Balancing law and music
CT LAWYER STEVE MEDNICK REPRESENTS HIGH-PROFILE CLIENTS AND ALSO RECORDED 20 ALBUMS
I“WE DEVELOPED THE COLLEGE STREET MUSIC HALL,” FORMERLY THE PALACE THEATER IN NEW HAVEN, “AND WE BROUGHT LIVE MUSIC INTO THE WESTVILLE MUSIC BOWL.”
n the liner notes to his new album 1952, Steve Mednick writes, “Each and every morning I look mortality straight in the eye and declare: ‘There is still so much to do! Don’t mess with me! Please?’ ”
Then he adds, “The recovering politician in me is just ‘looking for an extended term.’ ”
You might have already guessed that Mednick named his CD for the year he was born. “I decided to do this one because I turned 70 last February,” he tells me. “It’s a time for reflection.”
“When you’re our age,” he notes, “you’re looking back.” (He can say “our age” to me because we’ve known each other for many years and he’s aware we’re contemporaries; I was born in 1950.)
Mednick’s CD has “lots of references to places in my life,” including Waterbury, where he grew up; Milford, where his family had a summer home; and Hutchinson Island in Florida, where he spends parts of the winter.
We met for our interview at Mednick’s expansive second-floor law office in downtown New Haven. The walls reflect the blend of political creature and musician that has embodied his life. Here are photos of his idols John F. Kennedy and Bob Dylan; solo shots of George Harrison and John Lennon; Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on the campaign trail in 1968; the crowd at Woodstock (Mednick was there, at 17). Political campaign buttons and biographies of public figures fill the bookshelves.
One of those buttons says “Mednick.” He served on New Haven’s Board of Aldermen from 1982 to 1992. Then, reaching higher, he ran for a seat on the state Senate but lost. “I never ran for anything again,” he says. “Politics is a very wearying profession for those who have families.” He and his wife Marlene have a daughter, a son and two grandchildren.
That political defeat is addressed in a song on the CD. Its refrain: “Sometimes I sit here remembering the parts that didn’t come my way.”
When asked to specify those lost “parts,” Mednick acknowledges, “I never got to the state Senate; I probably would’ve wanted to go higher after that. And I thought being named a judge would’ve been a great way to end a career. But you can’t become a judge once you’ve turned 70.”
Mednick says of that song: “It’s not a lament, just a fact of life. The fact that I’m not a judge doesn’t diminish my life. It’s just a reflection that life doesn’t always go your way. That’s true for just about everybody.”
As with many of Mednick’s earlier albums — 1952 is his 20th — his lyrics sometimes reflect his liberal political views, the despair of living through the Donald Trump presidency and worrying about what comes next. His song “Lost and Found” has these lines: “The fabric has been torn. I am tired, I am worn. Is there a silver lining in the darkest cloud?” And in “Waiting to Derail” Mednick sings: “We are in a state of shock. The weight of this sad time. We are all islands shouting lies across seas of misunderstanding.”
“How could an album not have reference to this world we live in?” Mednick asks me. “Of the 20 albums I’ve done, five or six have the theme ‘Problems in Democracy.’ I try to tell stories in a way that’s not depressing or polarizing. I call it ‘history you can dance to.’ I’m now recording the next ‘Problems in Democracy.’ It’s titled At the Brink. I would love to make an album called Happy Days Are Here Again. I hope I live long enough to do that.”
Mednick is now 20 years into his musical revival. “When I turned 50, one of my old friends said, ‘Why don’t we re-form our band?’ We had a band in high school in Waterbury called the Avengers. I hadn’t touched an instrument in many years.”
The Avengers re-assembled. “And I started writing songs. The next thing I knew, I was in a studio. I thought, ‘Gee, maybe I should record some of the songs I’ve been writing.’ This has been one of the most enriching periods of my life.”
In the 1952 liner notes, Mednick credits his producer Isaac Civitello, “whose acuity and generosity of spirit in the studio made my dreams come true.” Mednick hopes the band can get on the road again in the spring or summer. They don’t have forever — “In our band ‘the baby’ is 60 and one of us is 75 or 76.”
This is not about money. “I’ve got 260 published songs and I haven’t monetized it. I recently saw somebody I hadn’t seen in many years and she told me, ‘I finally got to listen to your CD.’ I asked her what she thought and she said, ‘I wish you hadn’t asked. You won’t be on the cover of Rolling Stone.’ I said, ‘I know that!’ ”
“Some people do this because you’re called to do it. I don’t consider this a hobby. It’s a calling. It’s like a painter. You’re moved by a vision and you paint your picture.”
Mednick knows he’s lucky to have a lucrative “day job” to pay the bills. This isn’t true for many musicians. “I feel for the people I work with. I see people out there every day, making music and barely getting by. The state of the music industry is an abomination for the musician. It’s a travesty that working musicians have to work another job. It’s a tragedy for them and for this country. A new WPA [Works Progress Administration] would be an important thing for working musicians. Everybody should have a chance, a real shot at making a living off their work.”
You won’t find Mednick’s CDs in record stores; you’ll have to go online to buy one. He sends off his music to local radio stations such as listenersupported WPKN in Bridgeport. “My songs get some play; I don’t think a lot.”
Mednick sees the struggles of musicians first-hand, as his principal client for his law business is the New Haven Center For Performing Arts Inc. “We developed the College Street Music Hall,” formerly the Palace Theater in New Haven, “and we brought live music into the Westville Music Bowl,” a retrofit of the Connecticut Tennis Center. He calls these new venues “my passion projects.”
But Mednick could not save another venue, the New Haven Coliseum. “I represented SMG, the last operator of the Coliseum. We tried to cut a deal but [New Haven Mayor John] DeStefano wanted to get rid of it. We had this facility — why destroy it? I still think that was a loss.”
Toward the end of our extended conversation about life, time and memories, Mednick tells me, “I try to look at things very positively. The last song on 1952 is ‘Living For Tomorrow.’ I still think there’s tomorrow. I think that is the key to remaining happy and viable as a human — to look for tomorrow.”