Steve real joins Stevie for Leather & Lace in Adelaide!

[ali101]

"LIVE: STEVIE NICKS
25.11.11

Our arts writer Robert Dunstan went to the Adelaide Entertainment Centre to see a unique solo performance from Fleetwood Mac's front woman Stevie Nicks supported by The Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart.




Stevie Nicks and Dave Stewart

Adelaide Entertainment Centre, Wed Nov 23, 2011

After working together on Stevie Nicks’ 2011 In Your Dreams album, the Fleetwood Mac icon and her co-writer and producer Dave Stewart have continued their partnership on an Australian tour.

David A Stewart, formerly of Eurythmics and currently with SuperHeavy, a supergroup featuring Stewart alongside Joss Stone, Damian Marley and Mick Jagger, was touring his new solo album, The Blackbird Diaries, which is a country-esque affair recorded over a few days in Nashville at Blackbird Studios. It’s had mixed reviews but, in a live setting, songs from the album, including Magic In The Blues, worked well.

Stewart was backed by Australian band The Panics and Lucky Oceans, who was last in town to introduce the acts at WOMADelaide Earth Station up in Belair, served as a very special guest on pedal steel. He also had three backing vocalists who came into their own when Stewart re-visited Eurythmics classics such as Here Comes The Rain Again and Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This). The musician, who also rendered forth with Don’t Come Around Here No More, a song Stewart co-wrote with Tom Petty and which was a big MTV hit for the latter.

Stevie Nicks was touring her latest album, In Your Dreams, and her band included keyboard player Ricky Peterson of funk outfit The Peterson Brothers as well as guitarist Robert ‘Waddy’ Wachtel and percussionist to the stars Lenny Castro. Nicks also had her long-time backing vocalists, Sharon Celani and Lori Perry, with her and she opened with Stand Back. The pint-sized singer, who enjoyed a couple of low-key costume changes throughout the night, then went to great lengths to explain that her current tour was not a greatest hits affair but was more to promote In Your Dreams. As such Stewart joined her seven-piece band on stage for a few of the songs from the album he created with Nicks.

But the audience didn’t need to worry too much, as Fleetwood Mac classics such as Dreams and, of course, Rhiannon, also received an airing.

Her set, which lasted almost two hours, also featured a lovely acoustic version of Landslide while her vocal coach, Steve Real, joined Nicks for a rendition of Leather And Lace, a song she’d originally recorded with Don Henley of The Eagles.


A lengthy percussion solo from Castro was followed by a solo from Nicks’ drummer which then morphed into Edge Of Seventeen, one of the singer’s biggest solo hits.

Nicks, who had taken much time during the night to introduce most songs and explain their origins, encored with Love Is after stating that it was customary for her, whether performing solo or with Fleetwood Mac, to complete the evening with a ballad
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