Music Arts: How long have you been Al Stewart's lead guitarist and what led you to be chosen to replace Peter White?

Dave Nachmanoff: It was a somewhat indirect path. I first met Al in about 1994-95. I didn't actually start touring with him until about 1999. I started playing his music in 1978; something like that. When I first met him I already had a pretty good knowledge of his catalogue. After playing him the first three songs he said, "How do you know my songs?" He was a little freaked out. I use to have pretty vivid daydreams of being called in at the last minute to substitute for Peter White. The story is kind of odd. In 1984-85 I was living in England and going to school at Oxford. My parents were living in London at the time and I saw that Al was coming to the Royal Albert Hall and I had actually never seen him live even though I had been a big fan. So I went down and hung around the stage door hoping to meet him. I didn't know what I thought would happen but I ended up talking my way inside saying that I was a friend of Peter White. At that time people really didn't know who Peter was like they do now and it wasn't any huge deal to talk to Peter. He was very nice. He didn't have me thrown out! I told him that if he ever needed a sub I could fill in for him. Ten years later I was living in California working on my PhD in Philosophy. I went down to see Al and Peter in San Francisco. Unbeknownst to me, Peter had started to make some headway as a solo artist playing Smooth Jazz. After the show Peter was signing autographs and when he saw me he said "Don't I know you from somewhere?" I reminded him that we met ten years before in London and he said; "Oh, I remember you. You were the guy who said that he knew all my parts. Sometimes you just have to be bold" and I said; "If you would be willing to do it I would love to sit down and jam with you for a minute." So he sat down and we played "On The Border" together. We chatted a little bit after that and I got a call a couple of days latter from Steve Chapman (Al's manager) inviting me to come down and audition for Al because Peter's solo career was taking off and they needed somebody in a hurry to replace him and Peter had recommended me. So I went down and I didn't get the job right away but I was their second choice. It actually worked out pretty nicely because I finished the PhD that I had been working on for a number of years. I released my own first album about that time and started to tour as a singer-songwriter. But Al and I stayed in touch, and every now and then I'd come and sit in with him and we got to be friends. Then we wrote "The Loyalist" together. One thing led to another and by ninety-nine or two thousand he was mostly playing solo and we did a show up in Berkeley that went really well where I was sat in. That led to another show in Davis, where I live, and that did well. Then by 2001 I did a show in Texas and the East coast and little by little sort of became "The Guy," at least for touring; and of course in 2009 we recorded "Uncorked." So it's been a gradual process. In 2006 we played at The Royal Albert Hall where I had seen him for the first time in 1984-85. So it's been a long, strange trip, but it's always a joy playing with him.

Music Arts: Speaking about "Uncorked," (your unplugged, live album), it really shows how connected you and Al have become. What is in the works for another recording together?

Dave: At the moment I can't really say that anything is in the works. Al is a little down on the music industry in general. Basically the record industry as it was when he was coming up is no more.

Music Arts: I recently read an interview with Al about that. He said; "it's like you've got to pay for it yourself and nobody is behind you and your music is just out there in the ether somewhere. You don't know if you've got anything or not. There's no record store." I could tell by that interview that he was really down on the whole recording industry.

Dave: He's always been ambivalent about recording, he doesn't really like the studio and I really don't think he likes making records all that much. He likes writing songs and he loves performing and records are part of that whole process but I don't think he likes any of that as much as he likes performing and writing songs. In the past, when there were labels, the label would come along and give him a nice advance and pay to make the record and take all the risks and if it worked out then he would get some money too. That was kind of the old model and he was use to that. I grew up on the cusp of that model fading away and getting into the new sort of DIY mentality. You do it yourself, find your niche, you work hard and basically have to market yourself. "Uncorked" was done on the new model and I think it worked pretty well; being a live album it was a little less expensive to make then a studio album would be. Nobody really knows what the new model is yet! It's song by song; it's not even albums anymore. It's not even clear if people are going to be buying much longer when they can get stuff for free from Spotify and streaming media. It's a very fast changing world. So I think that what Al is saying is; "Hey, I've made a lot of records and if someone really wants me to do another one great; let them work it all out but I'm not going to sweat about it." I don't think he is too concerned about what his next album is going to be, if there is going to be another album. I mean, I would like to get us doing something, somehow, but again the logistics of making that happen are daunting to say the least. This last year it's been an amazing journey for me, in the non-Al sense of getting my own album out with "Step Up." That was an experiment that was tremendously successful and really encouraging to me.

