Setting his own standards

Paul Saitowitz

His honey-soaked voice is peppered with just enough gravel to give

his versions of some of America’s standards the right amount of

melancholy and introspection to make them his own.

The voice belongs to Steve Tyrell, and the melancholy is from a

very real place.

Tyrell lost his wife last year after a long battle with cancer,

and his longtime drummer and mentor John Guerin died on Monday. His

wife’s illness forced him to miss an earlier performance at the

Orange County Performing Arts Center, but he’ll be there on Saturday

night for a make-up show.

“It’s been a real tough time,” Tyrell said. “Getting out and

playing music is something that is very therapeutic for me. Losing

John is going to be really hard on the band but we’ll keep going.”

The Texas-born Tyrell -- whose roots are steeped in rhythm and

blues -- has produced albums for Linda Ronstadt, Aaron Neville,

Earth, Wind and Fire, Ray Charles and Alice Cooper. He had primarily

been working behind the scenes until circumstance led him to a

performance in the movie “Father of the Bride.”

“I was working on the film as a music supervisor and I ended up

performing ‘The Way You Look Tonight,’ in the movie,” he said. “It

became the ultimate wedding song, and eventually people started

writing to me and asking me if I had recorded any other standards

that got me thinking.”

Tyrell claims the song was the first standard he ever sang, but

that experience was enough to get him in the studio to record his

first set of standards, titled “A New Standard.” It featured songs by

George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington and several

others.

He has since gone on to record three more standards albums, with

the most recent being “This Guy’s in Love,” which was released last

year.

“I’m happy doing these standards because all kinds of people seem

to relate to them, but I like to put my own touch on them,” Tyrell

said. “A lot of these songs have been recorded and performed by many

people, so I try to make the songs I do stand apart.”

Picking which songs to record can be a daunting task, but he sees

it as a labor of love.

“The American songbook is so vast and filled with so many great

songs that I know that I will always have a lot to work with,” Tyrell

said. “One of the things that is really great about them is no one

can claim any one song to be his or hers. They belong to all of us.”

Since “A New Standard” was released in 1999, a trend of musicians

recording standards albums seems to have occurred. Boz Scaggs,

Neville, Ronstadt, Michael Bolton and Rod Stewart have all taken that

path.

“I like to think I started something, and it’s great to see all

these people do these songs,” he said. “They really are timeless

pieces and it’s great to expose as many people as possible to them.”

Tyrell will perform in Segerstrom Hall beginning at 8 p.m.