Steve Maase. Courtesy of Lily Maase.

This Saturday at the Outpost, the Inaugural Steve Maase Legacy Guitar Summit will celebrate the life of local guitar legend Steve Maase and mark the official worldwide release of his book, Music Theory You Can Use, a guitar method book over 20 years in the making. Presented by his daughter Lily Maase, a formidable guitarist, producer, bandleader, and educator in her own right, and Guitar Dad Productions, the event includes three generations of Steve’s students. Included are several top-drawer names in the guitar world—Tim Pierce and Mikey Wright, whose work has backed such artists as Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and Elton John on more than 1,000 albums; and Eric McFadden—each of whom, like Lily herself, began their journey up the fingerboard here in Albuquerque under Steve’s tutelage. They’ll be joined by the rhythm section of the Great Blue Whales, the Albuquerque band with whom Steve played for years. “What we’re really trying to do is present an evening-long overview of who my father was as a player and how he touched us as a musician,” says Lily. The evening will include both some of Steve’s original music that has never been heard before, which Lily will play, and the music that helped shape him as a musician.

The impact that Steve had on the lives of his students in the course of a near half-century of teaching can be gleaned from the response to Lily’s invitation to participate in Saturday’s event. “I asked a lot of people to come and get on stage with me to honor my dad, and I was beyond amazed when they all said yes,” says Lily. The roster of players ranges from the Los Angeles–based Pierce, who studied with Steve some 40-plus years ago and has been named one of the Top-10 Session Guitarists by Guitar World magazine, to the young Insun Blemel, a promising guitarist who is among the youngest generation of Steve’s students.

They all had the benefit of Steve’s personal instruction, but for those who couldn’t have that experience, Music Theory You Can Use will offer insights gleaned and distilled over nearly a half-century of Steve’s exploration of the instrument. He wrote the book in collaboration with Lily, finishing up the manuscript the day he passed away. Lily, who also edited the manuscript and oversaw the book’s production, pulled together the diverse, unassembled material—photos, diagrams, text, old posters and newspaper articles—with tireless and generous help from Scott Friedlander, a renowned photographer and documentarian, and graphic designer Wesley Jones of Glass Eye Design.

Sample page from Music Theory You Can Use. Courtesy of Lily Maase.

“The idea with this system—it’s a foundational system. It’s designed to teach you to become what my father called a thinking guitarist,” says Lily. That is, a guitarist whose ears, fingers, and brain work together, based on an understanding of what the guitarist is hearing—in their head, on a recording, or coming from the other musicians in the room—and how it works on the guitar. The concept was that the information would be presented in a sort of textualized version of an oral tradition, with knowledge passed down from one guitarist, Steve, to another, the reader—no notation, no tablature, no easy answers.

“The idea is, with this method, that you can take it and put in the service of whatever genre of music you’re interested in,” she adds. “The information is all basically the same.”

Steve was famously open-minded when it came to musical genres, absorbing wave after wave of new music as he attempted to help students learn the music that fascinated them in just the same way that fifties and sixties rock and roll had fascinated him. The book’s information comes across in Steve’s voice, laced with a humble intelligence and the relaxed patience of a man who, in scores of lessons a week for more than 40 years, listened to young guitarists trying to play their first E chord, work out the solo of their favorite rock song, and master the mysteries of the fingerboard.

Lily was one the many beneficiaries, taking weekly lessons with her dad and inheriting his attitude that all genres are “equal in the eyes of the Lord,” she says. That approach helped her in establishing her own career in New York, a career that has been set back by difficulties—in particular, sexual abuse and attacks that she has chronicled, and the devaluation of women that she feels was endemic at the time when she entered the New York music scene. Speaking out about such things essentially closed employment opportunities for her.

Left out in the cold, she was forced to redirect her energies and create a career on her own, create work for herself without the advantage of connections she might otherwise have enjoyed. In creating work for herself, she took on all the tasks that make music possible—everything from personnel decisions, to booking and PR, to travel arrangements for her bands, to producing, etc.—developing a skill set that helped her put together this week’s ambitious and multifaceted guitar summit.

Lily Maase. Courtesy of Lily Maase.

The advent of the #MeToo movement has helped vindicate her outspokenness, legitimize her accusations, and open doors that had previously been closed to her. She now divides her time between New York and New Mexico, and she has a busy year ahead. She’ll be releasing a new rock record as a short film in six parts, teaching at the Banff Centre at the invitation of Vijay Iyer, and appearing as the featured clinician at the first annual Women in Jazz Day at Central Washington University—among other projects.

She will also be slinging her guitar in excellent company this Saturday at the Outpost, in honor of her dad’s legacy, which she has worked hard to preserve for future guitarists.

Inaugural Steve Maase Legacy Guitar Summit
Saturday, March 17, at 7:30 p.m.
Weil Hall at the Outpost Performance Space
210 Yale SE, Albuquerque
Tickets: $20 (member/student); $25 (general)
For tickets or more information, click here, or call 505-268-0044.

© 2018 Mel Minter