Al Stewart and Dave Nachmanoff / Performing at Hugh's Room / Toronto, Canada / August 15 - 16th
Much
of the mid-forties and upwards crowd that packed out Hugh’s Room in Toronto
on August 15th and 16th probably came to reminisce
about songs such as “Year Of The Cat,” “On The Border,” and “Time Passages,”
that were made famous by British singer / songwriter and guitarist Al
Stewart, however if they were previously uninformed about guitarist and
songwriter Dave Nachmanoff, they came away from the evening astonished by
the superb acoustic guitar wizardry served up by both gentlemen. Nachmanoff
opened both sets, playing and singing solo, before he was joined on stage by
Stewart, who despite the fact that he did not get into Toronto until
three-thirty am on the 14th, demonstrated that he still has the
vocal chops. While Stewart’s voice straddles the octaves between tenor and
falsetto, Nachmanoff has a rich timbre to his voice that belies his
diminutive stature.
Both Nachmanoff and Stewart are great storytellers, who although stylistically different, deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Joni Mitchell, Roger Whittaker and Robbie Robertson, and both men often take their songwriting cues from historical events. During the first set, Nachmanoff told the audience that he used to be a philosophy teacher and that his song “Descartes In Amsterdam,” drew its inspiration from a period in the French philosopher’s life, when he moved from Paris to Amsterdam, so he could find himself. The song however, has far deeper meaning than simply recalling an event in a historical figure’s life, for it is a tune about being comfortable enough in one’s own skin, that you do not lose sleep over what others think of you. During the second set the duo performed Stewart’s song “The League Of Notions,” from his album Between The Wars (1995), which finds its inspiration in some convoluted sense from the Treaty of Versaille, which resulted from the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. As is the case with most of Stewart’s lyrics one needs to listen closely to pick up on the double entendre.
There was a magnificent piece of guitar work by
Nachmanoff during the duo’s performing of Stewart’s “News From Spain,” from
his album Orange, as Nachmanoff substituted some brilliant guitar
chord progressions, for what was originally a piano solo by Rick Wakeman,
the former keyboardist for the rock group Yes.
There were also the fun songs, such as, Nachmanoff’s “El Niño,” when he led the audience in singing the chorus “Blame it all on El Niño,” and Stewart’s fantasy of what it might have been like to have grown up in America instead of England “(A Child’s View of) The Eisenhower Years.” The twosome also injected humor into their sets as they dialogued with their fans and Al Stewart joked about how he should have been one of the Beach Boys or living in a trailer in Tennessee writing country music songs.
As they played and Stewart sang the songs that first made him famous, “On The Border,” “Year Of The Cat,” and “Time Passages,” it was obvious that he still has the ability to rekindle the magic and to send an electric current through a packed house of fans. This by no means was a performance by a musician and singer / songwriter in his waning years, but it was a spectacular performance, and Dave Nachmanoff was not here merely as window dressing, he is a gifted songwriter and a guitar virtuoso.
August 15th - 16th, 2009
Top photo: Al Stewart, bottom photo: Dave Nachmanoff
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Riveting Riffs Magazine wishes to express our gratitude to the management of Hugh's Room for making it possible to review this performance
