At age 15 he started playing guitar in a class offered by the high school and soon after started playing bass. He played in various bands through high school and formed his first successful cover band CZAR with a group of friends. That band played a lot of music from that era like Kansas, Styx, Deep Purple, Ted Nugent etc, and was the opening act for bands like The Ramones and popular Canadian band Rose. Steven continued to play in various cover bands and took classes in music theory from a member of the Chuck Mangione Orchestra (famous jazz group out of Rochester).