When Chris Robinson appeared recently on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the Trump-targeted host pulled up the singer’s page on IMDB.com. Among the credits for the Black Crowes frontman was music supervisor for a series of Hallmark-style holiday rom coms with names like A Runaway Bride for Christmas and Rodeo Christmas Romance. Clearly, there is someone else with the same name out there.
So, one could be forgiven if, when doing a search on Steven McClintock, think that there’s a similar case of mistaken identity. After all, it couldn’t the same gray-haired country singer/songwriter who also wrote scores for straight-to-video, low budget ‘80s and ‘90s movies with titles like Mankillers, Rage to Kill, Deadly Prey, and Space Mutiny. Right?
Wrong.
“No, that’s me!” McClintock laughs on the phone. “That was a really fun time of life. I moved to California when I was 20, and my partner Tim James and I pitched ourselves to AIP. And they did all these low budget B and even C movies. But they gave us an opportunity to score entire films. We did like 18 of them in like three days each. And Space Mutiny has become a cult classic!”
But McClintock won’t be playing any of his tunes with shredding guitars and synths reminiscent of Survivor, Night Ranger, or Frank Stallone when he plays the Mucky Duck on April 21 with fellow troubadour Aaron LaCombe. Instead, it will be him, his guitar, and a decades long catalog of songs about love, loss, life, and a little drinking.
“Performer” is just one of the jobs in McClintock’s five-decade career. He’s also a publisher, producer, scorer, and songwriter whose work have been covered by Johnny Cash, Juice Newton, Nelson, and Aaron Tippin. He co-wrote 15 songs for teen pop star Tiffany, including the No. 6 hit “All This Time.” His website (which features a picture of him in front of a gold record for Tiffany’s debut) says “One Man Many Hats.”
“That’s an example of how quickly I get bored. I enjoy all aspects of the business, but if I had to pick just one, it would be songwriter,” he says.
In fact, the name of his autobiography was going to be called Who Says I Can’t Do It All? Though no one will ever get to read it—McClintock accidentally left the sole, mostly handwritten copy on his American Airlines seat some years ago. And when he discovered his mistake, it was gone and was never recovered.
“I cried so much. I had 22 chapters done!” he offers. “But I don’t have the strength to go back and do it again.”
The Beaumont native’s last record effort was 2022’s compilation Soundtrack Heroes and before that you’d have to go all the way back to 1999 for Roadwise. But he does steadily release singles, with the two most recent being a cover of the standard “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and the original “A Train to Paris.” Both have significant personal meaning.
“When my dad was not doing well, we moved him from Kerrville, Texas to Long Beach. He had always wanted me to do classic songs. I kept telling him that’s for old people, but he kept saying it,” McClintock says. “And literally on his death bed week, he said he was leaving me $2,000 to record a standards album. He even had a list of songs.”
Well, $2,000 barely covered the first string instrument session after his father died seven years ago. But McClintock is forging ahead with fulfilling his father’s wish. “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is one of them. He’s also cut “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and “Moon River.”
“A Train to Paris” he calls a “documentary of my life in three minutes” about love and moving on. McClintock has been married four times and had a series of girlfriends. When one of them heard the song, she said she loved it. But asked him point blank if he was really in love with all those women, or just the idea of love? It floored him.
“That’s my lot in life. I love the idea of falling in love. At least it makes me a good songwriter with plenty of material!” he says.
Another new tune that he’ll probably play in Houston is “God Opened My Eyes.” It tells the story of a person who makes some poor choices in life and is beset by problems, finding comfort only in the bottom of a bottle of booze. Until there is a religious revelation.
McClintock says it’s not autobiographical but rather inspired by the experiences of a female U.S. Army vet he met as part of a program called Operation Song that matches writers with veterans as therapy.
“We get in a room with them for eight hours, and sometimes it can get pretty heavy. It affects me as much as it does them,” he says. This particular woman he met at a VA hospital in Long Beach. McClintock says that she had been raped three times by her commanding officers, beaten by two different husbands, then got into drugs and alcohol.
“She had been through so much and she wasn’t sure she could do it. She was very hesitant. I asked her why she didn’t just end [her life] and she said that line. She says it literally saved her life. And it’s difficult for me to get through performing without have a lot of emotion myself.”
McClintock notes that he performed the song just the night before when he noticed some veterans in the audience in Fredericksburg. That gig also reunited him with Frank Gilligan, a fellow performer who he had seen in 50 years since both were young singer/songwriters trying to scrape together a living in Houston in the early/mid-‘70s.
While he normally plays to dozens of people in a club, Steven McClintock did have one gig in which an estimated one million people—one of the largest concert audiences ever—watched him play his songs. That’s when he and singer/songwriter Victoria Shaw opened for Garth Brooks when the country megastar played a 1997 concert in New York’s Central Park.
Calling it a “series of luck and work,” it stemmed from meeting Shaw during a 1994 three-week songwriting trip to Indonesia. It paired U.S. tunesmiths with their counterparts from that region as a cultural experiment.
A last-minute addition to the group, he says that Shaw was the “one person I wanted to meet.” She had co-written “The River” with Garth Brooks (among other songs) and co-written “I Love The Way You Love Me” for John Michael Montgomery. The then-living-in-Nashville pair clicked and toured together for several years. It was that connection to Brooks that landed the duo the gig of a lifetime.
“She called and asked me if I had ever played in the jungle. I said no and she said I would now because we had a gig opening for Garth! It was a 22-minute show, but we were done in 19 minutes because I started everything so damn fast!” he laughs. “And I’m sharing the green room with Billy Joel and Don McLean, who [performed]. And we all did the Today show the next day.”
Finally, when asked about any memories of Houston, McClintock’s voice audibly brightens. After all, it’s where he first cut his teeth as a performer after moving here from Beaumont. Though the particular venue he worked smelled more of meat and potatoes than beer and pot.
“I got a gig playing at the Steak and Ale restaurant on the Eastex Freeway. That was my first job, playing Happy Hour there for $7 an hour in 1973. I didn’t even play guitar, and my buddy had to teach me three chords, and I threw myself into the fire!” he says.
There was at least one other very tangible benefit.
“They fed us! And I could do all the salad bar I could eat!” he laughs. “And I could take a lot of that stuff home!”
Steven McClintock and Aaron LaCombe play at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21, at McGonigels’ Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk. For more information, call 281-357-9478 or visit McGonigels.com. $37.
For more information on Steven McClintock, visit StevenMcClintock.com
