Landmark on Main Street proudly presents STEW AND THE NEGRO PROBLEM on Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 8 PM. Program Sponsored by Frank Ullman and WFUV Radio. Landmark thanks our 2011-2012 Season Sponsor Pall Corporation and our Partners in Performing Arts: Bank of America, Harding Real Estate, Town of North Hempstead and NYS Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel for their season support. Tickets and information at the box office phone 516-767-6444 or www.landmarkonmainstreet.org.
Stew and Heidi Rodewald (aka STEW AND THE NEGRO PROBLEM) have already recorded three critically acclaimed albums: Post Minstrel Syndrome (1997), Joys & Concerns (1999) and 2002's Welcome Back. The New York Times cited the last as "perhaps the finest collection of songs an American songwriter has come up with this year." Stew and Heidi are perhaps best known for their work on Passing Strange, the theater production that went on to become both a Spike Lee-directed movie and Tony Award winner for "Best Book of a Musical." Now they are back with "Making It," due out January 24.
“It’s a love and pain thing, a no one can explain thing, it’s simply complicated folks,” goes a line from “Curse,” one of the central pieces on Making It, not only the new album by the Negro Problem, but the first collection of new songs by the collaborative partnership that is Stew and Heidi Rodewald since PASSING STRANGE, their Tony-winning play turned Spike Lee Joint.
The January 24, 2012 release "Making It" weeps, moans and sings, as its makers — once coupled, now apart — deliver in equal measure, a male and female, yin and yang, black and white story of love and art, in all its colors and parts. Of course that’s what singer-composer Rodewald and the singularly named singer-songwriter-playwright Stew have always done, en route from rock ’n’ roll trouble to theatrical triumph, since forming their band the Negro Problem in Los Angeles in the early ’90s (Heidi joined in ’97).
“For some people, ‘making it’ means having enough money where you don’t have to make art anymore,” says Stew. “But I’ve always told people I became successful when I was 17 and realized that this was what I was going to do with my life — not when we got to the Public Theater or went to Broadway or when Spike shot the movie — but when I made that decision: To be in a band.”
Over the course of nine albums, while Stew’s concerned himself with making art, making love and making peace with all of it, Heidi’s co-composed and vocalized the push-pull, down-bound yet supersonic melodies that largely characterized the Negro Problem. But her notations to the songs on Making It are perhaps that much sweeter because of the resistance she initially brought to the project.
“I didn’t want to do this record,” she admits. But when she heard a bit of her own truth in the climactic “Leave Believe,” she says, “We decided that I should be involved — that I’d tell Stew what lyrics he should write for me.” The new twist on the creative process was especially gratifying for Heidi, while Stew gave and took what he needed from it too. “Stew said Making It was like his ‘therapy’ and I told him that therapy only works if you tell the truth.” The resulting song, “Therapy Only Works If You Tell The Truth,” is as bare-naked as it is straight/no chaser rock ’n’ roll.
Opening with an exuberant instrumental theme, comedown and chaos quickly combine while the first voice you’ll hear is Heidi’s. Trading echoing lines of dialogue in “Pretend,” the play’s the thing, as Stew foreshadows what’s about to unfold: “When times get tough the song does too.” Love and war, overseas and at home, are no joke in the downbeat duo “Pastry Shop” and “Suzy Wong.” And in Aspen, where “Black Men Ski,” you could say the path is designated “most difficult.” Meanwhile, Heidi and Stew roll with the emotional changes and go down swinging, lost and found in a swirl of rock ’n’ roll feedback, futuristic jams, flute, and funeral jazz, with a shot of showbiz flair.
During a week of sold-out "Making It" shows at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, theater-goers who expected Passing Strange part two had their minds revamped, and yet this was Heidi and Stew doing what they’ve always done, working out their songs as the Negro Problem, a band in (im)perfect harmony. Call it an uneasy listening experience that’s easy on the ears, or like eavesdropping on the human condition, ultimately Making It is a rock album concerning heartache — and who can’t get with that?