Music Arts: I saw the new format where if you can get a thousand people to support your endeavor and they each put in a few bucks you can get the production money you need.

Dave: Yeah, and a lot of pretty well known acts, names, are using "Kickstarter" and other funding sources like that to do what they do and that definitely is another model that might be open to Al if he wanted to go that route. Again, I think he is leery of anything that is not familiar and it's definitely part of the new paradigm. Any method you take always has risks. It's a lot of work. Even doing it that way it looks easy and I was very pleased with the support that I got from a lot of wonderful people that made it possible to make an album that was far beyond anything that I had done before but I have no illusions about that. It's not the sort of thing that you can do over and over again. Also, making an album is one thing and selling it is another.

Music Arts: Getting off the album and back on to touring. How do you tour as much as you do? I know you do a west coast tour; an east coast tour; then you are in the Emerald Isles, Germany and elsewhere in Europe. I know that it takes a lot of your time. How do you keep Jen and the children happy, on a personal note?

Dave: (laughter) The good news is that I'm not like some acts that are huge. We don't go out for six months at a time. There are acts that are gone for a year or more at a time. They never come home or they come home for a couple of days and are out again. We tend to go out for short runs. Usually no more then a week, maybe two weeks, then home for a couple of weeks then out again. It's been a little quieter lately with the economy being down. I mean there are entire months where Al won't be doing anything. It's true when we go to Europe sometimes we are gone for a month, maybe two months and that's definitely hard. One of the times; in 2006, Jen and Sophia (my daughter) was four and they came over for the English part of the tour and they didn't actually accompany us everywhere we went on the tour but met us here and there on days off and stayed with friends and family and some B & B's around England and then they came home and I went on to Germany and Holland with Al and did another three or four weeks. That was a long time to be gone and then in 2008 we were back over again doing Germany and Holland. Those times are challenging, but on the other hand those have been some of the most amazing tours I have done with Al with great audiences and great venues and some great opportunities to get my music out there. I sold more CD's in Germany then just about anywhere I have ever played. That's the up side, and it is a balance, just trying to be as present as I can when I'm home. Contrary to what some people might think, I don't just get to come home and basically take time off; there's plenty else to do.

Music Arts: Well that leads up to my next question. What percentage of the time is spent on your own endeavors aside from your touring with Al?

Dave: Well there's not as much time as I would like to spend on my own music, per se. With touring and gigging there is very little time for me to book any solo stuff because I never know for sure what Al is going to be doing, because I never know very far in advance what is going to show up on the tour schedule. He doesn't know. You just wait to hear from the agent as to what gigs have come in. Sometimes they just come in at the last minute. So that makes it hard in terms of booking my own stuff, and as you know, I do a lot of house concerts and private events. Sometimes we can set those up at the last minute and I can work them around what Al's doing. So in terms of gigging I don't do a huge amount because it's too hard to work that around Al's schedule. In terms of recording, I did manage to get this new album "Step Up," recorded, which I'm very happy with. The trick is also getting out and promoting it, which would involve more gigging. It would also involve sending it to radio and that sort of thing. I've had a little bit of success getting it out but I haven't tried very hard. Again, radio these days is nothing like it used to be. It's always been hard to get airplay unless you are with a huge, major label. Now radio's become so fragmented it's hard to know where to even try to get airplay.

Music Arts: I know there's no payola anymore and radio stations have to adhere to there format as to what they are going to play on rotation, that's unless you can get in with an independent radio station.

Dave: But they're all inundated, even if they like what you send them, they might play it once or twice. There's a public radio station in Sacramento that once a week they have a show that features local acts that is mixed with international acts for three or four hours on Saturday evening. Since my new album "Step Up" has come out they have been featuring it, maybe not every week, but two out of three shows they will play a track from it. Which is great but that is nothing like rotation on a real commercial radio station where they play your song ten times a day, everyday, and people really get to know it. So it's a whole different thing. I think people now are discovering a lot of music through You-Tube, which is fine if you have a really snazzy video that catches peoples attention or you've got a novelty song or something weird that goes viral. A lot of that stuff doesn't tend to last; it's sort of a flash in the pan. The whole industry is in kind of strange place. I do a lot of different things. I do songwriting workshops in schools. I write custom songs for people. I'm starting to do more production for people. I do studio work for people long distance because I'm not exactly in a major music hub but it doesn't matter, it allows me to put guitar tracks or people tracks on their stuff from where ever they are using the Internet. It's kind of like a lot of musicians aren't wildly famous or anything, but who are full-time players who patch together a whole lot of different little things to make it work. That's kind of what I do. I would love to focus a little more on my own songwriting, my own recording and things like that. I've been doing a few more shows with a full band, which is pretty fun. I've gotten to play with some really great players. I can't really afford to tour with a band so what I need to do is develop little mini bands in different regions, so that when I go to an area I can call those players who will know my stuff.

