“Let This Fool Dream On” Keith Stewart Band

The easiest way to come up with a random song is to set the song selection thing on my computer on “shuffle,” which then picks out a song, supposedly at random, without any kind of prejudice. The dangerous thing is that among the 4000 or so songs I have (somehow) there are a lot where I think, “how did that get on my computer?” So it's nice when there's a pleasant surprise like this one, from the Keith Stewart Band's album, Epic Hits. I'm not sure of the year. You won't find a lot about this one on the internet, folks. When the song started, from the into, I thought it was Tom Petty at first. Pretty much a guitar, bass, and drums band, but there's a nice, Casio-sounding keyboard. Keith is taking on his slightly British sounding singing voice (not obnoxiously so)—and there's a little bridge with the altered vocal that sounds like it's pushed through an old AM radio, for a kind of Spinal Tap touch. Right before that, there's an immensely compelling, simple guitar break that's a real bonus on multiple listenings. Epic Hits was a limited release CD, and I happen to have it, and know something about it, because Keith Stewart is the stage name of my brother, Jeff Russell. They used to play, for years, out of Sandusky, Ohio, mostly doing cover songs at local taverns, though he is quite a good songwriter.