By Marissa Willstein
Dave Stewart, who was termed a “fearless innovator” by Bob Dylan, is a one-of-a-kind artist who never plays by the rules. Calling him a triple-threat would be an understatement. Along with being a brilliant singer-songwriter and guitarist, the Grammy-winner is also a music producer, author, entrepreneur, filmmaker and philanthropist. Since his earlier days in the group Eurythmics, Stewart has sold over 100 million albums and has co-written songs for artists such as Mick Jagger, Katy Perry, Jon Bon Jovi and Stevie Nicks.
TheCelebrityCafe.com had the chance to speak with Stewart about his recently released albumThe Ringmaster General, his documentary and future endeavors.
TheCelebrityCafe.com: The Ringmaster General, your latest solo album, mixes a variety of genres including country, rock and blues. Did you go into the songwriting process with that idea for the album or did it just sort of develop into this blend of sounds?
Dave Stewart: It just came out like that. The thing is about a year ago or so, I released another album called Blackbird Diaries. How that album happened was that I randomly stumbled upon Nashville when I was on the way back from England. My plane was grounded in London because of the volcanic ash from that Icelandic volcano. I said, why don’t I go to Nashville and start making country music.
I became really good friends with some people there and then I came across a studio called Blackbird. John McBride, who owns it, is sort of an obsessive-compulsive person. Fortunately it’s about sound and vintage microphones and vintage amplifiers. I fell in love with that place. I made [the album] there with sort of handpicked, brilliant Nashville musicians. When I was about to make this album, The Ringmaster General, I got exactly the same musicians, went to the same room and did the same thing. I worked and recorded that whole album, The Ringmaster General, in five days. That’s writing the songs at the same time. That’s the same thing we did for Blackbird Diaries.
In the film, that we just [made] in Nashville called Ringmaster General, you see the crazy process going on. Some of it wanders in and out of surreality and back into reality. It shows how my mind works in that creative process. There are some scenes where people are acting. Joss Stone plays my psychic and a girl called Diane Birch plays my sort of hypnotherapist. Words come and go and sometimes I’m in the bath and sometimes I’m in the middle of a session with someone—everybody playing at once. It goes from me leaving London and the Icelandic volcano all the way through the end of The Ringmaster General—then me playing on stage with the guys at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville. It’s like this mad roller coaster—a sort of journey that ends with all of the songs finished. My process is sort of crazy.
TCC: What aspects of the songwriting and recording process are you most excited for fans to see in your documentary?
DS: I don’t have an idea about the perception of me. I didn’t make a record before the Blackbird Diaries. I didn’t make one for 14 years. So I think in this [documentary] you see my great enthusiasm for music and playing. I’m a guitar player and a songwriter. I’m a singer-songwriter, which they’re not used to seeing and that’s what comes across in the most bizarre and odd way. You see these songs coming in front of your eyes that are all happening in literally hours. 28 songs in 10 days. Playing with great musicians in a big room. A lot of records nowadays are not made like that. They are made in bits in different dark rooms with some sort of editing programming and mixing.
TCC: The Ringmaster General features duets with Diane Birch, Alison Krauss, Joss Stone and Jessie Baylin. Did you write the songs before you selected the featured artists or vice versa?
DS: I wrote all the songs except the one with Jessie Baylin. She was just making an album calledLittle Spark and I loved some of her earlier stuff. We met and wrote a song together, “God Only Knows You Now.” You actually see us writing it in the film in the hotel room. We go straight to the studio, march in with the band and recorded it.
But the others, I had written those songs in the studio. I had an interview with the Grammy's site and they put that Alison Krauss had a duet with me on their front page. They asked me how I got to work with Alison Krauss and I said I actually used some kind of hoodoo. I conjured her up and she magically appeared. Which is kind of true. I thought, oh my god it would be amazing to have Alison Krauss sing a song with me called “Drowning In The Blues.” So I kind of wrote the song about her. It starts off, “You don’t know me and I don’t know you but something says we will. All I’m asking is have you got time to kill.” I ended up singing, “Let me kiss your eyes while you’re drowning in the blues.” It all just came tumbling out like that.
I sent her the song of me just singing it and she replied. She thought it was a great song and then I got her on the phone. The next thing you know she was there with her viola, singing and playing. You see all of that in the documentary too.
TCC: You work extremely well with other talented artists and other creative minds. What aspect of collaborating with others do you enjoy the most?
DS: I’m one of these people who is just in love with everybody. I just want to communicate and be around people. I love people so I’m probably destined to be one of the collaborators that won’t stop. I can’t stop. As soon as I meet someone else, whether it’s a great guitarist like Tom Bukovac and then he’s married to that girl Sarah [Buxton] who is a singer and then the next thing I know she’s singing on a track. It just goes on and on.
I think when you’re open, it’s like when you look at a molecule or something and you see all of the different connections. For me it’s just natural. It’s just a constant collaborative process.
TCC:You are also a very talented author. When you wrote the comic book, Zombie Broadway, did you intend for it to become a full-length feature film?
DS: I wrote it as a precursor to a feature film and a theater piece. Funny enough, we’re right in the middle of meeting various people to cast for Zombie Broadway. Jonas Akerlund is going to direct it. He’s directed quite dark movies. He’s also directed Lady Gaga videos and stuff like that. So he is perfect for it. Very crazy and musical.
I’m meeting people to be in this movie that is a very dark comedy. It is a little bit of an allegory about America. It’s got these layers about theater, art and the crazy juxtaposition of zombies and vampires. I had an amazing lunch with Susan Sarandon two weeks ago about it. It’s going to be the zombie movie of all movies but it’s a musical so it’s like one step more crazy.
I can’t wait for them to release it. It is over the top—enormous songs. We are pulling together an incredible sort of ensemble. It is going to be very unusual the way it’s going to be released. Everything about it will break the rules.
TCC: You helped create the new iPad app, Creativity. Do you think the explosion of social media in general has helped spark creativity in society?
DS: That app is actually based on my book called The Business Playground: Where Creativity and Commerce Collide that I wrote with Mark Simmons. For some people, [social media] has made it a lot easier to express themselves and for some people it has made it a lot more difficult.
If you talk about a painter or a writer back in the turn of the century, you can’t say that if he was transported into now he would be able to get his art across much better. His paint might be made out of certain pieces of earth. It’s just another medium. You can’t say that Shakespeare, if he were able to type into a computer, would have written a better play. Inventions, apps and things like that—allows things to change.
TCC: Along with your team at Weapons of Mass Entertainment, you created the upcoming seriesMalibu Country. What can you tell us about this new show?
DS: I came up with the concept and am an executive producer. It was when I was first back in Nashville. I had an idea about doing this series about a Nashville messy divorce. The female in the divorce has to move out and moves to Malibu. She finds out that he’s had a house there all this time that he used to have parties in. She never knew about it and moves her mother and her children there. It’s like a fish out of water story. Kevin Abbott is writing the series and Lily Tomlin is playing the mother. It’s all sort of in production right now. It starts airing Friday nights at 8:30 in November on ABC.