Kings of Mercia singer, as opposed to Steve Overland, the FM singer or whatever. So, I can’t, it’s much rougher the way I sing the songs to go with the music. It has to be, and I just love the challenge. It’s just been an amazing, amazing thing for me to do.
I’m looking forward to the next album, which hopefully Jim will start to write soon. I’ve just been on tour, Jim sent me a message, he said,” I’ve just had the album on, Steve. I just what a marvelous piece of work is. We should both be very proud.” We are very proud of it. We think it’s a great, great band
On if he waits for the music before he writes the lyrics or if he has lyrics written – No, I absolutely wait until I get the music because to me, the music, you think of some, like “Aftermath”, I’m thinking, “Wow. It’s the darkest song I’ve ever worked on”. So I thought it has to be about something dark. So I thought the end of the world’s fairly dark, that’s what it does to me.
I hear the music and it inspires me to come up with, if there are any relationship songs with Kings of Mercia, like “Wrecking Ball” from the first album, they’re anger. They’re not, “I want you back. You left me. I’m sad”. They’re angry songs. Kings of Mercia songs all have real angst and they’re anthemic, I think. They’re anthemic rock songs. To be honest with you, Jim’s never sent me anything through that has been rejected from records. Everything he sends me is of such a high standard and sounds like a produced record. He’s a very, very talented man and one of the nicest guys you could ever work with. He’s fantastic. Jim is just such a great guy to work with. He’s very prolific. He’s really, really nice guy. He’s got no side to him. He’s just a really, really easy person to make good music with. He really is.
On if the band plans on touring – Absolutely. We’ve talked about it all the time and it’s something that I think this band will come alive when people see it live because of the anthemic nature of the songs. To be able to do the festival thing that you’ve mentioned, that was a great call, that would be fantastic for a band like this, because you can maximize your impact very quickly on festivals, so if we could do that. We’ve talked about it, we’d all love to do it. It needs to be seen as a band, with the lineup we have it would be incredible, definitely something to look out for in the future….That’s how I visualize it. To have us doing a like Download or a massive festival in the States or what, some of those massive, huge festivals, I just think the band would come alive. I think would be an amazing thing to do. So it’s definitely something in the forefront of my mind to do in the future, I know it is in Jim. So it’s something we’ll try and get together.
On if he still has a lot to accomplish with FM – Very definitely and that’s very nice to hear you say that, that’s just being generally that’s why the band still can tour the world and still have the following they have because although we have that legacy, we’ve been going for 40 years now, for me, it’s all about what you do next. For me personally, it’s all about what I do next. Hence Kings of Mercia, hence all the things I do. It’s all about keeping on top of your game, really. I guess that’s the way I would put it.
For me, writing songs is still probably my most pleasurable thing. I love doing it and recording them. From that idea you have in your head. It’s just in your head to it being there in front of everybody else. You said, “This is what I was thinking”. And you can play it to somebody when you’ve recorded it, that still excites me the same way. So FM are very much a band. We’re now doing another album. We’re on another album next year. Next year’s touring’s already just about done. Booked and finished. So they drive us hard, you know, because we’re so young. That’s what it is. Basically they get the whole schedule together, the management and our promoters, and then say, “Right, these are the tours. You get on with the album”. So we need to have an album done by early next year. We started it before we went away to Spain. So we’re well on our way. We have the songs. It’s just now finding those slots to go in the studio and put it down. But that’s great for you to say that because it is all about, I think it’s all about your next record.
In this day and age, you can’t really afford to let your standards slip, in my opinion. Yes, Tough It Out was a great album. It did very well for the band and the early albums did, and I always want the next record to be the best one we ever make. So that’s what I’ll be striving for with this one too.
On the story behind “Shot In The Dark” from his band Wildlife – Oh, we haven’t got time for that one, I’m afraid. Basically, we wrote the song, we were going to do a second album We were signed to Swan Song managed by Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin’s management, everything It was all In place to do a second album. “Shot in the Dark” was one of the first songs written for that album. Phil (Soussan) then went away and the next thing I knew I was in, I think my parents’ house visiting, and there was a TV show called “The Tube”, and I was in the kitchen, and I suddenly heard “Shot in the Dark” on the TV with Ozzy Osbourne singing it.
So Phil had taken the song, as I believe, and said it was totally his song. Ozzy did change the lyric to suit more his style, but the melodies are all the same. It’s one of those things. Phil took the song. We did it on the BBC over here, where it’s recorded by Tommy Vance on the show, and it’s a very similar version of the song. All the chords are written by my brother and stuff like that. It was a bit like, “Oh, right then”, because I didn’t know the story really until Sharon Osbourne contacted me and said that Phil had taken the song to Ozzy, saying that was totally his song. So that’s how it happened, all in the past. I can dwell on these things, but it’s not worth it. You just have to get on with your career and I do pretty well. I have a lovely life, so I’ll just put all that stuff behind me.
