The dinner-jacket tour of Rod Stewart’s Great American Songbook albums opened on Friday night in Sunrise with the old rake revising his shaggy splendor. After a spirited round of his rock and pop hits, Stewart returned from intermission at the sold-out Office Depot Center to reach still further back into the 20th century – to Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and other titans of the repertoire.
The exercise had ample backing: a 19-piece orchestra, a conductor and a set dripping gold lamé. An RKO-style radio tower – renamed “Rod” – beamed concentric waves on the video back-screen. As the bleached blond in black tails and white carnation took his inner gent for a walk, a waiter came out and served him prop cocktails.
For all the overselling, the program had its rewards. Stewart, 59, was skilled enough to honor if not distinguish the music that has returned him to the charts. He sometimes fell outside the narrow margin of error allowed by these standards, whether dropping a note or a stumbling over voice modulations. A creamy string section likewise laid an embalming glaze on My Heart Stood Still.
But I’m in the Mood for Love swayed brightly, aided by bandmate J’Anna Jacoby’s jazzy fiddle lines. And Stewart was an ideal roué for the melancholy humor of Don’t Get Around Much Anymore. His trademark rasp is nicely sandpapered down by use and it tended to slip easily through – almost under – the arrangements. He did not lord it over the material or joust with the rhythms as he does with his rock songs. He was graceful on The Way You Look Tonight exactly because he sang unaffectedly.
Stewart’s fling with the classics might yield a third Songbook volume, although one hopes he sets aside the fine-wine approach to rock-star aging.
Stewart’s own folk-rock standards – the bracingly Celtic Oo La La and the subdued Reason to Believe – had all the worn beauty a songbook needs. His maturity was an asset, not a contradiction, when he sang “A little old-fashioned but that’s all right” on the luminous You Wear it Well, and let the words reflect back on him.
Courtesy Sean Piccoli, The Sun-sentinel
