NEWS & UPDATES! (lastest update: 01/10/13)
Happy New Year steezburgers! 2012 was a hell of a year for steez! Highlights for us include playing at the inaugural Summer Set Music Festival among a slew of other really amazing festivals around the Midwest, dropping our latest EP KRONOS ( steezcreepfunk.bandcamp.com), another amazing mustache bash, a unforgettable sold out boat cruise on Lake Michigan, and we began 2013 with a bang playing a string of shows in Colorado.
We have met so many amazing people, fans, musicians, and new friends over the course of the year and really want to express our appreciation and mutual respect for all ya'll out there on the scene. It truly is a blessing to be able to go out and do what we love to do...rage creepfunk and to have your ears listening makes it all worth it.
So cheers to another great year. Raise your glasses high! 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of steez at its core. Can't wait to see you on the road, at a show, raging a festival, or just raging life.
Peace and Love,
Ron, Duder, Neri, Raab, and Dubs a.k.a steez
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
steezcreepfunk.bandcamp.com
KRONOS’ testes have dropped and they are available on our bandcamp page (see link above). A powerful deity in both Greek and Roman culture (and a mediocre gyro stand), KRONOS is the first part in an ongoing series of EPs to be released by steez. Featuring fan favorites including Three Man Weave and Whiteout, the album “ dives deep into funky electronica in a gutsy display of improvisation in the studio setting” according to Glide Magazine. According to Fearless Radio, “the music is tight as the band has ever sounded, playing through changes with Swiss watch precision and polishing the songs with top shelf production quality. To turn a musically complex recording of this magnitude around so quickly is a real testament to how well the band is playing these days, and to how much they continue to grow as a band and as individual musicians”. Thanks for the love brahs! You can stream the songs on the bandcamp website as well as download to your iTunes for one million dollars, or five, or free if you would like - it is pay-what-you-want :)
The season of mud and body odor has come and steez cannot wait to share their tunes and hetti jamz on the festival circuit this summer. Starting May 19th, playing late in the evening at Trillium Connect in northern Wisconsin among the trees and disc golf courses, steez will begin their summer journey across the midwest bringing the electrorgasmic, funky, dance party to the masses. Maybe there will be lasers, maybe there will be thunderstorms, maybe there will be laser rain a la Camp Bisco 2010...who knows? steez is ready.
Continuing on the hot and sweaty festival carnival this summer, you can czech steez out at:
Ifdakamp 6/16
Stranger Danger Music Festival 6/23
the world’s largest music festival - Summerfest on 6/30
Weekend at Harmony 7/6
Whippersnap Music and Arts Festival 7/19
Jammin’ on the Wolf 7/27
People Fest 8/10
For more information on any of these festivals - google it...duh. Needless to say, we are beyond excited for the next few months. There is also HUGE news coming soon regarding late August so stay t00ned.
One final note, for the first time ever in steez history, we will be embarking on an epic journey out to sea. That’s right, steez boat/booze cruise is kangfirmed for July 13. We will be departing out of Milwaukee into the charted waters of Lake Michigan for a very special evening of creepfunk and camaraderie. There are a very limited number of tickets for this event so get yours now at http://mkeboat.com/index.html
Peaceblasters and Love,
steez
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STEEZ: 2012
Happy 2012 friends! We’ve had a great year spreading our sound throughout the Midwest and beyond. We were blessed with amazing opportunities in 2011 including participating in some of the biggest music festivals in the country - our 4th Summercamp experience, playing the Revival Tent at Wakarusa (DVD of the performance available soon - stay tuned!), taking on the Harley Stage at Summerfest - the world’s biggest music festival, and rocking out at the inaugural Electric Forest Festival.
We have big plans for 2012! First and foremost we have lots of music we want you to hear so we will be releasing our first album in 3 years this spring and hopefully more to follow. We just completed recording at Blast House Studios for our first album of 2012 entitled KRONOS. Look for this album to be released in early spring. Our goal is to spread our music so we will be offering electronic copies of our albums recorded this year for free! That’s right...free studio steez for your listening pleasure in 2012! We will also have a limited amount of hard copies for sale so stay tuned!
