{"id":298320,"date":"2026-05-03T21:23:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T21:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/298320\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T21:23:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T21:23:18","slug":"poltz-is-back-in-san-diego-with-a-bigtime-award-on-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/298320\/","title":{"rendered":"Poltz is back in San Diego with a bigtime award on the way"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>Musician Steve Poltz, who has returned to San Diego after 10 years in Nashville. (Photo by Jay Blakesberg)<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve noticed a recent uptick in local appearances by quintessential San Diego singer-songwriter Steve Poltz<\/a>, who relocated to Nashville in 2016, it\u2019s not because he\u2019s been visiting a lot more often.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Poltz and his wife, Sharon, recently moved back to town \u2014 just in time for Steve to receive the Country Dick Montana Lifetime Achievement Award at the 35th Annual San Diego Music Awards.<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time Poltz has received a big SDMA honor. In 2000, the awards named him San Diego\u2019s Most Influential Artist of the 1990s. From co-writing Jewel\u2019s 1996 pop smash \u201cYou Were Meant For Me,\u201d to national touring and recording with offbeat music-and-comedy group the Rugburns, to more than a dozen albums under his own name, Poltz has been one of the most accomplished San Diego musicians of his generation.<\/p>\n

Talking with Poltz is like getting an informal history lesson covering 30 years of San Diego music. He waxes poetic about long-gone venues such as Drowsy Maggie\u2019s, Mandolin Wind, Java Joe\u2019s, the Pink Panther and the Old Time Cafe. He talks about befriending late, great San Diego luminaries such as Buddy Blue, Mojo Nixon and Country Dick Montana in his younger days. He shares hilarious day-job memories of \u201clearning microphone control\u201d by calling out orders at Round Table Pizza in La Mesa and working as a \u201cnipple salesman\u201d for AMS Plastics in El Cajon.<\/p>\n

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1960, Poltz moved with his family to Pasadena and then Palm Springs before heading to San Diego for college in 1978. We spoke with him by phone recently while he was on tour in Canada to support his new album JoyRide, heading west across the Great White North before flying south to San Diego in time for the Music Awards on Wednesday at Humphreys by the Bay.<\/p>\n

How long have you been back in San Diego, and what led you to move back after 10 years in Nashville?<\/p>\n

I always said I was going to \u201cretire\u201d in San Diego, because it\u2019s just so easy to live there. I didn\u2019t really want to leave Nashville, but my wife really wanted to get back, and I had said that I would. So we ended up moving back in October. We live right by North Torrey Pines State Beach. I said to my wife, Sharon, that I wasn\u2019t going to move back unless I lived walking-distance to the beach. That was my one parameter. She really wanted to get back. She did not like the weather in Nashville, but she loved the community and all the friends. I could have stayed there another 10 years, but she wanted to get back. And you know what they say: Happy wife, happy no knife in your neck.<\/p>\n

Not that I didn\u2019t want to go back to San Diego, because I love it. I just didn\u2019t think everything would happen so fast. I said that I have to live at the beach because I lived at Windansea in La Jolla for 30 years, right on the ocean in a little apartment. So I\u2019m kind of spoiled. We got really lucky and found a little townhouse. With my folk-music savings, I was able to buy a tiny little place, but it\u2019s at the beach and that\u2019s all I cared about. We sold a place (in Nashville) that was four bedrooms, three baths on half an acre, next to all these great musicians. It was really fun for me to live there, because everybody loved co-writing.<\/p>\n

But the moment I got back to San Diego and I went for a walk on the beach, I was so happy to feel my toes in the sand and the sun. We just leave our windows open \u2014 no bugs fly in. I can\u2019t believe I have this little place and I don\u2019t ever want to move again. I have such a crazy, peripatetic lifestyle, where I\u2019m constantly bouncing from airport to rental car to hotel to another rental car to another flight. So being back in San Diego, it\u2019s so livable. My beloved Padres are there, I\u2019ve got a lot of friends, and I love the proximity to Mexico. There\u2019s so many things I love about San Diego.<\/p>\n

