Azizi,
Steve's voice is a small bit like Scotch; same way Jack Elliott's or Woody's can be. Or Leadbelly's or The Masked Marvel/Charlie Patton singing "Boll Weevil". After the first efforts, it goes down easy--with a warm glow.

The belly/ticks reference was just a semantic flight of some kind. --- I was once doing a 12-step thing. The 4th one was '\coming face to face with one's self.' So I shaved my beard. There were so many chins in my mirror, I chose to grow it back -- real quick! ;-)

Art