"Lucky Numbers" - Sortie le 4 novembre
Multi-talented, renaissance rock ‘n’ roller DAVE STEWART is on a bit of a roll…and it’s not just the dice pictured with the skull and crossbones on his new tattoo which doubles as the cover of his latest album, LUCKY NUMBERS. It’s the third album in three years for the self-declared The Ringmaster General after last year’s release of the same name and 2011’s The Blackbird Diaries, which was his first solo effort in some 13 years since 1998’s Internet-only Sly-Fi and 1994’s Greetings from the Gutter.
For LUCKY NUMBERS, STEWART assembled the same team of Nashville’s finest that were on the previous two, including co-producer/engineer John McBride with guitarist Tom Bukovac, drummer Chad Cromwell, bassist Michael Rhodes, pianist Mike Rojas, pedal steel guitarist Dan Dugmore joined by multi-instrumentalist Kieran Kiely, who played accordion, flute and, most notably, the Irish bodhrán drum that can be heard in the opening notes of the first single, “Every Single Night.” The list of guest stars includes singers Martina McBride (“Every Single Night”), Karen Elson (“Nashville Snow”), Aussie pop diva Vanessa Amorosi (“What’s Wrong With Me”), Broadway star Laura Michelle Kelly and violinist Ann Marie Calhoun (the soaring cinematic set-piece, “You and I”) and a gospel choir headed by Lynn Mabry (“Drugs Taught Me a Lesson,” “What’s Wrong With Me”).
After recording the first two albums in the trilogy at McBride’s Blackbird Studios in Nashville, STEWART really tossed the dice this time by shifting the sessions to a boat in the South Pacific (“I can’t be more specific,” he says mysteriously), where he maintained the same method…coming up spontaneously with new material, played live in a circle facing one another, most of them in a single take. Like most of STEWART’s multi-dimensional career as a performer, songwriter, producer, video director, photographer and mastermind of his busy, Hollywood-and-Vine based office, Weapons of Mass Entertainment, it was a huge gamble.
“My whole theory of creativity is a bit like that, taking risks and landing on my feet,” laughs STEWART, explaining how he wove that into the musical and lyrical themes on LUCKY NUMBERS, an album which is intended to be a movie musical starring STEWART as a down-on-his-luck low-roller who finds himself being chased by loan sharks in Las Vegas while he tries to connect with an ex-girlfriend and his band to raise money to save a failed circus. “I wanted to do something a little different this time, so I invited the band to join me on an adventure to the South Pacific, where we could record with nobody else around, floating around on the sea. It was like parachuting into Oz. We were fish out of water. We were out 12 days, but we were actually only sober enough to record for three or four.”
Like the first two albums, LUCKY NUMBERS combines STEWART’s ‘60s British rock sensibilities growing up in the northeast of England with the veteran Nashville country musicians’ southern blues.
“The two worlds collide in the most beautiful way,” says STEWART. “I’m singing one thing in my mind, and they’re playing something completely different, but it works.”
The first single, “Every Single Night,” is the perfect example, a song that references the crazy circus-like atmosphere that surrounded STEWART in his days with Eurythmics, which includes a chronological check list of some of the band’s singles in its lyrics, from their first single “Never Gonna Cry Again,” to the final “Don’t Ask Me Why.” The video is Fellini’s La Strada-meets-Tarantino, featuring STEWART’s Ringmaster amidst a series of vintage, under-the-big-top imagery, produced in groundbreaking 11.1 surround sound, its swirling psychedelic dreamscape serving as a trailer for the film, with LUCKY NUMBERS its soundtrack.
“It’s The Hangover meets my life,” says STEWART of the proposed movie musical, which he compares to A Hard Day’s Night and Purple Rain in its conception. Producer John McBride’s almost Rain Man-like ability to memorize numbers is a key plot aspect in the movie--helping STEWART’s gambler win a fortune at roulette--while giving the album its title.
Other standout tracks include the autobiographical “Drugs Taught Me a Lesson,” which starts as a cautionary tale and ends up with a soaring gospel choir, while “How to Ruin a Romance” is a playful, Dylanesque blues that describes the various ways to blow a date, with a sly sense of humor recalling “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35.” “Satellite” is a song about the isolating bubble of celebrity, with STEWART viewing earth from way above the clouds, singing the double-meaning lyric, “I’m so tired of seeing stars,” meaning both the celestial and Hollywood varieties. “What’s Wrong with Me” offers a vibrant duet between STEWART and Vanessa Amorosi, while the shimmering “Nashville Snow,” which STEWART dubs “Music City meets the South Pacific,” features a sultry pairing with Karen Elson. STEWART claims to have based the country twang of “Never Met a Woman Like You” on Fred Neil’s version of Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” from the last scene of Midnight Cowboy, with Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. The Dylan-meets-Springsteen vibe of “One Step Too Far” tells of how STEWART always pushes things to the limit, highlighted by a nifty Kiely accordion solo. Perhaps the album’s highlight, “You and I,” serves as the film’s highlight, a show-stopper that swells from a gentle piano ballad to a majestic, wide-screen flourish, featuring Broadway star Laura Michelle Kelly in a tribute to DAVE’s wife.
There’s a photo of STEWART and the band just before boarding the plane which would take them to the South Pacific to record the album, DAVE caught tossing the dice into mid-air, an image that informed the making of LUCKY NUMBERS. For a man who is juggling various roles, from a recent rock photography exhibit at the Morrison Hotel in Los Angeles, producing and starring in a demented TV talk show called “The Ringmaster” to producing the likes of Stevie Nicks and Joss Stone and performing in an all-star band, SuperHeavy, with Mick Jagger, Stone, Damian Marley and A.R. Rahman, it is nice to see DAVE STEWART getting back to where it all began.
Surrounded by the constant flow of people working on his projects, STEWART takes a deep breath.
Music is the "Intel Inside” for everything we do here,” he says.
LUCKY NUMBERS is just the latest proof of that. Looks like DAVE STEWART’s come up sevens once again.
About DAVE STEWART:
“An explosive musician, deft guitar player, innately recognizes the genius in other people and puts it into play without being manipulative.” - Bob Dylan
"Jack of All Trades Master of All of Them" - The Sunday Times
“He’s the musician’s musician.” – Rolling Stone