2. What was the reason for moving to Nashville 10 years ago?<\/p>\n

You know, I never wanted to move. But I play a lot of festivals and a lot of times, my wife is with me. She\u2019d say, \u201cEverybody lives in Nashville.\u201d We\u2019d be hanging backstage and running (into) different Nashville people, like Buddy Miller or whoever. And my wife said, \u201cI think you should live in Nashville.\u201d We actually got in a fight about it. I say the dumbest things when I get angry. And I said to her, \u201cI\u2019m not leaving San Diego. I AM San Diego!\u201d She looked at me with this incredulous look, like, \u201cWhat did you say?\u201d And I realized how embarrassing it sounded. I couldn\u2019t believe I said that.<\/p>\n

So we went out there, and she said, \u201cI think we should buy a house together.\u201d So we did, and that was the best move I ever made, because we bought that house at the right time. It doubled in value, and that was how I was able to get this place we have now in San Diego. I owe it to her and me moving to Nashville. Everything just fell into place there. It was almost stupid. When I got there, everybody wanted to write songs with me. It was very easy. So it went from me saying, \u201cI AM San Diego, I\u2019m never moving from here,\u201d to me then saying to her when she said she wanted to move back, \u201cI don\u2019t want to move.\u201d She said to me, \u201cI didn\u2019t know when I married you that I was marrying someone who grew roots wherever he was.\u201d And that really made me laugh, because I kind of do. I think it\u2019s because I\u2019ve been nonstop on the road since the early 90s, so I like having that one little place where I can hang my hat.<\/p>\n

3. You\u2019re a Canadian by birth, but your family moved to Southern California when you were still living with your parents. How did you end up in San Diego?<\/p>\n

I graduated from Palm Springs High School in 1978, and then I moved to San Diego. I went to San Diego State and to Mesa College and to Grossmont College. I studied classical guitar at Grossmont College because they had a classical guitar program led by this guy named Miles Moynier. I really got along with him well. We would play classical guitar duets, which I was really into. He was playing gigs in Mexican restaurants in San Diego. One of them was a restaurant in La Mesa called Por Favor. Another was El Amigo in El Cajon.<\/p>\n

One day he said, \u201cHey, man, I double-booked myself, so I recommended you to play at Por Favor.\u201d They fed me before the gig, and I would get to eat after. They gave me 30 bucks. I\u2019d sit in the corner and play; I\u2019d sight-read all these classical guitar pieces. And then Miles was like, \u201cI\u2019m too busy teaching, why don\u2019t you take over my gigs?\u201d So I was playing four nights a week at Por Favor and three nights a week at El Amigo, four-to-five-hour classical guitar gigs every night. I would leave there and I would be so at peace, because the songs were all instrumentals that would put me in this zen state.<\/p>\n

4. You later attended University of San Diego and got your degree in political science there. What were you doing musically at that time?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when the Rugburns started. We actually started as a classical guitar duo, me and Rob Driscoll, because he also played classical guitar. We would play classical guitar duets for change in Balboa Park. We started playing a place called Drowsy Maggie\u2019s that was in North Park. I met this guy named Larry Brown, who was an encyclopedia of cool stuff. He ran the open-mic night at Drowsy Maggie\u2019s. Larry took a liking to me and he would play me songs. He never wrote a song, but he knew all these songs and he was a great flatpicker. He would go, \u201cYou ever heard of Townes Van Zandt?\u201d And I\u2019d be like, \u201cNo.\u201d And he\u2019d sing \u201cWhite Freight Liner Blues.\u201d Then he\u2019d say, \u201cThis is a Paul Westerberg song,\u201d and he would sing \u201cIf Only You Were Lonely.\u201d<\/p>\n

5. Finally, what does it mean to you to get the Country Dick Montana Lifetime Achievement Award from the San Diego Music Awards?<\/p>\n

Well, first of all, I feel like I\u2019m too young. I\u2019m only 66 but I still feel like I\u2019m 20. But I\u2019m thrilled because it\u2019s named after Country Dick Montana. He was one of my teachers and so the fact that it has his name attached to it, I\u2019m tickled pink by that. I love that.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really like awards for the most part, because they\u2019re kind of embarrassing. It\u2019s not false modesty, I promise you. I just don\u2019t want too much attention. And I think there\u2019s probably a lot better people they could have picked for this award. I don\u2019t know how I stumbled into this. I got into it because I just love the joy of music and I love the discovery of music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Musician Steve Poltz, who has returned to San Diego after 10 years in Nashville. (Photo by Jay Blakesberg)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,89938,75,89939],"class_list":["post-298320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-music-awards","tag-san-diego-news","tag-steve-poltz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}