Accordion players and manufacturers all over the world know about him, however, and Jordan says one of his proudest moments was the hero's welcome he received when he visited the Hohner plant in West Germany 11 years ago. The company flew Steve over to present him with an accordion they customized to his specifications, including almost flat buttons for faster finger action.
"The factory tour was a trip, man, because I always like to see how things are produced," he says. "Then I played for all the assembly line workers, and you could see their jaws drop. I showed 'em what they were making."
The Tao of Steve: "I'm not slowing down, bro. I still kick
ass every day."
Al Rendan
Jordan, onstage at the 20th annual Tejano Conjunto
Festival in San Antonio this past May.
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There are no wrong notes, only players who don't know what to do with them, Jordan says. Sometimes he'll hit a "wonk" when you're expecting a "wink," but in his jazz player's consciousness, it all makes sense. He doesn't know where it comes from, this inspiration that makes him happy and drives him crazy. Making music is putting yourself in a trance that tunes out the world, often to the dismay of wives, lovers and bill collectors.
"I don't wanna wake up until I die," he says. "I don't give a damn about the audience. I could be playing for five people or 5,000 -- it doesn't make a difference. I'm still gonna kick ass. And if you ain't gonna play because there's nobody there, then get the fuck out of my band."
"Steve is always saying he's not giving any part of Steve Jordan away," says Martinez. "He turned down a tour that would have earned him a million dollars because he didn't want to give an agent his percentage. He said he'd rather have 100 percent of nothing than to give some other man a piece of him."
Martinez' son, Steve Jordan Jr., who leads Mariachi Chihuahua, knows too well how idiosyncratic his father can be.
"He did some recording with Steve Sr. last year and he was so proud of that work," Martinez says. But when Steve Jr. came back the next week to hear how the tracks were mixed, his father said he had erased them because he didn't like them. "Stevie was crushed. He idolizes his father, but nothing he does is ever good enough for Steve."
Jordan's wicked perfectionist streak is such that he once hauled his own P.A. system to a taping of Austin City Limits. Although he initially refused to go on without his own speakers, he finally relented when it was pointed out that the ACL system was set up for television taping and not some Tejano bar.
Jordan has also been known to be brutal with club sound engineers.
"I'm sorry, but white guys just can't mix Mexican music. They always want to put the emphasis on the beat," he says, imitating a bass drum. "But we like the up beat."
Jordan says reports that he can be a fiery bandleader are justified, but there's no problem with his current group.
"They're like little pieces of me," he says of 17-year-old bassist Richard Jordan and the 19-year-old guitarist he calls Steve 3. "They've been playing only 11 months, and they get what I'm saying the first time."
The father didn't really know his sons when they were growing up. There were occasional Christmas visits and a fishing trip here and there, but for the most part Jordan wasn't an active participant in their upbringing. He didn't get along with their mother, his second and, he vows, final wife. Then, one day about two years ago, she dropped the kids off with the near-stranger with the eye patch, saying she couldn't control them anymore.
At the time Jordan was without a band, and therefore without an income (he says he's never received a penny in royalties from the nearly 50 albums he's released in his career). When a lucrative gig was offered in Houston, Steve said he'd take it. He had three weeks to teach his sons, who were more into sports and Nintendo than music, how to play 30 songs, but they did the show and haven't stopped playing since.
"These boys, they keep me young," beams a proud Jordan. Steve suddenly stops talking and raises a hand for silence as his version of "Harlem Nocturne" plays in the background. The jazz standard, which Jordan spent more than a week producing, starts with a lushly layered orchestra conjuring every shade of the night.
"Can you dig it, man?" he asks when his accordion starts into the melancholy melody. "All that sound from this little brown box," he says, tapping an old Hohner on the floor with a pointy-toed shoe. He touches his chest where the buttons would be, swaying his head as if lost in a dream.
"Man, what am I doing here, living in the back of some other dude's house, with my kids sleeping on the floor?" he asks, cutting into the ethereal moment. "Ask yourself that, bro. But this is why," he says, gesturing back to the speakers, where his accordion is flitting all around the melody like a bouquet of fireflies. "This," he says tapping the air. "This."
What a gift it is, the ability to blow your own mind. For Estéban "Steve" Jordan that'll have to do for now.
