Steve Holy: Not Your Typical Country Artist

By Rob Greenwell

When a man comes onstage to perform at a country concert, what do you suppose that he should wear: cowboy hat, jeans, boots and a "Western" shirt? Well, when Steve Holy played Coyote's Music and Dance Hall on October 11, his attire was slacks, a silk shirt and pretty boy hair. Steve is not your typical looking country music singer; he doesn't even try to act the part. He just gets on stage and sings with a very soulful voice.

Steve Holy is also a very good impressionist. Throughout his show, he impersonated some of his favorite singers as well as some of his label mates: Conway Twitty, John Anderson, Elvis Presley, Tim McGraw and even Roy Orbison. (I was so impressed with his version of "Pretty Woman" - it honestly felt as if Roy was singing the song himself.) The crowd really seemed to get into the old time rock `n' roll songs that he covered, weren't there to hear his rendition of priceless classics; they came to hear him sing "Good Morning Beautiful," his mega-hit that has climbed the charts at a very steady pace. It is even in a movie starring J-Lo (Jennifer Lopez). Not bad for an artist who is only on the third single of his career.

While he is billed as having one of the hottest new voices in Nashville, Holy obviously has not done the normal pay-your-dues-in-the-nightclubs routine, because his inexperience on stage showed. He just got up on stage and sang. Don't get me wrong, he did move around on stage some, he just didn't seem to have a sense of the flow of a show down pat and appeared to be surprised when the crowd got into his show at Coyote's.

He was walking off stage afterwards, he asked if he should do an encore. Not something that a seasoned veteran with many years on the road would ask! In his defense, while it appeared that he lacked the desire to do an encore, he did say on stage that he wanted to meet everyone in the club, which he later tried to accomplish.