Blues music isn’t supposed to survive on nostalgia. It’s supposed to live, in neighborhood clubs, festival stages, late-night jam sessions, and in the hands of musicians willing to spend decades learning where the music came from and why it still matters.
Steve Grills understands that better than most.
For more than four decades, the Lima native and Rochester musician has quietly become one of the region’s most enduring ambassadors of American roots music. He’s shared stages with blues legends, performed at the Chicago Blues Festival, recorded alongside musicians whose careers stretch back to the birth of electric blues, and helped sustain a musical tradition that remains deeply woven into Rochester’s cultural fabric.
Ask Grills about his career, however, and he’ll quickly dismantle any romantic notions of life as a musician.
“I often joke, if I say I am a musician, don’t hold it against me. Even in Canada or European countries, being a musician is respected and encouraged and supported as part of the culture,” Grills says. “Not so much here. That’s a sense I have about it.”
Music, he explains, is often equal parts passion and perseverance.
“If music is what you want to do, it is going to be a tough road,” he says. “You are going to be subjected to people who enjoy what you do and try to be supportive, but you will run into negativity too.”
For Grills, that’s never been a reason to stop playing.
Raised in Lima, NY, Grills’ musical education began long before he ever stepped onto a stage. His father’s record collection introduced him to blues masters Big Bill Broonzy, Lead Belly, and Lightnin’ Hopkins. The Beatles led him to Chuck Berry and, eventually, to the deeper roots of American music itself. Family friends Steve Goodman and John Prine helped expand his understanding of songwriting and artistic expression.
“I have searched out the roots of rock and roll,” Grills says. “I kept uncovering the people who built it. For me, the blues was straightforward and honest. It reflected the expression of an individual. I’ve always been attracted to the blues from a young age.”
His path into performance wasn’t carefully planned. It began when his older brother told him to show up for a band rehearsal.
“Back in those days you didn’t ask questions,” Grills laughs. “If your dad or older brother said be there, you went.”
What followed wasn’t a sudden breakthrough so much as a realization that music offered something worth committing to.
One of the defining relationships of Grills’ career came through Robert Lockwood Jr.—the legendary blues guitarist who was mentored by Robert Johnson and remains one of the most important links between Delta blues and modern electric blues.
“Robert was, to me, even before I heard him perform, a legendary figure,” Grills recalls.
What began as admiration became friendship and mentorship. Grills traveled to Cleveland to hear Lockwood perform, spending time listening to stories and learning from one of the music’s living legends. Eventually, Lockwood invited Grills and his band to perform at his Legendary Blues Festival outside Cleveland in 1992. Later, Grills would record with Lockwood on Harmonica Wizard, another milestone in a relationship that helped shape his musical identity.
“I tried to learn his songs,” Grills says. “I had the audacity to play them for Robert, and he seemed to enjoy hearing me play them.”
For Grills, honoring the blues means understanding the cultural history that gave birth to it.
“It is nothing to trifle with,” he says. “The people who devoted themselves to the blues, this was an opportunity to express themselves when their expression was suppressed.”
Rochester’s music scene has long served as an unlikely crossroads where national artists and local musicians have found themselves sharing the same rooms.
Grills remembers one particularly surreal evening in 1979.
Robert Lockwood Jr. was performing at Red Creek Inn, the beloved Jefferson Road music venue operated by Jeff Springut, when Bob Dylan arrived after performing at the War Memorial during his Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
“Bob Dylan came to hear Robert play,” Grills recalls. “Dylan had a small entourage with him and was wearing those half-tinted gradient sunglasses that were popular during that time.”
He brought his guitar with him. The two musicians reportedly discussed recording for a label Dylan hoped to launch before circumstances—and Dylan’s growing Christian faith—ultimately took him in another direction
Over the years, Grills has collaborated with an impressive roster of blues musicians, including Joe Beard, Benny Turner, Carey Bell, Johnny Rawls, and Bill Doggett. His longtime band, The Roadmasters, takes its name from Earl Hooker’s legendary group.
In 2009, Grills performed at the Chicago Blues Festival as part of the centennial celebration honoring blues icon Robert Nighthawk. Sharing the stage with pianist Ernest Lane, who grew up playing music alongside Ike Turner in Clarksdale, Mississippi—Grills found himself participating in yet another chapter of blues history.
Lane’s musical résumé reads like a roadmap through American music: collaborations with Ike Turner, Robert Nighthawk, and Earl Hooker place him among the architects of electric blues. Grills eventually recruited Lane to record on his album On After Hours, a self-promoted release that reached No. 39 on the Roots Music Report’s Top 100 blues albums chart.
“I was quite happy about that,” Grills says. “That was an accomplishment for a self-promoted release.”
Like many working musicians, he now navigates an industry transformed by streaming platforms and shifting listener habits.
“CDs? Do people want them?” he asks with a laugh. “There is more interest in vinyl. How do you release music now? It is basically all streaming.”
Despite his impressive musical résumé, Grills measures success differently than many artists might.
When asked what qualities he values most in fellow musicians, technical ability isn’t at the top of the list.
“It is more about personality and character than musical ability,” he says. “You really have to want to do it and you have to love it. It is not always rewarding financially. You really earn your money. Try to maintain a degree of humility,” he says. “Just be kind and respectful of people. There are two kinds of people in the world, those who lift you up and those who put you down.”
The same philosophy informs the venues he chooses to play. He points to Fanatics in Lima as an example of a place that understands how to make both audiences and performers feel welcome.
Recognition still arrives unexpectedly, a compliment from someone at a bike shop in Rochester’s South Wedge or a stranger on the street who remembers hearing him perform.
Those moments, he says, matter.
Steve Grills doesn’t talk about preserving the blues as though it belongs in a museum. For him, it’s a living art form that survives only if musicians continue to play it, teach it, and share it.
“I feel a respect for the tradition,” he says carefully. “But it is also about keeping it alive through change. It has to live, not just be preserved.”
That philosophy has guided him for more than four decades.
In Rochester, where artistic traditions are often sustained not by institutions but by working musicians willing to keep showing up, Steve Grills has quietly spent a lifetime carrying the blues forward—one song, one stage, and one audience at a time.
George Cassidy Payne is a Rochester-based nonprofit leader, educator, and advocate for sustainable economic development. With a philosophy and social work background, George has spent over two decades addressing issues of equity, public policy, and crisis intervention. His community development and environmental sustainability expertise informs his commitment to strengthening Rochester’s regional economy.