• Al Stewart and Joe Rathbone
• 9:00pm

Al Stewart makes a triumphant return to City Winery to once again entertain and beguile with his timeless brand of folk. With his trusty guitar in one hand and a glass of wine in the other be set to experience the joy of Al Stewart in full form.

ABOUT AL STEWART

Stewart came to stardom as part of the legendary British folk revival in the sixties and seventies, and developed his own unique style of combining folk-rock songs with delicately woven tales of the great characters and events from history. He is best known for his hit 1976 single "Year of the Cat" from the platinum album Year of the Cat. Though Year of the Cat and its 1978 platinum follow-up Time Passages brought Stewart his biggest worldwide commercial successes, earlier albums such as Past, Present and Future from 1973 are often seen as better examples of his intimate brand of historical folk-rock - a style to which he returned in subsequent albums.

Stewart was a key figure in a fertile era in British music and he appears throughout the musical folklore of the age. He played at the first ever Glastonbury Festival in 1970, knew Yoko Ono pre-Lennon, shared a London apartment with a young Paul Simon, and hosted at the legendary Les Cousins folk club in London in the 1960s. Stewart has released eighteen studio/live albums and two limited edition albums of B-sides and rarities between Bedsitter Images in 1967 and Sparks of Ancient Light in 2008. He has worked with Alan Parsons, Jimmy Page, Tori Amos and Tim Renwick and currently plays with Dave Nachmanoff and former Wings lead-guitarist Laurence Juber and continues to tour extensively around the US and Canada, Europe and the UK.

Stewart bade farewell to the 20th century with Down in the Cellar in 2000, a concept album themed on wine. Stewart had begun a love-affair with wine in the 1970s when, he admitted, he had more money than he knew how to spend, and so turned to fine wines. With the arrival of a new century, Stewart has returned to his inimitable brand of historical folk-rock. In 2005 he released A Beach Full of Shells, which was set in exotic places from First World War England to the 1950s rock'n'roll scene that influenced him.

In 2008, he released Sparks of Ancient Light produced, like his previous album, by Laurence Juber. Here he weaves tales of William McKinley, Lord Salisbury and Hanno the Navigator, without losing any of the wit and crispness of delivery that made him famous. Stewart and guitarist Dave Nachmanoff released a live album, Uncorked: Al Stewart Live with Dave Nachmanoff on Stewart's label, Wallaby Trails Recordings, in 2009.

ABOUT JOE RATHBONE

Singer/songwriter Joe Rathbone began his folk-rock career in 1998, when the Philadelphia native left his job as a wedding singer to write his own material. A solo album appeared at the tail-end of 1999, followed by relentless touring around the New York City area, where he keeps a job as a music teacher.

Joe has appeared on The Mountain Stage and tours in the US and UK, opening for Shawn Colvin, Chuck Prophet, Rock Four, Peter Mulvey, Robbie Fulks, Jeff Lang, Amy Rigby, Greg Trooper, Jim Lauderdale and Ben Weaver.

After catching the ears of Starbucks/Hear Music with his 2007 release Under the Scorpio Moon, resulting in their licensing several songs for play in stores nationally, Joe Rathbone is back with Mad July; a 5-song EP that runs from a rememberance of a desert trek ('8 Years Ago'), to the death of a former colleague ('Mary'), to landing in the modern era 'half naked in a bistro' ('Mad July'), to realizing 'we're finally where we should have been('Moving with You').
Recorded in the attic loft of musical renegade/producter Josh Fuson and ending up in David Henry's haven aka True Tone Recording, what happened was madness and love in sound and words. In the summer of 2008, Daniel Dennis, owner of Prime Cut Records in Nashville, teamed up with Joe Rathbone to release his new EP, featuring Steve Bowman's tribal drumming, David Mead's soul/choral backing, cardboard box drum loops, 10-watt Gibson amps, a string section, metal ductwork on 2 and 4 and a belief that all these folks you never heard of sound better than the famous ones, the priveleged anointed ones.

Mad July follows 2007's Under the Scorpio Moon, 2004's I Can Hear the Windows of Your Heart Breaking and the 2002 debut, Welcome to Your New Life. All three received very favorable reviews in national media and extensive airplay on AAA radio stations, most ntably WFUV in NYC, WXPN in Philadelphia, WNCW in Charlotte, NC, KUT in Austin, WRNR in Maryland, WMNF in Tampa, KXCI in Tuscon and XM Satellite Radio's Cafe' Channel throughout the US and were lauded as an impressive showcase of Rathbone's songwriting skills.