Who knows why?

"Of course, we gravitated the conversation to Andrew [Dorff] and Alex [LeVasseur/Steele], and being that we're both in this hideous club that no parent should ever be in. We were talking about it, and then came a shrug of the shoulders, 'Who knows why?'"

(Steve Dorff / people.com, September 24, 2022)

It was an unusual name, when country band Boy Howdy from California signed a record deal with Curb Records at the beginning of the 1990's. It helped getting attention for their music and resulted in 3 top-10 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs Chart. The 4-piece band released an EP and 2 studio albums. When Boy Howdy quit in 1996, their 35-year old lead singer, who had basically written all their music, decided to make it on his own and moved to Nashville.

Looking back, Jeffrey Steele described his influences and the challenges of his new beginnings in a conversation with Andrew Kurland last year: "When I came to Nashville from Los Angeles in the early 90s, I was one of these guys that grew up on Merle Haggard and Led Zeppelin. So my music was a ball of that. And so when I was playing my songs back in the 90s, [record label] people were like, oh no, this is never gonna get on the radio!"

Indeed his output as a solo artist did receive little commercial success. It sounded too little in line with radios' expectations, too untamed and unwilling to compromise. So the highest chart performance of his solo works was a disappointing number 33, for the title cut of his first album in 2001, "Somethin' In The Water'".

Nonetheless he continued with 3 terrific solo-projects ("You Gotta Start Somewhere" / "Outlaw" / "Hell On Wheels"), which allowed him to put his swaggering voice on self-written material that creatively was all over the field between country and rock. And in 2008 he put his interpretations of country classics (this time none of them written by him) on his last solo-project to date, called "Countrypolitan", which among others includes a well done version of 'Angels Flying Too Close To The Ground' by Willie Nelson, one of his favorite songs.

After having spent 25 years in Nashville, the artist name Jeffrey Steele is still something of an insiders' tip in 2022. But at the same time, the by now 61 year old artist, who does not look his age, stands for one of the biggest success stories Nashville has seen over the past 25 years. For although he barely left a mark on the charts as an artist, he still is omnipresent there - one only needs to check the small print, that tells of the songwriters.

As a matter of fact, his successes require more than a paragraph to be listed. But they include highlights, such as multiple Songwriter of the Year awards, membership of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (2013), 5 Grammy-Award nominations, more than 60 hit songs (written for other artists) and over 500 recordings of his songs, resulting in over 65 mio. radio plays. Artists such as Zac Brown Band ('Knee Deep'), Tim McGraw ('The Cowboy In Me'), Montgomery Gentry ('Gone'), Eric Church ('Stick That In Your Country Song') or Rascal Flatts ('What Hurts The Most') owe significant highlights of their careers to Jeffrey Steele.

This momentum allowed Jeffrey Steele to release 2 Greatest Hits projects already in the 2000s! "Gold, Platinum, Chrome, and Steele" (2003) and "Gold, Platinum, No Chrome, and More Steele" (2007) contain his own take on hits, he has written for other artists. And in his Jeffrey Steele Academy he offers 35 years of music industry experience to ambitious songwriters, including a holistic approach on learning how to think like a songwriter.

Steve Dorff is 12 years older and with his 3 Grammy Award nominations also one of the most respected songwriters in Nashville. But while Jeffrey Steele also impresses as a charismatic entertainer on stage, Steve Dorff sticks to his destiny as a songwriter and composer by doing music scores and productions for musicals and TV on top of it.

Apart from a friendship that dates back to the 1980s, both artists share a traumatic blow of fate. Both of them have lost a son! For Jeffrey Steele it was his only son Alex, which died at the age of 13 in an ATV accident in 2007, while Steve Dorff lost his 40-year old son Andrew Dorff (also a renowned songwriter) in 2016.

"I think this was the first time we actually sat down to write something together", Steve Dorff told The Tennessean for an interview in October of 2022. "And as writers do, you start talking about family and you start talking about things that you have in common. And unfortunately, we have this in common, and we were talking and one of us just threw out "Who knows why?"

The intent of their musical collaboration, which by now dates back more than 2 years, was to pitch it to other artists. However, after a much applauded performance during the event "An Evening of Songs and the Stories Behind Them with Steve Dorff and Friends" at the City Winery Nashville in March of 2022, both of them decided to self release the song by the title of 'Who Knows Why' on September 23, 2022. "It's not a country or a pop song, and its tempo fluctuates, as does its key", Steve Dorff told people.com on trying to categorize it.

But even if it does not seem to fit in any musical drawer, what matters most is, that the result of which is a highly touching one. I'm not sure where it goes from here, but I just know that it goes from here - is Jeffrey Steele's favorite line in the song. He, who is still getting better at transforming the pain of the loss into supportive and transformative energy for others.

"I just think you have to try to take that, which is destroying you, and make it good for somebody else to help them out. That's really all you can do to keep your sanity and keep you walking straight. I'm speaking for myself, but it's been really good for me to get involved with kids and try to point them in the right direction."

It means accepting the irrecoverable as part of life and prevailing against the pain from it. Hence directing one's efforts towards matters that can still be changed. As Jeffrey Steele quoted an old wisdom during his appearance at the City Winery Nashville: "There is no tomorrow, there is no yesterday, we are only living in the now."

It doesn't matter where you are,

near of far, you're in my heart,

though you're gone, that's where you'll always stay.