He sings rugged songs of the open road.....songs that concentrate on man's desperation to break out of the rigours of living in a clinically organised life.  Stewart's worried about his country and he takes care to articulate his thoughts with a nervous intensity that can send shivers down a spine.  Truly, he's one of today's great folk singers.  (Ray Coleman Melody Maker review of John Stewart performing at the Troubador, Los Angeles) In the stinking concrete cities
Oh I never do feel clean.
The air is dirt and the ladies skirts
Are enough to make me mean.
Good earth rider look around
And I know that you'll agree
That across the hill from Placerville
The wind sure can feel free.

('Earth Rider' from the album 'Willard')

''The place called Wild Horse Road, that is on Highway 101, two hundred miles out of San Francisco.  There's a big sign that says Wild Horse Road.  Nothing there now except a truckin' dive.  One time there were a million wild horses in America and now there's something like two hundred.  In the song I try to draw an analogy between mustangs, in some cases pop singers, and in many cases politicians."  (John Stewart Country Music Review 0ctober l973). Runnin' down a mustang oh, what'll it take
A pick-up and a gun
Hey, young moonlight gunner
Where's the sun?
Don't it make you feel Like kickin' in a white wall
Now you finally know
There ain't no wild horsesout on Wild Horse Road

('Wild Horse Road' from the album 'The Lonesome Picker Rides Again').

Stewart has a brilliant way of communicating with the audience.  His songs are important in that they are personal devices for dealing with all the pieces in us that are missing.  (Hollywood Reporter). Listen to the hymn in the high school gym
'Cause the church burned down last night
Glory,glory, hallelujah, I can see the light
But I got a church right here inside
And it does me quite all right
It shows me the road that goes to home
And I can see the light.

('The Road Shines Bright' from the album 'The Lonesome Picker Rides Again').

"It came on the news,'' John told his audience, "that at Mill Valley, where I live, they've built a drive-in movie church.'' Standing in line at the Bank of America
Nobody spoke, they were in the house of God
And a church I know is a drive-in show
Where the local band plays hymns to go
"Jesus loves me" rock and roll

('Kansas Rain' from the album'Sunstorm')

''Bolinas is one of my favourite places in the world.  It's a little fishing village on the coast of Northern California and it's remained essentially the same for the last fifty years because there's no main highway goin' through it.''  (John Stewart Country Music Review0ctober 1973) Time in Bolinas is so very small
The clock on the courthouse ain't workin' at all
And the Mayor of Bolinas is digging for clams
But folks in Bolinas
They don't give a damn

('Bolinas' from the album 'The Lonesome Picker Rides Again').

John Stewart has signed withRCA, his third label following Capitol and Warner Bros.  ''It's a six figure deal," John told us, strictly off the record.  ''S I III.II.''  (Ro11ing Stone Random Notes 4.1.73)

....R.C.A. have taken the singer in hand, snapping him up after his break with Warners and celebrating the occasion with the release of the stunningly beautiful album, 'Cannons in the Rain'.....(which) stands out as a musical gem - an original and melodic collection full of intriguing and poignant lyrics.  (David Redshaw Country Music Review 0ctober 1973) How could you go, Virginia
And play that drifter's game
He sold to you the thunder
Was cannons in the rain
And all his Holy Roads
Were sidetracks just the same
Still you believe the thunder
Is cannons in the rain

('Cannons in the Rain' Title track)

Divorced, with three children, and living in a small home, with a 1965 Ford and no concern for possessions except a love for his holy guitar, Stewart is very close to his own ideal of the troubador.  "Anchors scare me," he declared.  ''I've always loved to be able to put all I own in a case and take off.  I don't like the idea of roots.''  (Ray Coleman Melody Maker) Mother outlaw's been giving me jaw
Saying why donlt you marry the girl
I know you've been living in sin
Got your backside out to the world
But an all time woman
Ah, you don't need a preacher to know
That an all time woman
Keeps you ready for the rock and roll
Now a one night stand for a guitar man
Is easy when the road gets boring
But Holiday Inns and the two dollar gins
Can sure look bad in the morning

('All Time Woman' from the album 'Cannons in the Rain')

''I was gonna do a movie with Sam Peckinpah called 'Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.'  Went in and met the casting director, who said "You'll be really good in the part.''  Went in and met the producer, Gordan Carroll, and we got along very well.  And I really wanted to play Billy the Kid but he said, 'we need someone younger, more experienced.'  And Kris Kristofferson got the part.

"There was another part.  Billy's friend, a guy named Alias, and the part was mine.  It was mine, but they said, 'you gotta go,' so Bob Dylan got the part and that was that, that's the story."  (John Stewart Zoo World 24.5.73) I was talkin' to a man about a movie show
Oh, won't you,take me to Durango
I could play that part just fine you know
So won't you take me down to Mexico
Well I never saw Peckinpah
I guess he forgot to call
I can understand using Rita's man
He'll be the best Billy theKid of them all

('Durango' from the album 'Cannons in the Rain')

''I am obsessed with travel. People are living and working hard and not getting any sort of fulfilment, while right outside their front door is a road.  People do have the chance to get out on the road and change their lives.  Travel is motion - and that means moving away from things you don't like."

