April 24, 1971: Blue Lyte

 

No, these guys did not name themselves after a beer. Labatt’s did not introduce its lo-cal brew until 1983. They did, however, find other allure in the Great White North. See the Footnote at the end of the story. 

April 24, 1971

Blue Lyte: Friendly Men and Good Music 

“All set? All right, this is unnamed melody, take three,” Steve Raiken announces.

“Oh boy,” says Sue Pfeffer before the guitars begin. “I get to write another lead sheet. Actually, I’m all set. THEY’RE the ones that have to struggle.”

Thin, round glasses, long kinky hair, purple velvety pants, Sue is Steve’s girl, the invisible third member of Blue Lyte – she even made it a trio for a while, forcing pop piano through her classical fingers.

* * *

BEING a music major at UB makes it easy enough to do those lead sheets, however, when the two of them come up with an original song. She’s done 30 so far and a lot of them start like this – Steve riffing single lines on top of partner Marc Cashman’s ideas.

These are South Carolina ideas. The suntanned composer of “Buffalo Rag,” which celebrates our “two seasons” – winter and the Fourth of July – has just spent two weeks at Hilton Head Island with some Buffalo friends and their five children.

His English folk tenor sings la-la in place of yet unborn words and his 12-string guitar booms confidently through finger-picked progressions for the third time in less than three hours since he arrived at Steve’s parents’ home in Williamsville.

* * *

“PUT YOURSELF out there like a real live performance,” instructs Steve, the comic. “Hello, we’re Blue Lyte. I’m Steve Raiken and this is” – fumbles some paper – “uh, Mack Cushman” – and Marc takes a punch at him as they romp into a supercharged “Can’t Make It Alone,” their usual show-starter: 

“There’s a warmth you have within yourself

That everyone can see.

Why on earth can’t you be close enough

To sing this song with me?

It’s a long, long way

To the place I call my home

And I can’t make it alone.” 

“We woulda done this whole bit, the ‘choreography’ and all even if you hadn’t been here,” Steve tells the reporter. “We haven’t seen each other in two weeks and we’re hungry to play guitar.”

“Last year, after our first big job, we drove down to Daytona Beach for sort of a vacation from music,” Marc says, “and after two days we were going crazy. You know what we did? We called Buffalo and had the guitars flown down to us.”

* * *

THAT DEBUT gig, 2½ months at one of Buffalo’s fancier supper clubs, was the beginning of Blue Lyte’s first-year traumas. That was where the management insisted that Steve remove his peace button.

Since then it’s been mixed success. They’ve played the Bitter End and the Gaslight in New York City, met the usual bunch of fly-by-night managers (mostly book themselves) and indifferent bar appearances.

“That’s why we do colleges and coffeehouses,” explains Marc. “We’d rather play where people come not to socialize but to listen to music.”

* * *

AND THEY’VE made two fruitless rounds of New York City record companies and agents – the second time right before Easter. Now they’re writing to get their tapes back.

“Everybody said they liked our songs,” Steve says, “but it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Those trips to New York are really a hang-up. There’s this problem of thinking we’re going to be rich and famous. I think we’re going to have to detune ourselves from that.”

* * *

LOOMING ahead for both of them is graduation from UB and the end of their secure roles as students. Plus the winter, full of work, has become a dwindling spring.

Now all that’s ahead is tonight’s concert in Niagara University’s Clet Dining Hall. A tentative May 3 date at Amherst High School. And a biggie – sharing the bill with folksinger Tom Rush next Thursday at D’Youville College.

Hearing Tom Rush’s “Urge for Going” got Steve into playing guitar in his senior year of high school. Steve and Sue just saw Rush in Washington, D.C., before Easter.

“We’re looking forward to playing with him,” Marc says. “He’s the sort of performer we sort of model ourselves after. A nice, quiet man who plays good music and is friendly and warm and people know he’s friendly and warm.”

* * *

AND THEN there’s the Paul McCartney influence.

“McCartney amazes me,” Marc relates. “He influences me to the extent that he writes good music and he doesn’t have a ‘style.’ McCartney is a chameleon, he’s constantly changing. And his level of taste is superb.

