San Francisco Bay Concerts interview with Dave Stewart and review of his concert on 26th January

Last Friday evening, the SAP Center in San Jose eagerly embraced the arrival of the ‘So Happy it Hurts’ tour headlined by Bryan Adams, with the charismatic Dave Stewart gracing the stage as the opening act. And let’s be clear, we’re not referring to the Oakland A’s All-Star pitcher Dave Stewart from the Bay Area, but rather the legendary Dave Stewart of Eurythmics — a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer responsible for timeless hits like “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” and “Here Comes the Rain Again.” Having missed the chance to witness Eurythmics live during their heyday, and having almost resigned myself to the unlikelihood of a reunion tour featuring the classic duo of Annie Lennox & Dave Stewart, this San Jose performance was on my radar as soon as it was announced. Watching Dave Stewart, accompanied by his 8-piece all-female ensemble, was nothing short of the next best thing—a remarkably faithful yet refreshingly modern interpretation of the iconic Eurythmics classics.

The lineup boasted a harmonica virtuoso hailing from Brazil, the enchanting Indiara Sfair, who breathed added dimension into the melodies. On saxophone, the sensational Yasmin Ogilvie added a layer of sonic brilliance, while the bass grooves were skillfully crafted by the talented Julia Lamb. The keyboards, a vital pulse in the ensemble, were expertly handled by the captivating Hannah Koppenburg.

In the quest to fill Annie Lennox’s formidable shoes, Dave orchestrated a vocal triumvirate of unparalleled talent. Hailing from the land Down Under, the charismatic Vanessa Amorosi assumed the lion’s share of lead vocal duties, infusing each note with her distinctive flair. Meanwhile, the dynamic duo of Judith Hill and Stevvi Alexander complemented Vanessa’s lead vocals, seamlessly trading their voices on selected songs throughout the set, creating a harmonious spectacle that resonated with the nostalgic spirit of the night. See a video of Missionary Man below.

In their interview a few days before Dave speaks about his new band amongst other things, here’s an extract from the interview, the link to the full interview is below.

In advance of his show this Friday night, we had the honor of speaking with this musical legend and you can find our full interview below.

SFBayAreaConcerts: You’ve described the Eurythmics catalog as ‘a labyrinth of different kinds of songs;’ I love the idea of this spiraling maze of tunes that you’ve constructed. How do you connect these different tracks while playing live?

Dave Stewart: That’s interesting, you see, because along with co-writing every song with Annie [Lennox], I produced them. So, in creating those different sorts of fusions of styles together in experimentation, even on the Sweet Dreams album, everyone thought we were an electronic band–but we weren’t.

We’d already been in another band that sounded more like Love–a band from the Sixties–with jangling guitars. When we were in that band, Annie and I were never satisfied with the sound that was being recorded. We had a friend, Conny Plank, a German producer; we worked on an album with him as the Eurythmics called In the Garden.

There, I had a chance to talk with him a lot about how to engineer, how to record. We had Holger Czukay from Can playing with us–Markus Stockhausen. Right from the heart of the U.K. and American pop world we were deep in the experimental world.

After that, I said to Annie, “You know what, I think we need to get a tiny amount of equipment, enough to record ourselves. I’ll learn how to use it and then we don’t have to keep asking people to get our sound–we’ll just make that sound.”

And so the Sweet Dreams album…Actually tracks on it have trumpet players, and people playing slide guitar (on “This City Never Sleeps”)–all sorts of instruments on it crammed into an 8-track tape recorder. By the time we released two albums, in 1983, Sweet Dreams and Touch (which had “Here Comes the Rain Again” on it), there’s a full orchestra and me playing a big Gretsch country guitar.

By the time the next album came out, the next year, we were making Stax R&B with “Would I Lie to You.” We were both massive fans of R&B and Motown. We could do whatever we wanted, because I learned how to produce our records, in any style we wanted to.