Over the course of a career, any songwriter ends up with a virtual drawer full of unused songs that got to some degree of completion without becoming part of the catalog. Maybe the songwriter only got through a couple of verses; maybe there was a demo; maybe the song failed to make the cut on a particular album and was forgotten; maybe it was actually sung a few times in concert. In 1992, John Stewart fan and friend Tom Delisle, recalling a batch of such efforts, persuaded Stewart to record nine of his also-rans for a cassette called Teresa & the Lost Songs, released on Stewart's own Homecoming label. This 1998 CD is a reissue of that material, plus three bonus songs. In either configuration, it definitely presents some otherwise unavailable gems. One might wish that Stewart and Delisle had actually gone back into Stewart's archives for the original versions instead of having Stewart cut new 1992 performances of them (sometimes altering and adding lyrics). His takes tend to be off-the-cuff, at least in terms of the vocals, on which he swallows words and sometimes sings in a perfunctory manner, as if he still wasn't convinced the project was worth doing. It was. There are odd moments, to be sure, lines that seem unfinished, but some songs are worthy of joining the repertoire. This is especially true of "Looking Back Johanna" (for which a new verse has been written) and "Seek a Newer World," which would have fit on the Last Campaign record about Robert Kennedy. The possibilities for original recordings are suggested by one of the bonus tracks that is actually an old performance. Stewart's "Liddy Buck" dates from 1980 and is, interestingly, a song for Stewart's pal Lindsey Buckingham, set to an uptempo guitar line that sounds like something Buckingham himself could have come up with. The vocal here has a boxy sound, but the track has the urgency of something just written instead of something recalled from long ago.
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