Dave Stewart has today released his groundbreaking new music, film, and stage musical project, EBONY MCQUEEN, a deluxe multi-format box set featuring the complete triple album on 3x vinyl LP alongside two additional vinyl EPs, two cassettes, and an expansive photo book that includes typed lyrics as well as Stewart’s original film scripment.
“Ebony McQueen’ is the name of a voodoo blues queen from Louisiana, who, in the story, is a kind of portal to my leaving my hometown of Sunderland and guiding me to London,” says Stewart. “She is basically my entry point into music and the song is the entry point to this story. Ultimately, it’s about destiny. There’s a point in your life when something’s put before you and you can either choose this path or that path. Some people choose none of the paths and end up not even knowing there was something put in front of them, because they weren’t aware or they weren’t in the present moment. So this song is about having a vision and being in the present moment. And our whole story is about how that awakening happens.”
A boy at the crossroads is visited by a living, breathing manifestation of the blues, setting in motion an extraordinary journey that will take him from his teenaged bedroom in the northern English city of Sunderland to stages and studios in London, Nashville, the Caribbean, and countless places in between.
EBONY MCQUEEN is among the most ambitious and autobiographical works of Dave Stewart’s remarkable life and landmark career, an exhilarating, original musical fable about music and young manhood, growing up and getting on, hard-earned wisdom and true love with the girl next door.
Written and produced by Stewart, EBONY MCQUEEN was recorded at studios including Nashville’s legendary Blackbird Studio and his own Bay Street Recording Studio in the Caribbean, with contributions from an array of top vocalists, session players, and the 60-piece Budapest Scoring Orchestra. The joyful, rousing score brings together Stewart’s seminal early inspirations – his father’s Rogers & Hammerstein records, Robert Johnson’s blues, and the mind-blowing sounds of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Rolling Stones – all filtered through his own inimitable creative lens of richly orchestrated pop, rock ‘n roll, psychedelia, country, musical theatre, even the distinctive rake-and-scrape sound of his beloved Bahamas’ colorful Junkanoo carnival.
Deeply personal yet wholly universal, EBONY MCQUEEN is more than Dave Stewart’s own story – it’s for everyone whose lives have been steered by the redemptive magic of music and mysterious power of love.
Watch the box set video below and the video for the single “Ebony McQueen”. You can listen to and order the box set here. http://www.eurythmicsvideovisionaries.com
