His projects have included the legendary '90s Deep Ellum band Tablet, as well as OHNO, The Now (featuring Joey McClellan of Denton’s Midlake) and Binary Sunrise. His newest project is called I Love You. After surfing through the ups and down of three decades in the industry, the singer-songwriter is quick to share what he thinks playing music is all about.
“Creativity is childlike,” Holt says. “You have to not care and just do it for the novelty of it and for your own enjoyment to delight yourself. I want to make music that is great music with good songwriting, great melody and a lot of novelty. I also listen to a lot of weird stuff.”
Holt’s projects have always had a signature sound, usually involving an element of psychedelic, and an angular pastiche of surprises through melodic juxtapositions. I Love You is comparable to the less commercialized, even underground groups of the ’90s and early aughts. Fans of Spiritualized, Placebo and Violent Femmes would find the band a refreshing addition to the Dallas music scene.
Holt started writing songs for the project in 2019 after his short reunion with Tablet in 2016, when the band rereleased their classic album Pinned on vinyl.
“Around the Tablet reunion period I got a job as a teacher, and in 2019 started working on recordings again,” Holt says. “It eventually evolved into what it is now, and it’s made me a lot happier, music being in my life and knowing that I can still do it and do it well. That’s cool.”
Other members of I Love You are drummer Max Hartman, bassist Matt Ryan and Holt’s former Tablet guitarist and band founder Paul Williams. So far, the group has released two singles with kitschy titles such as “No Hook” and “Cloris Leachman,” accompanied by colorful psychedelic music videos that capture the aesthetic of the MTV generation, before reality television took over the network.
The band plans to intermittently release the rest of the full-length album throughout the year, single by single, until they press the collection to vinyl. Unlike most start-up bands opening up at Double Wide or CheapSteaks, in the fall of 2023, I Love You threw an over-the-top, open-bar, fully catered launch party at the super-hip LERMA advertising agency overlooking downtown Dallas. The crowd was fashionable and genuinely excited to see Holt back behind the microphone after crafting I Love You’s songs.
For Holt, the show was a refreshing and cathartic experience to a certain degree.
“I figured out what the problem was,” Holt says, reflecting on what made this night special in contrast to some of his less-tasteful experiences playing music in other projects. “My wife Laurel has helped me conclude that the reason why it can become not fun for me is when I have too many expectations. When I start doing things for the wrong reasons, Laurel will stop me and ask, 'Why are you doing this again?' And then I will remember, it’s all for fun.”
It's not hard to imagine why Holt’s expectations can get so high. On April 20, 1996, his first serious project, Tablet, played a sold-out show opening for Oasis on their What’s The Story Morning Glory tour at Dallas' famed Bronco Bowl. Tablet had just signed a deal with major label Mercury Records and their manager called last minute with an opportunity of a lifetime.
“Our manager asked us not to ask him what he did to get us that show,” Holt says. “Noel [Gallagher] was really nice and came to check on us to see if everything was cool at soundcheck. He invited me and our manager to watch their set from the side of the stage. Then in the middle of the Oasis show as we are watching, Liam came over and flipped us off. The next thing you know, one of Liam’s personal bouncers kicked us both off the stage.”
Even though the notoriously naughty English bad boy of '90’s rock pulled his signature shenanigans, Holt fondly remembers the show for how well Tablet was received by Oasis fans.
“The weirdest thing to me is that compared to when I started, music is so devalued and worth so much less than it was ... The only thing clubs care about now is how many people you bring." – Steve Holt
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“The crowd really liked us a lot,” Holt says. “When we’d stop a song the applause would hit us in waves. I was like, holy shit!”
A year later, Tablet disbanded, citing promotional and financial problems with Mercury Records. Within the next few years, Holt once again found himself playing with one of the biggest bands in the world, this time backstage at The Mercury Lounge in New York, opening for The Strokes with his new project, OHNO.
“Basically, I was ready to do something different,” Holt says. “I was doing a whole new style of music and signed a deal with Last Beat Records. That project became OHNO.”
Locally, OHNO came to dominate the Dallas alternative rock scene as headliners at Trees, The Curtain Club and Club Clearview. The band featured prominent musicians Jim King, Vincent Martin, Marley Whistler and Grammy-nominated artist Rahim Quazi. OHNO even worked with Chris Kirkpatrick of NSYNC.
“We had a manager out of New York and wrote some songs for Chris Kirkpatrick that they took to Jive Records,” Holt says. “That was a lot of fun with OHNO, all the trips to New York we took and just seeing how the other half lived. Not long after that, our manager was able to cut a deal for overseas publishing, which we still get a little money from now and again.”
Holt’s firsthand knowledge of the inner workings of the music business is a great help when navigating today's complicated playing field. I Love You’s approach to building a loyal fanbase, releasing a steady stream of music and maintaining their buzz seems to be working as Holt’s live shows are once again on the trajectory to local greatness. The musician’s only hesitation about today’s music scene centers around the perceived value of the art itself.
“The weirdest thing to me is that compared to when I started, music is so devalued and worth so much less than it was,” Holt says. “The only thing clubs care about now is how many people you bring, and it’s gotten more and more like that. An ordinary club guarantee in the '90s was $1,000, and now it just doesn’t even exist it seems. There’s just not as much money in the system anymore but it will happen again, I think.”
Deep Ellum, once fertile ground for so many successful alternative rock bands over the past 30 years, has changed. But there's still hope as Club Dada, Trees, Double Wide and Three Links book a solid calendar of rock bands. Holt and I Love You are ready to start beating the door down again, starting with a Feb. 17 show at LERMA with John Buffalo and Taylor Young Band.
“To have a band now, you just really have to want to do it,” Holt says. “Early on I was obsessed with putting a band together, playing live, writing songs. That’s how it all started and continues to be to this day.”
