Orel Family

This past Friday evening at a recording studio in Birmingham, about 50 people gathered to witness Stewart Francke and his band record a DVD. The invitees included those who had contributed to a kickstarter campaign for Stewart's excellent new CD, Love Implied . The session, however, wasn't simply a rehash of the album tracks, but a bit of a career retrospective. Spanning two full sets at 23 songs, it included several that I had never seen him play before; songs that hopefully will have some listeners checking out some of his earlier work. While the main focus of the set was on tracks from Stewart's last 3 albums ( What We Talk Of...When We Talk , Heartless World , and Love Implied ), a key highlight was a rare performance of a composition that predated those albums: Letter From 10 Green , written as a letter to his children when Stewart was a patient at Karmanos Cancer Center, at a time when he didn't know if he would live to return home. It is difficult and person...

Just before the New Year, Stewart Francke released his latest top-notch album, Love Implied . As with its superb predecessor, Heartless World , the album was funded by a kickstarter campaign; this one to be slightly more ambitious as it will eventually result in a DVD companion to the album. Love Implied is a softer album than Francke's most recent prior releases. Listening to it, I needed more time to find my place in it; where Heartless World had me hooked by the 2nd song, it took until the 2nd spin this time. The first song that really grabbed me was one I saw by title first: Big Man . Being a longtime Springsteen fan, of course I immediately thought of Clarence Clemons, who died in 2011. But Big Man was also the nickname for Stew's dad; the former Saginaw mayor who passed away in 2010 . The song is a goofy homage to the strain of big band music the elder Francke loved; presented almost as a throw-away, its joyous hook and shouted one-line lyric brought an instant smi...