Music Arts: I really liked your song "The Loyalist." Spending so much time playing Al's music do you find yourself writing more ballads?

Dave: You know, I think being with Al all the time has changed my writing somewhat, I'm definitely always aware of his opinions about songs and his particular point of view. He has a very particular style of writing and he has been a big influence on me but I have other influences too. I don't know that I write more ballads then ever. I have always been drawn to story telling in songs and that is what I love about Al's music and that is part of why we have an affinity. I don't know if I am doing more of that now then I was before. I don't know if it has really changed my writing that much. I just do what I do but he's been an influence even before I started playing with him. Hopefully spending all this time working with him I've picked up a few tricks and generally kind of absorbed some of what he does.

Music Arts: Yeah, Al's a walking thesaurus. He's amazing the words he puts into songs.

Dave: Well Al and I have that in common, we both like unusual and interesting words; we like language. A friend of mine was telling me he counted at least three six-syllable words and a couple of five-syllable words on the new album. It's not the sort of thing that I think is being done a lot in songs at the top of the charts. Ultimately one of the things that I figured out is that as an artist, you have to make music that you really like, because if you don't, it's not going to feel real. People are going to pick up on that. If you are just trying to write something that someone else is going to like, but not writing something you can respect yourself, it won't work. You have to do something where if it weren't your own music, you would still go out and buy it. That's the goal, you put it on and go, "I really enjoy that!" As Al himself would say, "It doesn't always happen." Al has, I think, seventeen albums and he likes about half of them. I'm sure at least when he was recording them he liked all of them. You aim as high as you can and sometimes it works out and some times it doesn't work out as well. Also, there's how it works out commercially and how it works out artistically. I don't think I am giving away any big secrets when I say that Al is not terribly fond of some of his most commercial successes and yet he is very fond of some of the songs he has written that were not big hits. I feel kind of the same way. I know that there are fans who love "Song on the Radio" and it has a place in my heart simply because of the time and the place, but it's like pulling teeth to get Al to play that song. He almost never plays it. In fact, the story that he tells is that Clive Davis sat him down in a taxi and rode him around New York City saying; "Ok now, for your next song, I want one hundred twenty beats per minute, a sax solo in the middle and dah...dah..dah"; he got so mad at being dictated to that he wrote that as a slap in the face to Clive. You're on my mind like a song on the radio; it's such an obvious commercial thing. Oh course the irony is; he did that and it was actually commercially successful. But take, "Old Admirals," or "Roads to Moscow;" these are songs that are so incredible that nobody else could have written. I think they are part of a legacy that is really lasting and yet they (these songs) never could have been big commercial hits.

Music Arts: Finishing up, I'd like to ask you what you would like your fans to know about the direction of your music for 2012 and beyond?

Dave: I guess the I plan to continue on the path that I launched on to in "Step Up." I'm kind of excited about doing stuff that's a little more rock and poppy, less folky. There will always be that folk element because that is where I came out of but it really is fun to put on an electric guitar and rock out too. So I am definitely going to be looking for more opportunities to do more shows with a full band. I'm exploring trying to do some instrumental stuff and to make some music for film, TV and advertising and that sort of thing and collaborating with different people to explore that. But primarily I really want to try and get out there some this year and see if I can do some more stuff with a full band. Maybe we'll get the call and find out that they want Al to come back to Europe and I get to go along and we could do another run over there. I'd particularly like to get back to Germany because that was a really interesting experience the couple of time that I did that.

Music Arts: Well we certainly are looking forward to seeing you and Al March 3rd at Anthology in San Diego.

Listen to Dave's music and read more at his website http://www.davenach.com

Listen to Elton at his 60th Birthday Party in Madison Square Garden in 2007.

The San Diego Symphony POPS presents
"Classical Mystery Tour"
article and photos by Marcus Walton, Editor