Talking to Steve Burns on the phone is kind of like talking to Steve Burns in space. The disembodied voice, the slight distortion of his cell phone, the burst of radioactivity that momentarily intercepts his signal as if ground control is trying to touch base.
The latter is more likely a rogue transmission from the National Severe Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma, outside which Burns sits in the parking lot, finishing off this his last interview of the day before touring the facilities. He’s there to shoot backing video for “Troposphere,” a song in which the eponymous atmospheric layer — where most weather changes occur — is used as a metaphor for the limbo that follows heartbreak. It is the song most likely to be overplayed from his debut album, Songs for Dust Mites. He’s also visiting with the Flaming Lips, some of whom helped produce the album.
The press machine is just beginning to whirl for Dust Mites, but it already seems that the useful adjectives are taken: sweeping, cinematic, lush. It’s a gentle album, if such a thing can be said of rock without causing insult. Maybe it’s because Burns, 29, used to work with kids — or for them — solving puzzles with an animated dog and ruminating in the Thinking Chair on Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues for six years before retiring in 2002. He’s sorted himself out after the safety of children’s television writing “sweet songs about science and love,” propelling himself through the cosmos of adult emotion and childlike vulnerability that is the stuff of good pop music. — Su Ciampa
Hooksexup: Are you staying at Flaming Lips Headquarters?
Steve Burns: Yeah, I’m staying at Wayne [Coyne]’s house.
What goes on there?
The first time I went there, I was shown to a room where I would be sleeping where there was a life-sized rubber eviscerated man on the couch. There is a space station being constructed in the backyard. These things are not exaggerated.
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"I have a feeling that any groupies would be forward-thinking soccer moms at this point."
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It seems like you’ve gotten quite chummy with them. Steve Drozd and Dave Fridmann worked on your album, and you appear in the Flaming Lips movie Christmas on Mars. Before that, you were a self-professed Flaming Lips fan. What’s it like becoming friends with your idols?
It was really very natural. They are maybe even nicer than they are talented. It is kind of weird because I’m such a big fan of them—of their music—I am like a screaming fan, but I’m also a big fan of them personally now.
How did Drozd and Fridmann initially get involved with your album?
Well, I kind of stalked Dave Fridmann. I knew someone who had his phone number and I kind of inappropriately called him. I was getting involved in music production myself, just as a hobbyist, and when I finally talked to him he told me he had had a Blues Clues party the night before [for his son]. So I opportunistically guilted him into listening to my CD. And he called me back and said, This is pretty good, would you ever want to work on it? And I jumped on it.
Why dust mites?
I had seen a photograph of dust mites fighting nanotechnology microgear machines, and it just freaked me out to the point where I had to start writing songs about it.
Science is a recurrent them on the album. What’s the attraction? Is the search for science similar to the search for love?
I think that people tend to separate those two as often as possible. There’s science, and then there’s emotion. But I think the pursuit of science is very passionate. And I think that science is answering questions about the nature of love and the nature of who we are. It’s asking the same questions. To me it’s all very romantic and very fascinating.
And are you looking forward to the fan sex?
[laughs] If there is any I’m sure I’ll be looking forward to that, but I think the whole groupie idea is a little premature.
At least it’s a nice change from moms wanting to see you naked.
Well, I have a feeling that any groupies would be forward-thinking soccer moms at this point.
How did being an icon to millions of toddlers effect your sex life?
Actually it helped me date a lot more than you’d think it would. I read an article in GQ once about short and long-term mating characteristics. And I possess absolutely no short-term mating characteristics. None. I don’t have any of them. But I possess all of the long-term mating characteristics.
So you’re a breeder, not a lover.
I’m not the alpha male who just gets the attention instantly, but I am the sensitive guy who’s great with kids. Normally, it takes us, those of the sensitive type, four or five dates to get that across. But because of Blue’s Clues, it was right there on my green-striped sleeve. So it actually helped.
 Burns before . . .
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Do you feel that you have to overcome the supremely dorky image of Blues Clue’s Steve, and is the album an attempt to do so?
I do feel like I have to overcome that, but I’m also smart enough to know that I am supremely dorky, and embracing it is going to be a lot easier than trying to overcome it. I did make a record about nanotechnology and the troposphere.
Do you think people are more resistant to the idea of your being a proper musician?
If I were out there saying, please, no, don’t look at me as Steve from Blue’s Clues, look at me as this indie rock godlet, I’d be failing. That’s a boring story. That’s what everyone expects you to do. What I’m saying is, no, that’s me and I’m this guy. It’s not one or the other, it’s both.
You’ve spent some press time dispelling rumors of your death. Why do you think people are so keen to assume children’s TV personalities have a dark side?
Because it’s easier to believe. And it’s also more fun. It’s something so incredibly innocent, it’s so much more fun to corrupt it. I used to get tons of emails from bored housewives asking to take me for a ride in my Thinking Chair. Naked emails and stuff. I was always shocked and amazed by that. But I think it comes from that same instinct, to corrupt that which is innocent.
I read that you didn’t take other acting gigs during Blue’s Clues to avoid confusing or upsetting your young audience. Do you feel freer now to try different things in your acting career?
I do, but I’ve also kind of abandoned my acting career. When something interesting comes up, of course I’ll do it, but it’s nothing I’m pursuing.
Do you feel like you have other freedoms now? Blue’s Clues Steve had to be pretty asexual.
There were a lot of bachelor parties that I’ve skipped, and, hell yeah, I want to get me to some bachelor parties! [laughs] But I’m not going on any benders anytime soon.
Nick Hornby once defined good music as that which you can dance or drink to, cry or think about. How would you categorize your music?
Excellent music to watch the Discovery Channel by. n°
To visit Steve Burns’ website and listen to audio samples from Songs for Dust Mites, click here.
To buy Songs for Dust Mites, click here.