Our live sound will blaze on the next few months with shows throughout Wisconsin and the midwest. In January, we will be cruising to Neenah, WI playing at Diablo’s Cantina and the Popcorn Tavern in LaCrosse, WI on 13th and 14th. We will be raging late night at Winter Warmer Festival on January 21st, then onto Dubuque, IA and Rochester, MN the following weekend. Check our website creepfunk.com for more details.
On February 3rd, we will be holding our 2nd Annual FUnK Winter! Festival at the High Noon Saloon in Madison, WI. We had so much fun last year with The Mustache and The Twin Cats that we thought we would make it an annual tradition to dance and shake off those winter blues. This year we will feature our friend 4th Coast and Tani Diakite and the Afrofunkstars. We can’t wait to stay busy playing for ya’ll this winter! Check the website for more shows coming up in February and March.
Finally, save the date bitches, we will be holding our 7th Annual END OF THE WORLD Moustache Bash next December the 21th. It’s time to get down like it’s the end of the world! Thank you for everyone that made it out last month to our 6th annual ride!
love,
steez
-----------STEEZ UPDATE 11/7/11------------
steez continues to plow through the midwest this fall sploogin creepfunk day and night. In early October we had another great Naptown > StL run followed by a wonderful evening on Lake Superior in Ashland for Northland College's Coffeehaus series. Northland knows how to rage!!
Czech out this video from the Northland College show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL-7ONe4ecs
We were thrilled to play with our friends Funktion in Michigan a few weeks back. We were stoked to be back in the mitten after our debut performance at Electric Forest Festival earlier this year. And super stoked to play at Bell's brewery, a steez favorite... We then began to put the final touches on our special Halloween set...
As Rob, Steve, Chris, and Andrzej applied their Michael Jackson wigs and threads, Matt applied his Michael Jackson makeup and accessories and we were ready to take on the daunting task of doing justice to the King of Pop for our Halloween tribute show. After blistering sets by Sandrose as The Grateful Dead and The Grasshoppers as Led Zeppelin, we took the stage at the Barrymore Theater in Madison on 10/28. The energy was impalpable this Friday night. Our re-worked versions of Michael Jackson songs spanning 6 albums and 15 years included taking Michael's unreproducible vocals and channeling them through Andrzej's saxophone and Matt's talkbox and layering our own creepfunk twists on classic MJ tunes. What a dance party! Thank you to everyone that made it out for this show and to the show in La Crosse the following night for our encore performance of Michael Jackson at The Root Note. For more info on the MJ tribute catch up with this Glide Magazine interview with Bassist Chris Sell.
http://www.glidemagazine.com/hiddentrack/ht-interview-steez-pays-tribute-to-mj-at-the-night-of-the-dead/
Into November, steez will continue to bring the heat as the cold Wisconsin winter sets in. On November 11 we are pumped to join forces again with our friends Ultraviolet Hippopotamus at the Lafayette Theater in Lafayette, IN. The next night we'll travel to Milwaukee to play another rager at Shank Hall. Finally, we'll be making our 4th appearance in a row at the NOMAD Festival in Elkhart Lake, WI on Saturday November 26th.
December brings us to our 6th Annual Last Day of Class Mustache Bash. This special night has become known as the biggest night of the year for steez and their fans. We will once again be rocking The Majestic with aural powerhouse Roster McCabe. As always, there will be the infamous mustache contest where will be be giving a way a very special prize to the winner. Serious contestants may want to think about starting that facial growth soon!! Can't wait to see you all there.
Thanks to all of our fans in the Midwest and around the country for your support this past year as steez continues to move forward, redefining a genre and creating a sound unique to our scene.
See you on the road!
