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Steve Popp is a country songwriter out of Niagara, Ontario. Blue jeans, beer, barbecue — and bikes.
He taught himself guitar in 1992, during six weeks off work with a broken ankle. Two music books, a borrowed stretch of time, and by the end of it he was writing his own songs. Three years later he drove to Nashville with his wife Darlene — their tenth anniversary — and a backpack holding a hundred and fifty of them.
He'd made three hundred cold calls out of the Nashville Red Book to get in the door. Three publishers said yes. The third one offered him everything: a house in Nashville, eighty thousand American a year, a staff writing chair in a song mill. He got as far as the parking lot before he knew the answer was no. He had a business back home, a tree nursery in the ground, two young boys, and a life he wasn't trading. He tipped his hat and drove back to Ontario.
The songs came with him. They're still here — bins of them, the one thing he refused to put in storage when he moved.
Thirty-two jobs by the time he was thirty. Volunteer firefighter, kickboxer, landscaper, truck driver. He writes like a man who's done all of it, because he has. People hear Steve Earle in him. He keeps John Prine up on the pedestal. Catch him after a show and he'll meet you on the level — same as if you'd run into him at the bar.
One ride. He's not wasting it.
CH 12 · 2:00 AM · End of broadcast day