The Orange County Register

Fans of the new crop of singer-songwriters such as Gavin DeGraw, James Blunt and Howie Day may like the debut album of Steve Reynolds, aptly titled "Exile." The Canadian transplant, who now calls Los Angeles home, joins the growing ranks of this neo-folk branch of pop music.

Reynolds gained traction on KCRW/89.9 FM when his song "Painter and Son" was just a demo. After it aired, he got a record deal. Tracks from his new album are featured on Sirius satellite radio's Coffeehouse channel, where Reynolds joins the likes of Indigo Girls, Coldplay and Shawn Colvin.

Sitting recently in his neighborhood coffee shop, the Brite Spot in Echo Park, Reynolds - wearing khakis and a lightly wrinkled dress shirt - fills in a crossword puzzle during lulls in the interview as he talks about the album's inception.

" I never had the intention of putting the album out because I wasn't a singer," Reynolds said. "I was kind of doing it while I was looking for somebody else to come along and sing. It just sort of snuck up on me.

The album, released last week, took more than a year to write and produce. "I was just a guitar player in bands; I was a team player. I never sang until four years ago. Before that, I just watched other people; I could live vicariously through them. All of a sudden, I just opened my mouth and found out I had a whole lot on my mind," he says with a laugh.

His music has been used on TV shows such as Showtime's "Masters of Horror," as well as "Tru Calling" and "Roswell."

The catchy, slightly upbeat tempo of "Dear Rose" belies its bleaker storyline. Reynolds wrote the song after seeing a TV piece about a girl in Boyle Heights killed in a drive-by shooting. "It was just a compelling image of a father standing over his daughter's grave and he had a big huge beer in his hand, too, and he couldn't get his life back together," he said.

In some tracks, Reynolds' voice has flecks reminiscent of U2's Bono. The cut "That Old Love" is a breakup anthem, reminiscent of Goo Goo Dolls ballads.

Reynolds, 36, may seem a late bloomer to the pop scene, but it's good timing, what with the burgeoning popularity of acoustic music channels on Sirius and XM satellite radio.

Reynolds was born and raised in Vancouver, B,C, His dad died when he was 14, the same year he took up guitar. His mother, a schoolteacher, raised him, his brother and sister. Reynolds said he was grounded a lot, spent a lot of time in his room and was a typical punk-rock teenager. His mom paid for his first month of guitar lessons so he could spend more time productively rather than be an "anti-social" teenager. After two more months of lessons he quit, but was hooked on music.

"As soon as I found music, my world got opened up," he said. "Music was pivotal. David Bowie...I considered saved (me) in my teen years. He was the soundtrack of my life then."

After high school, Reynolds went to New York for six weeks with only $280 Canadian, and it gave him the bug. "I knew I had to go suck up life abroad." That year, he went to a weeklong guitar camp in Bremerton, Wash., which influenced the way he writes songs to this day.

"There was this guy that played 17th century harp songs on the guitar, so he tuned his guitar to sound like a harp. We'd go up to the woods and sit on a stump, literally. He would teach a few of us these old 17th century songs, I didn't sing at the time and I'd been looking for something that was interesting to play for people when they'd come over, and it was so boring to play G, C, and D."

Since then, Reynolds has been using harp tunings. "It drives players nuts when they come in to play with me," he said. Reynolds also adds some intricate finger picking to tracks such as "Forsaken," which some listeners may liken to old Simon and Garfunkel.

Reynolds got married and moved to New Zealand for nine months. After moving back to Canada, he and his wife worked for a movie catering company. His first two trips to Los Angeles were to fly down for the company and drive up catering trucks. After getting divorced, Reynolds went to Scotland and Ireland for a few months before landing in Los Angeles for a fresh start at age 28, in 1997.

"I came down for a week or two; I was thinking about maybe taking a course at UCLA," he said. "I avoided L.A. like the plague, yet it's become the only home I've known."

But Reynolds' Los Angeles home at first was his Dodge van. While he did have a cousin in Silver Lake, he lived in his van for nine months while playing at coffeehouses. When asked where he'd park, he laughed and replied, "Anywhere that didn't have a neighborhood watch sticker up."

"You're just kind of in traveling mode," Reynolds said of his almost two years living in his van, which was equipped with a Persian rug, rocking chair, stove and cabinets he built himself. "I could go to my cousin's place to shower; I wasn't homeless. It's funny, because it just happened so naturally that it didn't dawn on me that it was kind of a bizarre thing to be doing."

Reynolds said he is drawn to adversity, survival and finding beauty in the struggle of life. "I love talking to old guys that can tell me a thing or two. I'm just drawn to why people do what they do and how they deal with what they're dealt."