<3, Ron, Raab, Duder, Dubs, and Neri
steez summer update! – Part One
steez has been traversing the country the past month spreading creepfunk to the masses one weekend at a time. We started our run playing in St. Louis at one of our favorite new venues - Mangia Italiano – followed by a birthday extravaganza at The Mouse Trap in Indianapolis with our friends The Twin Cats. Matt Williams was in the full-out birthday zone bringing out a synthesizer symphony of rage. Thank you to everyone that made it out for these shows; we love playing in both these cities and will be back soon!
After some final touchups to our new originals and our ever-getting-more-obscure covers, steez was ready to hit the road to some really amazing festivals. A little rain and mud did not stop the party that was Summer Camp! We were thrilled to be playing our fourth year at Summer Camp, and although the storms rearranged our schedule, we were thankful to still be able to play for ya’ll later on Sunday (with a kick ass light show to boot!). For those wondering, due to the changes in scheduling Vinne from Moe. was unable to make our set for the “match-up sit-in,” but he was very cool and we plan to take him up on his offer to do it next year, ha. We really appreciate everyone who voted for the match-up contest and was totally cool to even meet and shoot the shit with Vinnie. Big thanks to everyone that came out for our set! We had a blast!
After a short day of rest we made our way down south en route to Wakarusa. We began the week with our debut performance at The Stonewall Tavern in Stillwater, OK playing two loose free-flowing sets on the outdoor patio on a sticky Oklahoma evening. Big thanks to everyone who came down and traveled to see us. We really felt at home for our first time in Oklahoma in nearly 5 years.
The following day we made our way to Ozark, Arkansas to the magic that was Wakarusa Festival. After taking in two days of great music (highlights including Lotus, Umphrey’s McGee, My Morning Jacket, STS9, and of course Ekoostik Hookah), we took the stage on Saturday afternoon, thrilled to be playing on the Revival Tent. Thank you to everyone that voted online to put steez on this stage; we are humbled and beyond thankful!
Our old clunker bus, Big Brown (or recently coined “the Brown Frown”, made it back to Madison safe and sound, and we were happy to catch some much-needed rest in some air conditioning. The following Thursday we felt truly at home as we took the stage at The Majestic Theater to kick off their free Summer Jam weekly live music series. The energy this night was truly spectacular. This show we will not forget anytime soon. Thank you Madison! We love you!!
After a short, rainy, foggy trip to western Wisconsin we ended up at the Smokin’ Bandits’ “Bandit County Fair” the next day to throw down a late night set for all the peeps that made it out to this great fest! It was great to listen to our friends Shoeless Revolution rip it up before we took the stage. The energy in the bar was awesome as we played through our set, inducing guitarist Steve Neary to dance down the stripper catwalk while tearing into a solo during Houseboats (yes, we were playing on a stripper stage, just minus the poles). The following evening we played a relaxing show in Elkhorn, WI at picturesque Lauderdale Landing, and were happy to have Andrew “Bear” LaValley (the producer and sound engineer of “Creepfunk Crusade”) to provide sound for us. It was great to work with Bear again.
The following Thursday marked our debut performance at the Leach Ampitheater in Oshkosh, WI for the weekly music series, Waterfest. We were honored to be opening up for Dennis DeYoung of Styx fame. What a great night of music! This guy can still rip it with the best of them. Some highlights for us include “Lady” and of course “Mr. Roboto”.
The following night we made our way to the Whispering Hills of Kiel, WI to headline Ifdakamp. We were taken aback by the beauty of the festival grounds and the great vibe of the whole weekend. It was great to be a part of such a well-put-together festival and to be playing alongside with our friends we have played with throughout the years. Thank you to everyone who made it out to our set! We took the great energy of this festival and channeled it into our sets taking some of our songs to places we’ve never ventured and really having a blast from start to finish. We have a great community of musicians and music lovers in Wisconsin and this festival proved it to the T. Thank you Ifdakar for having us!
