Steve, born in 1953, grew up the son of a Baptist minister and piano-playing nurse from Arkansas. His beloved parents are trying very hard to figure out how to be proud of him, bless their little hearts. He draws his musical influences from the small town gospel church music he grew up with, along with the Top 40 radio of the late 60s/early 70s, blues he learned on the Texas Gulf Coast, protest folk and, later in life, musical theater.
http://newworldwaking.com/Steve_Schalchlin_Bio.html
Steve is grateful to Jim Brochu for keeping him alive, to Artistic Director of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, Kathleen McGuire for her vision, to Executive Director Teddy Witherington of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus for his creative mind and to the entire SFGMC for their emotional commitment and artistic excellence in developing this piece.
Steve’s early musical development was in the church where his mom played piano for the tiny country congregations. His piano lessons began when he was 7, but he wasn’t a particularly good student. He hated practicing his lessons. But he did love the church music he had grown up with and at the age of 10, after his family moved to Anaheim, California, he began playing for his dad’s congregation of 12.
Though he enjoyed playing in church, he thought the piano was basically for “squares” until the day he looked into Paul McCartney’s eyes on the night The Beatles sang “Hey Jude” on Ed Sullivan, a moment which also turned him gay. And he realized the piano could be cool, too.
His family’s move to a tiny backwoods town in east Texas on the Gulf Coast led Steve, in his high school years, to hanging out with the local blues and rock musicians. And though he couldn’t join a dance band (since Baptists don’t dance or drink), he found himself, instead, rocking out the little congregation each Sunday until his mother finally scolded him, “The church is not a rock group.”
It was the late 70s. One night, at the 7/11, he met an out gay boy his own age, fell tails over head in puppy love and told the band he was now an atheist, a piece of news he thought they could handle more easily than the truth. (He was right.)
Cliff wasn’t interested in falling in love (with Steve), so Steve moved to Denton, Texas just north of Dallas with group of Iranian engineering students who he had met working in the kitchen of a Mexican Restaurant after dropping out of the band.
Working as a night shift waiter at an IHOP, Steve met a transgender dishwasher who told him where he could find gay people in Dallas. This led him to being cast as a singing/dancing waiter at a “high class” dinner theater called the Gran’ Crystal Palace even though he knew nothing of musical theater, had never so much as seen a musical, and had no knowledge of jazz or New York or Gershwin or Sinatra or Sondheim.
To his surprise, he found that his storytelling songs were a perfect fit for theatre, and he began writing love duets and anthems for the stage shows. Unfortunately, the Gran’ Crystal Palace was on its last legs, so he accepted a job as musical director for a Vegas-bound Donny and Marie-style act, while writing songs and making demos with the other band members on the side.
Eventually, though, he landed back in New York, singing and playing down on Christopher Street where he played hustler bars and cabaret clubs, teaching himself the American Songbook along the way. He took particular pride in his interpretations of Stephen Sondheim and Jerry Herman.
A year-long gig on a cruise line out of New York led him to meet his now life partner, Jim Brochu, who had just lost his father to cancer. They collaborated on a few songs for a children’s show, A Wonderful Worldful of Christmas, which got published by Samuel French.
A job offer for Jim from Hollywood brought the couple out where Steve immediately jumped into the Los Angeles music scene by volunteering, and then quickly becoming managing director of the National Academy of Songwriters, a job that got him back into his first love, the art and craft of songwriting.
http://newworldwaking.com/Steve_Schalchlin_Bio.html
That certainly doesn't fit the meme.....we are repeatedly told that homosexuals are born that way, have no control, genetically wired etc.