Amy's new CD

So Amy has her new CD out, Only a Dreamer, featuring the songs of John Stewart. Already she has had some nice reviews and airplays including the BBC as well as commercial stations. The DJs all seem to choose different songs to play, which is nice. Many albums have one or two goodies interspersed with dross, but this seems to be appealing across the board.

We went down to Portsmouth a few weeks ago for the launch concert. As is her wont Amy had a stage set built to replicate the cozy corner of her recording studio, and drapes and lights and guitar stands and space for backing singers including ME. There was a lovely review – at least I hope that is what it was – that described my contribution: “father and daughter singing together has a special kind of bond to it, and A’s voice brings a sense of time and generations to the songs.” Ah, “time and generations” – how lovely. Or does he just mean that I sounded OLD…? A new “discovery” Danielle sang with Amy for many of the songs and did some solos and that really worked well.

The whole program was streamed live on a social media platform, so people in America and France as well as the UK were able to see the show in real time. The only problem we discovered afterwards was that somehow the iPad doing the filming presented the whole show at a 90 degree angle. Emails about having a crick in the neck came wafting to us through cyberspace, and I was minded of the prophet Ezekiel. For those not so well up on Old Testament prophets he had to lie on his side for 390 days to function. Amy’s show only lasted a little over two hours, but the vision field was incongruous. Fortunately the whole gig was videoed so maybe bits of it will end up on YouTube or similar. Maybe.

The background to the album is covered in my liner notes. I will end with a reprint.

Personally I blame Radio Luxembourg.

In those dim and distant monochrome days of the late 1950s British radio was the BBC and establishment and both dull and condescending to the youth audience. But a commercial station based in Luxembourg (although recorded in London) broadcast sheer pop heaven on the 208 medium waveband. Lying in bed with my value portable radio the size of a brick clamped to my ear, I listened and absorbed.

One show was the Capitol show, paid for by the Capitol record company. A crucial ingredient of this show each week was the Kingston Trio.

I favoured folk music from a very early age and the Trio, with their harmonies and banjo and humour appealed. I bought singles. I looked for other similar fare in the record shops and came up with the Cumberland Three featuring a very young man named John Stewart. Then, when the Kingstons lost Dave Guard and John Stewart joined them, I was on a roll. I saw them at the Hammersmith Odeon on their one visit to the UK in 1962, and then saw Stewart sing Greenback Dollar and cut his finger playing it live at the London Palladium on black and white TV. I bought all the Trio discs – generally second hand because money was tight – and more and more, Stewart with his gravelly “wobbly” voice and song writing skills came to the fore. When the group disbanded and Stewart went solo it was a natural transfer for me.

Stewart’s music was eclectic. His albums went from country to rock to folk to singer-songwriter Americana and there were lots of them over the next forty years. His peak for me was probably in the early 80s when Chuck McDermott sang back-up and played 12 string alongside him. But that is a generalisation – I enjoyed (and still do) tracks from Signals Through the Glass to The Day the River Sang.

In the 80s and 90s I had a collection of bootleg tapes culled from the albums that I played in the car. Taking my daughter to and from school, and later to and from work, she was exposed – whether she liked it or not – to a John Stewart fest on many a day. Fortunately, she did like it, and ultimately this album is the result.

When Amy began writing and singing herself one of the first songs she wrote and taped was a tribute to John Stewart. It was pressed and presented to me with a couple of Stewart covers as an anniversary present. The tribute song incorporated all the various themes of John’s music, and told his story obliquely with lines from songs and particularly the final riff from Mother Country. Later when singing and recording professionally she had Buffy Ford Stewart’s permission and blessing on the song.

This brings us to this special tribute album. Amy has re-recorded her tribute song using musicians who have backed her in live performance. And she has chosen from a huge list of favourites the songs that make up the rest of the album. They range from the 1960s (Some Lonesome Picker), the 1970s (Hung on the Heart, Last Hurrah) to the 1980s (Dreamers on the Rise, Queen of Hollywood High). (Spanning the whole range of Stewart’s work she has previously recorded Jasmine from 2006 on an earlier album). She was especially pleased that Chuck McDermott who sang with John on some of his most iconic recordings kindly agreed to sing harmony with her on some tracks. More songs were worked on than could ever make this one album, but as a singer-songwriter with three albums already out, more of John’s work may well slip into some of her future projects.

I enjoyed this album. Of course, I have a certain prejudice. But I hope that anyone who loves folk music and the work of John Stewart will also enjoy.

As John sang in Irresistible Targets – Keep it Flying.

                  Chuck McDermott and John Stewart (with banjo) c. 1984. Taken from the John Stewart Facebook page.