Coming up we are playing two shows in Door County on Friday, June 24 at Sonny’s Pizzeria Bar and Grill in Fish Creek and Saturday, June 25 at The Hitching Post in Sturgeon Bay. We love playing on the peninsula and these shows will surely not disappoint! Expect obscurities, extended jamming, and general rowdiness! Then on Sunday, June 26 we have a special Sunday night show at The Brown Baer in Elkhart Lake, WI. Shots??
The following weekend we take Big Brown and the creepfunk to Michigan for our first ever performance in the mitten, and what better way to pop Michigan’s cherry than to be playing at The Electric Forest Festival!?!? We play on Friday, July 1 at 2pm on the Tripolee Stage. We cannot wait to be a part of this festival!
After taking in some music in the forest on Friday and Saturday, we will be headed back to Milwaukee for our first ever performance at the world’s largest music festival – Summerfest!! We will be playing on the Harley Davidson Stage on Sunday, July 3 from 2:30-4:30 just hours before Ben Harper takes the same stage. Then on Sunday evening we will be playing a free after-show at Fire on Water, just a stumble away from Summerfest. This is the first and possibly only time steez will play 3 sets in Milwaukee in one day. We will be bringing the heat and hope to see you all out for the party.
steez will then be taking a few much needed weekends off, when we will begin working on our new studio EP. We cannot wait to be back in the studio! We all got the itch when we recorded the “S my D (Scott Walker remix)” at Blasthouse studios a few weeks back and have a bunch of new material we want to lay down for ya’ll (You can view a video of the "S my D (Scott Walker remix)" on YouTube...check it on our Media page which should be up in a few days or click the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGPwh5ji_G4
Coming up later this summer we will be playing at Jammin on the Wolf up north in Langlade, WI (7/28-7/30), followed by our return to The Mousetrap in Indianapolis (8/4) on our way to Rootwire Festival in Logan, OH (8/5). We will make our first appearance in Chicago in 2011 at The Ace Bar (8/19), and will be back in Madison to play our favorite venue of all time – The Memorial Union Terrace – on August 26.
A big thank you to everyone who has made it out to our shows and who have supported us over the years! We have a great community of friends and fans and we can’t thank you enough! We hope to see you down the road!
Love,
Matt “Jimmy Buffet Casual” Williams
Andrzej “I’m a microbiologist” Benkowski
Steve “I didn’t kill my wife” Neary
Raab “Hang-Time” Bessert
Chris “I’m lovin’ it” Sell
Hello Again! (03/25/2011)
**Breaking News** STEEZ added to 2011 Summer Camp Music and Camping Festival (www.summercampfestival.com) for the 4th straight year!! This year's headliner's include Widespread Panic, Umphrey's McGee, Huey Lewis, Moe, STS9, The Avett Bro's, Bruce Hornsby and many many more!!
Also, thanks to everyone's support via facebook we were in the top 2 of 22 bands that were in the competition to play the 2nd biggest stage at Wakarusa Music Festival, the Revival Tent. Our slot is still TBA, but we are very stoked!! thanks everyone for voting and making this possible!
3.17.11 ST. Patty's Day Update
STEEZ is coming at you for a raging spring and summer of 2011! We've recently been added to several huge music festivals across the country, including the inaugural ELECTRIC FOREST MUSIC FESTIVAL in Rothbury, MI over the 4th of July Weekend. Other artists at the festival include String Cheese Incident, Bassnectar, Pretty Lights, the New Deal, Lettuce and many, many more. You can find out more info about Electric Forest at http://www.electricforestfestival.com/
We are also proud to announce that we are playing the WAKARUSA MUSIC AND CAMPING FESTIVAL (http://www.wakarusa.com) in Ozark, AR. This festival is held at Mulberry Mountain from June 2-5, and the venue is nestled among the beautiful Ozark Mountains. Other artists include, STS9, Umphreys McGee, Thievery Corporation and about 70 other awesome and diverse acts. We are currently in a facebook CONTEST to win a BETTER SLOT on a BIGGER STAGE (the Revival Tent) and could use your help!!!! Please log onto facebook and RSVP as "attending" for this event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=131111826960046 If we are one of the two bands with the most "attending" RSVP's, we will win the contest. Its as easy as that, no strings attached. Even if you dont think you'll be able to make the festival, please take the time to RSVP as it only takes 2 seconds and one click. Thanks in advance for helping us out!
