With the
release of Uncorked, Al Stewart and musical partner Dave Nachmanoff take a trip
through Stewart’s musical back pages, both in terms of the musical catalogue
(they did have nearly 20 albums’ worth of songs to pick from), and in terms of
performance style. After all, Al made his bones in the massively fertile folk
scene that was London in the late ’60s, and he numbers among his contemporaries
the likes of guitar wizards Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, singer-songwriters
Roy (“Hats Off To”) Harper and Richard Thompson, and a former flatmate named
Paul Simon, who went on to some celebrity upon returning to America.
Recorded live
during a springtime East Coast swing, Uncorked is the first live acoustic disc
Al’s done since 1992’s Rhymes In Rooms, and both he and Nachmanoff made a
conscious decision not to replicate any of the tracks from that disc, even if
it meant leaving off such standards as “On the Border, ” and his
multi-million-selling “Year of the Cat” and “Time Passages.”
“Because I’ve
learned all of Al’s songs, we had an opportunity to revisit some of the tunes
that hadn’t been featured in more recent years,” says Nachmanoff. “I think at
this point, we can actually do three or four full shows and never play the same
songs twice. And while Al usually comes
in to a gig with a set list in mind, often times, we’ll just throw it out and
go with the flow.”
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