Willie Nile

Al Stewart was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1945, and moved with his family to Bournemouth, a seaside town in the south of England, at an early age. A strong dose of Bob Dylan’s original songs shifted his focus from instrumentalist to lyricist and vocalist. In 1965, Al moved to London and became the emcee at the famed Les Cousins folk club, rubbing shoulders with young talents like Paul Simon, Ralph McTell, Bert Jansch, and Cat Stevens. After several albums written in autobiographical mode, Al shifted his lyrical gaze outward, into history, literature and current events, an approach debuted on 1973’s “Past, Present & Future.” Al’s next album exploded in America: “Year of the Cat,” released in 1976, spawned two Top 20 hits (the title song and “On the Border”), and itself became a million-selling record. After Al relocated to California, where he still resides, his next album, 1978’s “Time Passages,” repeated the success of its predecessor, selling another million copies and spinning off the Top 10 title track and Top 30 single, “Song on the Radio.” In the early 1990s, Al returned to his folk roots with “Famous Last Words,” which utilized acoustic instrumentation and traditional folk and classical styles. He’s never stopped creating completely original music—or being able to conjure other times and distant places with well-chosen words and evocative music.

“I’ve always thought of the BoDeans as a truly American band,” says Kurt Neumann, the founder, primary writer and frontman of the veteran Milwaukee-based group. “We were blue-collar kids straight out of the heartland—how could we be anything else? ‘Roots rock’ was a label I fought when I was younger, but I came to realize that if by ‘roots’ you meant blues, rock, country and soul all slammed together into one sound, then I’d say yes—that is the sound of American-made music.” Few would expect the band to still be going strong, so many years after Wisconsin’s favorite musical sons first got together in the late 1980s. But this is an American band that has stood the test of time. They come to The Ark with a new album, “4 the Last Time”—you know what that means!