Guitar-composer Steve Reel was born in Portsmouth, VA, and grew up in the neighboring
city of Chesapeake, VA. He notes that he can remember his mother rocking him to sleep as
a baby while she watched Liberace perform on television, but adds "my main early musical
influences were albums like Jethro Tull's Aqualung
Yes' Fragile, and Romantic Warrior by Chick Corea and Return To Forever. I
also loved watching Don Kirshner's "Rock Concert" on TV. One Friday night in 1974,
I saw the Mahavishnu Orchestra with John Mclaughlin, Jan Hammer, and Billy Cobham; these
guiys completely changed the way I thought and felt about music...
that music could be a vehicle for fire and emotion."
Reel continues "I began to play guitar at age 16, after seeing a friend's band rehearse. I
got a really beat up acoustic guitar, laid it flat in my lap, and learned "Smoke on the
Water" and "Iron Man" on one string, and played it overhand (left hand comes over the neck
from the top). I eventually figured out the "correct" way of playing, but I still
occasionally play overhand on stage just for theatrics."
At 19, he started playing in rock and top 40 "road bands" that were booked solidly along
the Eastern seaboard. In the 1980's, a band Reel was working with broke up while playing
in Florida; but the next day he joined a Florida based band and "ended up becoming a
Floridian through default." Later, Reel joined the faculty of the Audio Recording
Technology Institute in Orlando, FL, where he taught from 1991-1997; he also instructed guitar
students privately and at local music stores from 1975-1980. In 1997, Reel released his debut
recording, Wheel of the Year on Gaia's Light Records and began performing over 100
live dates a year ( a furious pace which he continues to this day).
Reel has been a guest soloist on Lisa Perry's Angel Rose (Magnolia Ridge, 1998)
and the eponymous debut of Shawn Risley (Wolf's Head, 1991). He engineered Da Hoodsmen's
1991 hit, Rhyme Ripper (#1 for five weeks on European Club charts); the 1991 Vive
Records release M.C. Sharon by M.C. Sharon (Prince's Step sister); Scott Berry
Trio's 1995 album Swingshift on Swingshift Records, and the 1995 Itta-Oy Records
eponymous release by Mitch Corbin.
As a composer, some highlights of his lengthy credits include documentary films like
"The Big E: The Story of the U.S.S. Eisenhower" and "Designing the Hard Rock Cafe,
Orlando;" four internationally distributed videos featuring martial arts/qiqong teacher
Grandmaster Y.K. Kim; and a talking book that was part of publisher Harcourt Brace's
Educational Media Series. Reel has also released a series of seven Healing Harmonics
casssettes in 1993 which are still selling well today.
While guitar is Reel's main instrument, he can also play drums, percussion, keyboards, bass, and several stringed instruments including dulcimer, banjo and mandolin.