We are also going to be playing several regional festivals this spring and summer, including the Dancin in the Dark Music Festival at the Waterbowl in Muncie, IN on Friday April 15th and the always raging Funk You Festival in El Paso, IL on Saturday April 16th. We are excited to kick off this year's festy season with some of our favorite bands including the Twin Cats, the Coop, and Strange Arrangement. As summer gets in full swing, we'll be playing the Bandit County Fair in Desoto, WI on Friday June 10th and the inaugural Ifdakamp at Whispering Hills in Kiel, WI on Friday June 17th. Our summer calendar is getting pretty full at this point so please continue to check our reverbnation (http://www.reverbnation.com/steezburger) and our myspace (http://www.myspace.com/steezburgers) calendars for the most up-to-date info on when we'll be coming to your town.
Finally, we have ANOTHER HUGE FESTIVAL ANNOUNCEMENT coming your way tomorrow afternoon, so make sure you keep checking our facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/steez/26510626872) so you can be the first to know. We hope to see y'all out on the road this summer!!!!
Love, Father Figure, 12 Pack, Sprinky, Sleeve and DJ Duracell
STEEZ is currently gearing up for what is sure to be a jam-packed spring and summer 2011. Last summer was quite the whirlwind highlighted by a 2 week southeast run and an appearances at Camp Bisco 9 and Moe's Summer Camp Festival. This year STEEZ is ready to build on the success they've been building by grinding it out on the road. Be sure to check out our facebook page for the lastest breaking STEEZ news and show announcements. Also, we are slowing adding more and more live shows to www.archive.org that are available for free download. We apologize that we can't more up in a more timely manner, but we just don't have the manpower to keep up. ha. take care everyone! and thanks for your continued support!!
1/25/11
BREAKING NEWS! STEEZ added to the 2011 WAKARUSA MUSIC FESTIVAL !!!!
*This will be STEEZ's first appearance at WAKARUSA !! For more info visit www.wakarusa.com
Love,
Spanky, RonJon, Nixon, Doodlebug, and Hans Dudenheimur
OTHER 'somewhat' RECENT NEWS
- STEEZ announced to play Summer Camp Festival 2010 !!! Stay Tuned for more details!!
- Creepfunk Crusade rated #4 best album of the Year in Madison by the Isthmus and up for Studio Album of the Year on the Homegrown Music Network.
- Steez named “New Groove of the Month” on Jambands.com.
- Steez featured in the “On the Verge” section of the latest Relix Magazine
- Creepfunk Crusade charted on both the Homegrown Music Network Radio Charts and the Jambands.com Radio Charts, peaking at #19 and #23, respectively.
- Cited in Madison’s Isthmus Independent Press as one of the Ten Most Influential Bands in Madison throughout the 2000’s
- Full Feature “Track by Track” article on Creepfunk Crusade - Hidden Track
- Band of the Month - Grateful Web
- 10,000 Lakes Festival Review - Kind Web
- Live Track Featured at the Butter Room
”I must say that this is a hugely impressive debut album from Steez that I cannot recommend enough. Catch this band and see for yourself.” - Musical Stew Daily
“Generally speaking, Steez is a band in the sweet spot; that point where they are really clicking with one another and getting a lot better, fast.” - Glide Magazine
“This group possesses the intuition and communication skills to make the shit work, no doubt about it.” – Jambase.com
"Steez presents a muscular, energetic blend of funk, jam, and groove with “Creepfunk Crusade.” - Homegrown Music Network Review
“Funk behaves as the base vibe from which the band then takes fanciful expeditions towards progressive, electronic, and just plain different sounds. With a strong through line that remains a highly danceable funk groove, there’s an astonishing level of cohesion through some rather adventurous sonic sojourns. When it works, that’s Creepfunk.” – Jambands.com