Steve Louw has been making records for over 4 decades, and ‘Traces of the Flood’ stands as one of the finest of his career. The South African singer-songwriter and guitarist’s fourth solo album in 5 years is out now, a 10-track collection recorded live in the room at Nashville’s RCA Studio with a band operating at full flight.
Lead single “Time To Move” arrives with an official music video, and it’s a perfect introduction to what the album delivers. The song nearly didn’t make the cut. “I didn’t think I’d do that song if only because I thought it wasn’t ready,” Louw recalls, “but when we started playing it, we fell right into the song’s groove. After 3 days of jamming in the studio the song became effortless.”
The album was produced by Kevin Shirley, Louw’s creative partner since 1986, whose credits include Joe Bonamassa, Black Country Communion, Beth Hart, and Joanne Shaw Taylor. The sessions brought together an exceptional group of players, with Louw recruiting guitarists Bob Britt and Doug Lancio after spotting them play together at a Dylan show in Memphis.
“I’d seen Bob Britt play with Doug Lancio at a Dylan show in Memphis, and I wanted to have those two guitar players in the band for this record,” he explains. The instinct paid off completely. The band walked into the studio on day one, plugged in, and played, arriving with 18 songs and recording with the kind of loose, committed energy that can’t be manufactured.
Individual tracks illuminate the process. “Echo Dream” was built around 3 acoustic guitars, Louw, Britt, and Lancio playing together while Greg Morrow handled drums, before a single electric guitar part completed it. “CBGB Xmas” came to life in a single take with 10 minutes of studio time left. “We just knocked it out. You hear how we caught it in one loose jam.”
The result is an album that sounds exactly like what it is, a band in full flight, capturing the energy and urgency of a room full of committed players doing what they do best. ‘Traces of the Flood’ joins ‘Headlight Dreams’ (2021), ‘Thunder & Rain’ (2022), and ‘Between Time’ (2024) in a run of solo work that has cemented Louw’s international reputation well beyond his South African Rock Hall of Fame status.
A musician who collaborated with Brian May and Dave Stewart on the Nelson Mandela-inspired 46664 AIDS awareness project, and whose band Big Sky helped soundtrack South Africa’s transition away from apartheid in the 1990s, Louw carries real history into everything he makes. ‘Traces of the Flood’ is the latest proof that the journey is far from over.