 Here's a guy who once traded a Guild guitar for a car stereo. But that car stereo has long since been stolen. Now Steven keeps his guitars, plays them, writes songs and sings with his musician friends. One reviewer said, "Steven Kalas looks at life with a bit of a tilt a collision of humor, pathos, and celebration...a compelling performer." He's entertained folks from quiet coffee houses to parks, theatres, and concert halls.
Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Steven was graduated from Northern Arizona University with a B.S. in Psychology and earned his Masters in Theology at Southern Methodist University. He currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he works as a marriage and family counselor, bereavement specialist, and behavioral health consultant. Steven writes Human Matters, published Sundays and Tuesdays in the Las Vegas Review Journal.
Steven is a former Episcopal priest, turned therapist, free lance writer and published author. He does stand-up comedy, and travels nationally as a professional public speaker. His favorite hobby is songwriting and performing in the band PaperCymbal. His new album Lessons From the Dead is available on his website stevenkalas.com.
Steven is father to three sons: Jonathan, 16, Aaron, 14, and (what was he thinking?) Joseph, age 5. He is a rabid Phoenix Suns’ fan, a crazed Green Bay Packer fan, a Beatlemaniac, and owns DVD recordings of every known work of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In his spare time he grows lettuce.
PaperCymbal
The name emerged one day in rehearsal when the band was laughing about people whose favorite pop group was the Patridge Family that the ultimate irony of our culture might be that you could REALLY LOVE a band that doesn't actually exist. We wondered if the producers had removed the cymbals from Tracy Patridge's tambourine and replaced them with faux paper cymbals so she wouldn't make a racket during filming.
PaperCymbal is...
Steven Kalas: Acoustic Guitar, Lead vocals
Temple Hall: Backing Vocals, Vocal Arrangements
Kirsten Keilty: Backing Vocals, Vocal Arrangements
David Braun: Waaay doesn't suck Lead Guitar
Andre Brunson: Bass Guitar, Dredlocks
Stacy Henry: Drums, forehead perspiration, taskmaster of excellence
Naldo Pasello: Cello
Dave Romero: Percussion, nice hat on stage
Lessons From the Dead was recorded at Digital Insight Studios, Las Vegas, Nevada.
Recording Engineer: Matt Szpyrka
Mastering: Matt Szpyrka
Taking all our money: Rob Devlin
Graphic Design: Catherine Dalinis
Photography: Jackie Robinson
Executive Producer: Jackie Robinson / Stavros Entertainment
THE MUSIC
Steven and his band, PaperCymbal play everything from driving pop-rock to tasty, acoustic folk guaranteed to hammer you with melody and take you apart with sheer poetry. Steven writes lyrics that are a gaping mirror into the human experience---extraordinary images of ordinary life.
You'll hear songs that are acoustic, folk laced pop, unique and eclectic; a combination of folk-rock and pop; a voice that's been compared with Cat Stevens and a style that morphs The Beatles, Jim Croce, James Taylor, Crosby Stills Nash, Paul Simon, Matchbox 20, Maroon 5, Rod Stewart and well...Steven Kalas.
If it's real, then art is about the risk of being wholly oneself. The journey is costly beyond imagining.
For me, Lessons From the Dead records a particularly intense leg of that journey. In the near two years since this CD project was begun, my entire life has burned down and begun again.
You will hear songs celebrating love, and songs witnessing the helpless, inexorable unraveling of love. There are songs holding on for dear life against the onslaught of darkness and stupidity, and songs which smile, celebrate, and laugh. If you find any of these songs kicking your ass, rest assured they were written to first kick my own.
Unless otherwise noted, you have only me to thank or blame for the lyrics and melodies you will hear on this album. But some credits are due:
An End to the One Man Band, co-authored with me by Paul Taylor and D.R Wilke, was inspired by the work and legacy of the late Wes Frensdorf, Episcopal Bishop of Nevada. The title song was conceived from a parable told in Belden Lane's book "The Solace of Fierce Landscapes." Here Inside the Crucible (with you) emerged from the work of marital therapists David Schnarch and Ruth Morehouse and David's book "Constructing the Sexual Crucible."
The melody and story of Mary Said was made possible by Temple Hall's writing and arrangement of simply the bitchinest guitar riff and cord changes I've ever heard. But I want to dedicate the song to the actual 'Mary.' La-la-LA-la, Lovely Linda. You are my treasured friend.
My favorite love song on the CD is also the most ironic: I Wonder If You Know. Turns out she did not know.
Paul Taylor composed the clever alliteration in the verses of You See Better, And Mr. Jack Paper is of course a sequel to Peter Yarrow and Leonard Lipton's song "Puff the Magic Dragon." That's their words and melody which appear in Jack's dream.
For me, the CD's most powerful and important song is True and Beautiful. It was inspired by a woman who was neither. But I owe her a paradoxical `thank you` for the way her darkness forced me to face my own darkness, forced me to claim my highest truth, my deepest values, and the wholeness of myself. Only cost me a vocation, a course of anti-depressants, and my soul mate. I see you, Katharine.
PaperCymbal is Stacy, Andre, Temple, David, Kirsten, and me. The prodigious talents of my bandmates are overshadowed only by the value of their friendship.
That's it. See you on the other side.
-- Steven Kalas
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