Steve Key at the Rudyard

By Paul Moffett

This is my real job.

It's what I really do.

It doesn't pay a lot...

But it's what I do.

So goes the chorus of Steve Key's tune, "This is My Real Job," a response, he said, to all those folks who come up to him and ask, "What do you really do?"

Key performed that tune, along with other Key originals plus songs by songwriters he admires, in a two-hour set at the Rudyard on August 4.

A resident of Washington, D. C., Key works the folk circuit. He came to the Rudyard on the recommendation of Alan Rhody, who brought a group of fellow Kentucky Music Week participants to the show, making the audience at once elite and accepting.

He has had some success in the songwriting field, having gotten a song about technological obsolescence, "334578," cut by Kathy Mattea. He has now become, he joked, "an obscure country songwriter instead of an obscure folk singer." To "celebrate," he spent "several days" in Nashville. He is also working on arranging an appearance on the "Homefront" radio show.