Artist:     John Stewart

Album:     Old Forgotten Altars: The 1960s Demos

Label:     Omnivore Recordings

Release Date:     5.8.20

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The late John Stewart underwent a radical conversion before rousing Sleepy Jean with his perfectly charming fairy tale “Daydream Believer,” which bursts wide open with transcendent romantic pop idealism in The Monkees’ 1967 smash hit version. It turned softer and prettier for Anne Murray in 1979, years after Stewart started out as a rough-and-tumble, Southern California garage-rock sparkplug with Johnny Stewart and The Furies and then baptized himself in the Kingston Trio’s folky warmth when introduced to them in 1958.

The story of how Stewart fell into The Kingston Trio’s good graces, eventually gaining membership in the group in 1961 after a sort of apprenticeship with The Cumberland Three, is wonderfully recounted in Jim Moran’s meticulously researched and engrossing liner notes to Old Forgotten Altars: The 1960s Demos. Well-curated, with a smattering of vintage photos and memorabilia, it’s a 19-track set of embryonic recordings Stewart made as his time with The Kingston Trio was winding down. The collection reveals much about Stewart’s ascending songwriting development and his rare ability to form something extraordinary and poetic from rudimentary elements. In what seems like the lost musical woodshop of this mostly unheralded artisan, stirring romantic ballads and lonesome travel stories are strewn everywhere.

Some crude pieces that showed early promise, like the simply strummed, unpolished opener “Livin’ That Way,” are found among more fully realized works, such as the three lovely duets with songbird Buffy Ford Stewart, his future wife, that presaged their endearing partnership on 1968’s Signals Through the Glass album, Stewart’s solo debut. Domestic bliss and nautical adventure clash in a theatrical and somewhat jaunty “The Pirates of Stone Country Road,” where distance does indeed make their hearts grow fonder. The greyish beaches of “Big Sur” seem deserted, but as they gently stroll along arm in arm in its cool, misty melancholy, the scene becomes cinematic, as their huddled intimacy comes into sharp focus. Meanwhile, “She Believes in Me” unfolds naturally, its graceful picking setting tender traps of melody to ensnare their unsuspecting audience.

Just as enticing, the wistful waltz “Lock All the Windows” leads into “Rambler Get On Board,” which approaches the haunting dreaminess of Nick Drake. Joyous and spirited, “The Spinnin’ of the World” – one of four songs here that pushed their way onto The Kingston Trio’s 1966 release Children of the Morning – is a buzzing beehive of shaggy, vigorous acoustic guitar strumming that produces sweet melodic honey, while the spellbinding title track from that LP could have been forged from darkened stained glass. A dusty and feverish “Shackles & Chains” shakes and shimmies in walking a gravelly road to freedom, and a bonus 1959 demo of “Hey Sarrey” is a wild banjo melee that sounds deliciously scratchy and raw, a stark contrast to the lithe and winsome “July, You’re a Woman” – the first recorded manifestation of that song appearing here. At times, Stewart’s vocals are uneven and lack confidence, but there’s always a sense on Old Forgotten Altars: The 1960s Demos that Stewart will fix everything later, eventually molding and shaping the material into more of a finished product. And yet, almost the entirety of what’s housed here is just fine the way it is and needs no embellishment.

—Peter Lindblad