Local musician Steve Eager has been a fan of Greenville since he moved from Ohio to attend Bob Jones University more than 30 years ago.
Since his introduction to the city, Eager says he has lived in other cities such as Chicago but always found his way back to Greenville.
It was his love for the city, combined with playing songs about other cities such as “New York State of Mind” at outdoor concerts with a group of other musicians, Steve Eager and Friends, that led Eager to pen his song, “Greenville.”
“When COVID started, I started a group called Steve Eager and Friends,” says Eager. “It was kind of just me at the time and then slowly but surely I added other musicians from the Greenville Symphony and other walks of life, so they’re all professionals from different walks of life. We all got together and started doing outdoor concerts in my front yard. At that time, we did a lot of pop songs, so I would try to finish a concert with an original song. One night we had been doing a song about a particular area of the country and I thought, ‘it would be so cool if Greenville had a song.’”
Eager went home that night and put together the chorus. Eventually, the song came together and his band performed it at a charity concert at Front Porch Housing on Pleasantburg Drive and following the recommendation of the band’s cellist, Christopher Powell, to record the song, Eager arranged the piece and worked with his bandmates to record it.
With the recording done, Eager says the music video took around four hours to film, including two hours of shooting downtown spots such as Falls Park, Camperdown Plaza and the Eugenia Duke Bridge. He also worked with video director Jered McKenna to film scenes on top of a downtown parking garage and in the studio with his band.
Eager says he and his band will be performing at a variety of indoor and outdoor concerts in the coming months.
For more information, visit facebook.com/SteveEagerMusic.
