Carlos Steele Music

A ‘Clawing, Brawling’ Search for a Certain Sound

Exploring the music and development of Carlos Steele’s newest album, “When I’m Enough,” produced by Sandia Studios in Albuquerque, N.M.

WRITTEN BY JOHN BAKER PAGE // APRIL 26, 2025 (PUB. MAY 5, 2025)

Recently completed and released at the beginning of this year, When I’m Enough (2025): New Mexico-native Carlos Steele’s feature-length sophomore studio album, hit stores on January 31st (the shared birthday of legendary Chicago- guitarist Terry Kath and Sex Pistols-frontman Johnny “Rotten” Lydon).

Steele — a noted observer of dates, times, zodiac signs (and the like) — made clear from the get-go that he settled on the selected release date for very specific reasons:

“It may just be another one of my quirks, or something deeper, but the date for something like a music release — for me at least — has to hold some sort of significance. And this could be something as simple as it being one of my hero’s birthdays, or maybe a birthday of a loved one; maybe the date just looks good to me on paper… but I remember a while ago I looked at the date in my head: “January 31, 2025,” and I felt both a sense of wholeness, and the essence of two legends hit the air — Terry Kath and Johnny Rotten. This was their shared birth- date. And I decided then and there — that was gonna be the day the album comes out. That was just it.”

To his deep satisfaction — after a turbulent production process and many a-hard night’s work and little sleep, high stress, and several cups of coffee down the hatch — Steele made his 1/31/25 deadline with the album’s release. **

According to the blues/rock guitarist and singer himself, When I’m Enough — composed of 12 songs (11 originals, alongside one cover tune), is “the single-most thing I’ve worked hardest on in my life, at least to date.”

Featuring 11 original, fully produced rock-based songs, structured around a slow-burn, soulful deep-cut rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’ — featuring the distinct voice of New Mexico’s hugely talented and charismatic Amanda Machon (of renowned Albuquerquean-garage rock group Red Light Cameras — When I’m Enough presents a raw and far edgier grit (and loudness) as compared to the strictly more acoustical timbre of Steele’s debut LP, Pictures (2022).

When asked about the origins and overall design of the album cover, the grassroots musician told us: “I really love the more elaborate album art spawned by the giants I grew up listening to, and fell in love with — The Beatles, Floyd, Zeppelin (and so on). But I guess when it comes to my own music, I like to keep things pretty simple. There’s a couple symbolic things goin’ on there, but really it’s just a picture of me fake-sleeping eating a burrito.”

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“We decided it was gonna be a rock album, this second one,” Steele recalled in thinking back on the early days of planning When I’m Enough’s production: “… Dylan Anderson — who recorded my first record, and who has been a good friend of mine for a very long time — kept bugging me to record some fully produced, full-scale rockband songs (which I’ve never been against, the first record just ended up being all acoustic). And seeing as him and I certainly share a love for rock-n’-roll — Foo Fighters; Pearl Jam; Nirvana-type stuff — on top of having a new list of songs that seemed pretty tailored to a classic rock structure, we started tracking: guitars, vocals, and bass, AND drums… the whole enchilada.”

Without question does the record shout and screech, tumble and turn, and repeatedly waver on the brink of a provenly turbulent and darkly clouded emotional storm, and too meditates on a variety of themes and circumstances — from mental illness; relationship debacles; familial dynamics; to other inner demon-based quarrels (within tunes like ‘Tell Me (I’m Sure as Hell)’, ‘So Sick’a Feeling Sick’, and bare-bones concluding number ‘I’m Still Here’).

Additionally, other narratives from the record illustrate notions/visuals as simple (or common) as barreling down a lost highway on a blisteringly hot sunny day along some bend amidst the red dirt of the American Southwest — as is the case throughout the album’s 3-minute rock frenzy opener ‘Roads’ (at least with this imagery in particular).

However, through crafting the deepest emotional pools and most personal regions of When I’m Enough, Steele shared that a strange and tumultuous comorbidity arrived with the harder days of production, in which the pain within the words and music of, for instance, the 8-minute long blues journey that is ‘Heavy Living (or, Daisychain Blues),’ coupled inevitably with the weighing pressure of finishing the album to both his own, and Anderson’s standards:

“It certainly got to be a bit f**king grim, man… A lot of these tunes that I’d gathered for this specific album came from… well, I can’t necessarily call it a ‘happy place.’ Let’s just say there’s a certain someone in my life who hurt me a hell… HELL of a lot, and filled me with a lot of the kind of pain you hear throughout a tune like ‘Heavy Living’… and it wasn’t all from them. There’s just a lot of rants surrounding the trials and tribulations and hardships of a young man’s life arranged across the album. And while I finally, quite literally, scream it all out in ‘A Million Ways To Eat Your Demons,’ there’s still a pain you can hear in my voice on the final track. But — it’s all part of the story. The album isn’t all good tales, nor all bad. I think it’s both, though with more of the latter and fewer of the former.”

To say the least, When I’m Enough marks a notable musical venture in Steele’s passionate musical career, plentifully full of heart and soul; pains and misgivings; apologies and acceptances; blood; sweat; tears; broken drumsticks; blistered fingers; teeth chipped off the crowns of microphones, and an appropriate amount of hair lost… amongst an extensive multitude of feelings, facets, and conditions.

The album is the second installment in what Steele has referred to as his ‘Phases- trilogy,’ of which is intended to be completed by his third studio album “Back.”, destined for release some time in 2026/7.

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When asked ‘What’s next?’, Steele — as with the majority of his answers — gave a pretty hefty response: “Well… like everyone man, and namely a lot of the heroes I have always looked up to: there’s a lot of struggle I attribute, not only to who I am, but to what I do.” He continued:

“I think I was born with a musical something already planted in me… you know, on a preternatural level, maybe? And all the music, really, is a reflection of what I see, and feel. That’s what Van Gogh expressed on cheap canvases for the bulk of his 39-years on this planet, and what Brian Wilson did (and still does) in producing his albums, and what Syd Barrett did in establishing the fundamentals of Pink Floyd, and what Phil Ochs created in his hauntingly powerful protest songwriting, and what Nina Simone did in her redefining of contemporary soul and R&B music, and what Francisco Goya developed in his ‘Black Paintings,’ and what John Nash did in his furthering of modern mathematics. These are just a few legends… a small bunch of legends spawned through Earth’s rotations since the beginning of it all… and all of them had their demons. And I know I do too. And sometimes, I feel better knowing that, although I may be broke for the rest of my life and/or not amount to anything that is even slightly comparable to that of the efforts of these aforementioned names (or the geniuses of their ilk)… at least I’ll know I will have played music my entire life. Because that’s what I’ve done, and that — truly — is what I plan to do.” ***

** As of April 15th, 2025, When I’m Enough qualified as an official finalist for the 2025 New Mexico Music Awards’ category for ‘Best Rock Album.’ The awards ceremony took place on June 1, 2025 at Sandia Resort & Casino in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

*** Steele would like to extend his thanks and gratitude to the following individuals for “making When I’m Enough possible”: Mom, Dad, Tina Marquez, Dylan Anderson, A.J. Ortiz, Andrew Godfrey, Amanda Machon, Dave Grohl, Eddie Vedder, Jim Morrison, Angus Young, Paul McCartney, and my entire Rubio-Steele families.

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(“A ‘Crawling, Brawling’ Search for a Certain Sound.” © John Baker Page 04/26/2025 / All rights reserved.)