We were lucky to catch up with Steve Wolff recently and have shared our conversation below.
Steve, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
My parents were independent business owners (antique restorers and dealers) back in the UK and both had a strong work ethic, which they passed on to me by example and with comments like “Always do your best, even if you fail you can always look back on that with pride” and “if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well”. They also impressed on me that failing is a good thing; which I transitioned into my general life motto of; “you succeed when you run out of ways to fail!” I’ve found that to be true in business, engineering and music, not to mention relationships. Growing up, I saw them go through hard times (including losing my brother in a motorbike accident in London) and pick themselves back up and succeed and excel, to the point where my father was selected by Buckingham Palace to build a mirror designed by the Queen of England for her study on the Royal Yacht and also to gild her coronation thrones, which were even reused at Westminster for King Charles’ coronation this past year.
Even with that, I didn’t do well at the UK state school I was at. My parents found a way to get me into the UK private school system using a UK government grant to get me better opportunities. Once there, the drive to work hard and succeed was ingrained into the broad education system that I received in my almost 7 years there and fortunately I got with the program and did well, both there and later at University, first in the UK and then, getting a scholarship to pursue my Masters, at Stanford.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I grew up on London, UK but I have spent almost ⅔ of my life in California when I moved here to get my Master’s degree. It was that experience that started my music career as my UK scholarship to Stanford suffered when George Soros shorted/ devalued the UK pound by 50%. With no work permit, my only option to supplement my meager living expenses was to get a band together and play Frat and Dorm parties. Still, I bore in mind the warnings about “turning pro” from my UK next-door neighbor who played professionally with The Kinks, Roger Daltrey (of The Who) and other bands. He drummed into me (literally, he’s a great drummer!) that most of us are better off having a “real job” and making music a paying hobby rather than making music the “real job”. I really enjoyed playing out live and we “introduced” New Wave and Alternative 80s music to Stanford, which at the time was musically locked into the 1960s and 70s. Even while playing, I studied hard, got my Masters and then found a job in the Silicon Valley (working, oddly, for a San Diego company), first as an engineer, then project manager and finally in several VP roles in a startup company that developed the first bomb-detection technologies for screening bags at airports. I moved to San Diego in 2000, starting out the millennium in a new city.
After 911, I was laid off thanks to the bureaucracy surrounding the formation of the Dept. of Homeland Security and I became a consultant for other Homeland Security technology companies all over the world, which actually gave me more time for music. I played – and continue to play – at local San Diego bars and clubs all over the county, most recently solo, with my band, Wolff (www.wolff.rocks) and with a couple of other bands where I play bass for more variety. We play almost exclusively covers (“Rock Classics from Both Sides of the Pond and Beyond”) but along the way, Wolff recorded and released 2 albums of originals on services like Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, etc.; Sins of the Times (2009) and American Dream (2016).
Of course, I didn’t neglect the “real job:, which bought in enough revenue to live in this increasingly costly city. Work-wise, the two things I’m most proud of are 1) is the development and worldwide rollout of CT based baggage scanners for explosives detection, which are now being rolled out for the checkpoint, allowing everyone to keep all their items in the bags and (eventually) take more liquids on board and 2) being selected by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to head up a small team to optimize and improve the passenger screening checkpoint at airports. IATA presented my work to the US Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2011, which ultimately led to PreCheck in the US and other security measures at airports worldwide.
When the pandemic hit, like many of us, both my consulting business and music performances went into hibernation so I was left with plenty of time. I got into live-streaming solo performances and writing and recording original songs (lyrically focused on various events that occurred during Covid). I also got into video editing, creating rock videos to go along with them, which are on my YouTube Channel (www.youtube.com/@WolffLive). I also assembled a web site called Jam The Wire (www.jamthewire.com), whose goal is to consolidate original videos from different artists on to a single web site, where listeners can select between different “channels” and musicians can select different levels of exposure to their songs. The idea was that each musician’s fans would get exposure to more musicians and the community would hopefully grow. The advantage for musicians is that they’d not just be an isolated channel on YouTube, but would be part of a community of independent musicians and – ideally paying – listeners.
After months of working on this, getting musicians on the site, I realized that it’d take more effort and skills than I have to conduct outreach both to musicians and to solicit paying audiences; I couldn’t see myself doing NPR-style pledge drives to drive revenue. Also by that time, Covid restrictions were easing, so it was time to explore playing live again. Sadly, many of the venues we played at didn’t survive the lockdown, so I decided to be aggressive promoting the bands and my solo act to both new and surviving venues. Based on my pre-covid experience, I thought I might end up with maybe a 10% success rate getting new gigs. It turned out to be over 50%, so we got – and remain – really busy; I’m writing this in the middle of a 4 gig marathon over the 4th July weekend! So between more gigs and the consulting work picking up (more slowly), I decided to spend less time on Jam The Wire – it’s still there, and if any musicians or fans are interested, they can reach out to me, and I can get their videos on the site and fans can watch some cool music videos from independent artists the US and as far away as Mexico and the UK.
So, half way into 2023 between my band and solo acts under Wolff (www.wolfflive.com), my other bands: Backstage Pass (www.bspband.com) and Pomerado (www.blimylimey.com) plus the “real job”, I’m busy.
Musically, my next goal, which is in its early stages right now, is a project called called Rock For Relief. The idea is to set up concerts for local bands at one or more decent size venues, do heavy promotion in local media and through on-line social groups like MeetUp. Rock for Relief would charge admission with the bulk of the proceeds going towards one or more charities. I did something like this a few years ago for Earthquake relief in Haiti but the venue no longer exists, so I need a venue partner with a big enough space to do this. If there any bar owners out there reading this who are interested, let me know! In addition to doing good, they’d get free promotion for their venues.
So, I continue to combine music with my other marketing and management skills. If you’re interested in learning more, check out my various web sites and feel free to reach out to me.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I’d say that the main skills are:
1) Know what you want to do and develop the skills to do it, but be open to new opportunities that can come out of nowhere.
2) Be persistent in pursuit of your dreams and don’t be put off by failures; just find another path. You’ll succeed when you run out of ways to fail
3) Strive for excellence but not perfection – I follow the 90/10 rule: it takes 10% of the time to get to the 90% point, but 90% of the time to get that last 10%. Usually that last 10% is not worth it.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
At this point, the most useful partners would be those that could make the Rock for Relief concept a reality: venue managers in San Diego area, media contacts to help us get the word out and other bands that might be interested in being a part of something like this, receiving some pay for their efforts but the goal is to give as much money as possible to the specific charity(ies).
Contact Info:
- Website: www.wolfflive.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wolfflivesd/
- Facebook: Wolff Live
- Twitter: @WolffLive
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/@wolfflive
- Other: www.wolff.rocks www.jamthewire.com www.bspband.com www.blimylimey.com
Image Credits
Steve Wolff
