[Cover photo credit to Jason Quigley]
This Friday, February 14th, 2025, also known as Valentine’s Day, Portland-based musician/engineer/Producer Steve Drizos is releasing a rendition of the Clem Snide song, “Loneliness Finds Her Own Way”. It’s an interesting kind of anti love song that nevertheless shares deep insights on what we pursue, how we do so, and what it means to us. The track features Jenny Conlee from The Decemberists on it, who is also Drizos’ wife.
Drizos has been a professional touring musician for more than twenty seven years, and is a studio owner of The Panther in SE Portland. He can currently be found behind the drums for Jerry Joseph and The Jackmormons, and has recently released his sophomore full-length solo album, i love you now leave me alone, via Cavity Search Records.
We’re very pleased to premier the track “Loneliness Finds Its Own Way” here on Wildfire Music + News today.
Drizos has chosen a song to cover that has a ton of nuance to it to begin with, and explored it even more subtly, alongside some frankly gorgeous instrumentation from Jenny Conlee, Tim Murphy, Todd Wright, and Scott Van Schoick. There’s a warmth to the strings that brings an Americana vibe to the electric guitar at times, and Drizos renders the vocals confessionally, at an unhurried pace, unreeling the central concept of the song: that Loneliness is personified as an alluring woman who the narrator seeks to pursue in various ways, with various realizations along the way.
It’s clear that Drizos wants to give dignity and weight to the lyrics of the song, making sure they are never lost in the energy of the music. The natural contrasts in the lyrics, often between tenderness and injury, give the song both a punchiness and a sweetness that’s hard to totally shake. Even when there’s a rising Rock energy to the track, the players manage to keep the tone just a hair within the mellow zone, preserving a meditative air.
In the end, Drizos and co. deliver a deeply felt reflection on the beautiful, and even hypnotic romance, of chasing and pursuing loneliness, but the ultimately devastating blow-back that it can lead to for a human being. Interestingly, the song itself comes to a realization that feels like a coming-of-age development, recognizing the fading of the love-spell, and this group does an excellent job of making you remember the uncanny attractiveness of that mirage long after it has slipped from view.
Steve Drizos shares:
Clem Snide has been a favorite of mine for a long time, and this song in particular always resonated with me. Here is our own take on this, featuring Jenny Conlee (The Decemberists/Casey Neill) on keys, Tim Murphy (RoughCuts) on bass, Todd Wright on guitar, and Scott Van Schoick (Lordymama) on drums.
Alt-Rock band Clem Snide got their start in the 90s, and “Loneliness Finds Her Own Way” hails from 1999 originally. Drizos’ recent album is heavily rooted in and influenced by 90s Rock, something Drizos keeps coming back to.
He shares on that subject:
[90s rock] resonates with me the most. Maybe at 50 years old it reminds me of a more innocent time in my life, maybe it’s just really familiar and comforting. I love the energy and larger than life aspect of music from that era. Can it be overly earnest from time to time? Absolutely. But I’m not afraid to go there! As long as it’s not ALL like that. I guess it doesn’t feel like it was a choice to go in the direction of 90s rock, its just where I live most of the time.