“Have you read Ray Bradbury? It’s like every short story is a work of art. McCartney is the same way. As long as it’s different and good, that’s what I strive for, composing-wise. A different mood, a different beat than my last song.”

* * *

MARC’S songs go through two tests. There’s Steve, who says: “If I like it, I figure, hey, we’re gonna make our career on this. And if I don’t, well, you notice all these slash marks on my forehead …”

And classically-trained Sue. “When she likes it,” they say, “we know it’s good.”

They do “Song for You” (“Here’s a little thought to chew on, something just for you to know …”), which builds to a raging crescendo before it eases for the final verse.

Then they strum into the Beatles’ “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” one of the first songs they played together. A six-string guitar, a 12-string guitar, Marc singing. This, Marc says, is the essence of their sound.

For variety, Marc’s got piano and harmonica and Steve’ll put on an occasional harmony on the electric guitar he picked up late last year (maybe some of those chords from Mickey Baker’s Jazz Book – “Nobody ever uses it,” he says). Or even violin, which he studied for five years, on a mock country-western song.

* * *

THE BIG test will come in June, however, when they pack off for San Francisco and, they hope, better opportunities.

“Honestly, we couldn’t see doing anything else,” Marc says. “It’s almost a ‘Go West, young man’ type thing. We’ve been East, there’s nothing in the South and it’s too cold up North.

“For all we know, there may be 500 other Marc and Steves out there just as good as we are. We just want to try to make a living by doing what we love.” 

The box/sidebar: 

Liked 2 Guitars 

Pertinent and impertinent information about Blue Lyte:

Marc Cashman, 21, vocals, 12-string guitar and piano, native of Port Jervis, N.Y., senior in political science and American studies at UB, single.

Steve Raiken, 21, lead guitar, electric guitar and violin, graduate of Amherst High School, senior in psychology at UB, single.

* * *

THE TWO became friends while living in the same UB dormitory. The partnership began in December 1969 when Steve filled in for Marc’s former singing partner and Marc liked the sound of two guitars.

“We searched for a name for a long time,” Steve says, “but we couldn’t find something flashy or anything and then one night on our way to a restaurant, I said, hey, how about Blue Lyte?”

“Well,” Marc says, “I said blue is my favorite color and lyte looks kinda funny.”

* * *

STEVE adds: “It wasn’t like we had a lotta trials and troubles in Freeport, Ill., and we decided to call ourselves the Freeport Two. We’ve had people say the name didn’t grab them, but we say let the music grab you.”

“That’s the thing,” Marc says, “you look at the audience and they’re nodding their heads, tapping their feet and you know they’re with you, you know they’re there. That’s the kind of stuff musicians live for.”

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Marc and Steve didn’t go to San Francisco. Marc told his side of the story on a talk show on the Messiah Community Radio podcast. 

 They started off in Toronto instead. 

 "It was the land of Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot and The Riverboat, all those coffee houses in Yorkville and lots of colleges," he said on the podcast. "I figured that was a pretty neat little place to start out."

They stayed for about a year, then moved to Philadelphia and played the East Coast college circuit.

Marc got tired of the road, though. He picked up a master’s degree in education at Manhattanville College, then taught elementary and junior high for five years. He also kept writing songs, but didn’t like what other artists and producers did to them.

So he went around to ad agencies in Cincinnati, where he was teaching, and got hired to write music for a 30-second TV spot. That inspired him to head for Los Angeles, where after a few months of job-hunting he got a call from an agency.

“The client was Knott’s Berry Farm, and they needed help immediately,” he said. “They wanted a 60-second talking blues type of spot to be written, recorded and finished by noon the following day. When I heard it on the air, it was a big thrill. My first spot in L.A.”

Marc has gone on great success in commercials as a producer and as a voice actor. He even coaches other voice actors. He’s done voice-overs for foreign films, narrated more than 150 audio books, won a Clio Award and three times was voted one of the “Best Voices of the Year” by AudioFile magazine.

Steve Raiken, on the other hand, went back to Toronto and, according to his bio on the Songwriters Association of Canada website, spent 35 years in management consulting and the public sector in Toronto before returning to his first love. He released a CD in 2010 and appears regularly at clubs and festivals in and around Toronto. He still considers Tom Rush his greatest influence.