''I don't want to sound like all the other ten million songwriters who go on about freedom.  The more freedom you have, the more responsibility it brings.  But I'm Singing and writing about travel and the road because the will to get out on the road and travel seems to be lost on an awful lot of people who need to do just that.''  (John Stewart Melody Maker) As long as the tyres still cry on the highway
As long as the dogs still die on the road
As long as I wake up without knowing who I am
I will always think of you as home
Ev'ry time I hear you say ''John, why are you leavin'?"
Bless it, my confession is a woman called the road
And like the other woman, the road she gets jealous
She know there'll come a time I won't see her any more

('Freeway Pleasure' from the album 'The Lonesome Picker Rides Again')

One of the strengths of Stewart's music is that it points out those restrictions.....(that) can come from a variety of sources, some highly organised, some quite informal.  His songs speak about the ill effects that can confront the individual in the name of tradition, obligation, religion, patriotism, human selfishness and above all, he seems to feel - 'human progress'. (Robert Hilburn Los Angeles Times) Our dad he was a gentle man
When we all worked at the store.
The only time I saw him mad
Was when he talked about the war.
We lost a boy at Belleau Wood,
And I guess he just never really understood
What the medals from the President were for.

('O1dest Living Son') from the album 'Willard')

Stewart is a sort of cowboy country-folksinger, and before you growl, ''Jesus, another one of those,''please note that John has been at it longer than virtually all the current competition, he can sing real nice and has a deep, tough, uh, masculine voice, does not sound in any way like a wimp from the green pastures of suburban Los Angeles, and writes songs that are so pure and so real that they'll stop you dead in your tracks.  As an artist/composer Stewart has not so much altered his style as continued to refine it, to the point that he can take the stock motifs of country-folk - ridin' trains, ramblin' the highways, leavin' your true love behind - and place them in a context so fresh and unexpected that if you didn't know any better you'd think he'd invented them himself.....

He (together with John Prine, whose approach is quite different) is our most American songwriter, his vision shaped by his hearing of the beating of the heart of the country.....  His characters, usually small-town types in a world without small town certainties, are misfits by definition.....  They're all running to or away from somebody/some place and they're all outside whatever is around them (lovers, home, the law, the world) but there is no mistaking their dignity or courage or decency.  They may be wrong..... but they are heroes just the same.
Give John Stewart a chance. He's one of the best we've got and it would be a damn shame to lose him.  (Jerome Clark Rolling Stone 5.7.73) Young holy roller
I've gone and stolen her
Away from the holy man
His bible and beads
Young holy roller
What could be holier
Than all of the love
Shining between you and me.

('Light Come Shine' from the album 'Sunstorm')

''There are two great weights to carry as far as I am concerned.  One is immediate success, when they're laying for you to mess it up next time; and the other is having a lot of potential, when you get reviews saying you have 'a lot of potemtial,' that's a lot. to carry around, you know?

You keep trying to better yourself or outdo yourself.''  ''It's not the pressure of winning, it's the pressure of almost winning.'' (John Stewart Zoo World 24.5.73) Rain, rain, rain,
Picker it's raining on the border line
And you're out on the unknown road
Swayback woman by your side
And the pain, pain, pain
Ah, it's time that you had a little fun.....
Ride,ride,ride
Hope you live to ride another day
Old lonesome picker, no one cares what dues you paid
You've played one too many beer halls
And there ain't nobody come

('Touch of the Sun' from the album 'The Lonesome Picker Rides Again')

Stewart, like the characters in so many of his songs, seems to be a part of that vanishing breed of American, the rugged individualist, and his work obviously springs not from studio scribblings hastily stuck together to shove an album out on time, but from an impulse, a subject and an area of experience; each song hints at a wider backcloth, a cluepiece to the John Stewart jigsaw.  (Pete Frame Let it Rock August 1973) Anna on a memory
She come rollin' by
Anna on a memory
Makes me laugh, she makes me cry
Makes me think of all the good things
That like a bluebird learn to fly

('Anna on a Memory' from the album 'Cannons in the Rain')

Off to California next Monday!  John Stewart is in the studios for the first half of November..... with a bit of luck, I'll be with him.  (Pete Frame 23.10.73) Sing you a song
Sing it soft and low
Sing it for you, baby
And then I'll have to go

('Chilly Winds' from the Album 'Cannons in the Rain')

So why, after all this time, ain't John Stewart a star?  (Jerome Clark Rolling Stone 5.7.73)
 

Compiled by Peter O'Brien. November 1973