Steve Burns

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Steve as host on Blue's Clues with Blue(right) and Mrs. Salt and Mr. Pepper
Steve as host on Blue's Clues with Blue(right) and Mrs. Salt and Mr. Pepper

Steve Burns (born October 9, 1973 in Boyertown, PA) is an actor, singer, and guitarist best-known for his stint as host of the popular Nickelodeon children's television show Blue's Clues. Burns hosted the show starting with its inception in 1996 and continuing through 2002, at which time the character Joe (portrayed by Donovan Patton) took over hosting duties.

In the fall of 1998, an urban legend began circulating on the Internet that Burns had died from a heroin overdose. To counter this rumor, Steve made an appearance on the Rosie O'Donnell Show to confirm his good health. The legend may have started from Burns' appearance as an autistic teenager in an April 1995 episode of Law & Order, in which his character died before the opening credits. Burns' "overdose" may also have been simply another iteration of a subgenre of urban legend in which celebrity figures whose public personas are associated with innocence are supposedly revealed to have a hidden, seedier side. According to a 15 minute documentary on Nickelodeon, titled "The 10 years of Blue", Burns left Blue's Clues because he was losing his hair and he did not want kids to know he was going bald.

After Burns left Blue's Clues in 2002, he recorded a rock album, Songs for Dustmites, which was released in 2003. The album was produced with the assistance of producer Dave Fridmann of Tarbox Road Studios, and with the assistance of and contributions by Steven Drozd, drummer for The Flaming Lips. (During the recording, Burns portrayed an engineer aboard a spacecraft in The Flaming Lips' film, Christmas on Mars.) The album was well-received by critics, many of whom expressed surprise at the album's quality (given their previous associations of Burns as "merely" a children's show host). Burns followed up the album's release with an international tour in 2003 and 2004. Burns also made an appearance on Figure It Out: Wild Style as one of the panelists.

Burns is currently working on a new album. He has recently contributed a cover of They Might Be Giants' "Dead" to the TMBG tribute album, Hello Radio.

Burns has an active voice-over career. His voice can be heard on numerous Rubbermaid commercials, as well as the 1996 McDonald's commercial that introduced the Arch Deluxe sandwich, and Mobil's "Mobil On The Run" radio commercials.

On October 26th, 2006, Steve Burns released two new songs on his new MySpace page that will appear on his next album, which will be titled Deep Sea Recovery Efforts. He is currently featured in a video on the Jack's Big Music Show website, performing "I Hog the Ground" with Steven Drozd of Flaming Lips.

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