Willard is a country record in all the best ways it just might be Stewart's master opus. Likewise "Golden Rollin' Belly," about the need for a woman's sexual company, with Chris Darrow's fiddle and Thompson's banjo riding well inside a big fat Garofalo bassline. In the title track, Stewart's romanticism centers on a character, a hobo, who embodies everything that is free and wild, untamed, and often tragic, but there are no apologies, no sentiments other than the fact that this unlikely icon is everyone and everyone is him, separated only by circumstance. Willard is a romantic record in the same way that California Bloodlines was, but its romanticism is well intentioned in that it poetically preserves a time period in America that was quickly disappearing. Stewart's uncompromising lyrical vision that relates the past as if it were a living, breathing present drives a band eager to carry those words through to the listener. "Back in Pomona" is a country rocker in the purest sense of the word. John Stewarts follow-up to the unprecedented success of California Bloodlines stuck close to the same formula. It's raw, tough, and full of unbreakable spirit. A listen to "Belly Full of Tennessee," with Kershaw's fiddle and Putnam's bass driving the tune, colored elegiacally with Thompson's banjo, makes it a Louisiana bayou dance tune. It was released in 1970 on Capitol Records. The feel of the album is somewhat stripped of the California crap that was in so many records from that time. Willard is the third studio album by folk artist John Stewart, former member of the Kingston Trio.
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March 2023
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