ABOUT

and

Hello, my name is Steve and I am Ball Of Lame. I enjoy playing in rock groups and working with other musicians, and there's a big benefit to playing in a band environment. I currently play in a band ( Bjerke & the Ripsters) that play some of my favorite music and I get a huge rush in that situation. Then again, I often have the urge to play music outside of a band situation. Being a multi-instrumentalist, I can easily throw together a song in one evening.

Ball Of Lame is what I created when I wanted to record by myself, but didn't have the ego to put my name in the 'artist' category. It's a self-deprecating version of the phrase "ball of flame", and allows me to release a metric shit-ton of music under the pretense that it's all just 'lame'. Personally, I love some of the stuff I've done, and still enjoy listening to it. It's not for everyone and I realize that.

That being said, I'd like to explain what these recordings represent. No, it's not exactly blood, sweat and tears. It's just a guy recording one track at a time, and sometimes learning completely new songs in a matter of 15 minutes. My recording of "Grenade" was done within 2 hours of hearing the song for the first time. I just happened to notice it was near the top of the Billboard charts and thought I should try a song from the current decade. Using some helpful chords from the folks on the World Wide Web, I proceeded to record the song and feel really proud of my accomplishment. You can hear the finished product here. Some songs, however, have a different story.

One song I recorded, Rod Stewart's "Maggie May", is the hardest recording experience I've ever experienced. Before you e-mail me that it's a simple song to play, hold your breath. The recording process for this song was exhausting, and I'll tell you why. On a Sunday in the Fall of 2010 I was watching a Vikings game, and it started looking like they were going to get pounded. So at halftime, I decided to start recording the aforementioned "Maggie May". Honestly, I'm not a big fan of Rod Stewart and this wasn't my favorite song by the man. But I didn't let that stop me from accomplishing this task. Since I hadn't ever played it before, I ended up spending a good 30 minutes playing the song over and over in my headphones. This gave me a big headache, literally. Being the strong Scandinavian that I am, I forged on and recorded all of the piano, guitar, bass, and vocal tracks. Once I finished recording and mixing all of the tracks (which took me 2.5 hours), the mastering was all that was left. Unfortunately I was distracted all the while by my pounding headache, and I forgot to save the files as I was recording. And when I went to create a stereo mix, my computer shut down unexpectedly and I lost all my tracks. Most people would say, "Screw this! I hate that Scottish bastard anyway!" and decide not to re-record all of the tracks (around 12 or so). But not me. I re-recorded every single track and it ended up relatively mediocre. If you want to listen to it, click here.