A Randy Kind Of Feeling
Stewart D’Arrietta interprets the songs of Randy Newman at the Adelaide Fringe Festival and Claire’s Kitchen in Sydney
With his trademark flourish and reverential impudence, Stewart D’Arrietta presents his latest show , A Randy Kind Of Feeling in which he wrings his rough-edged rasp across the songs of Randy Newman. This legendary songwriter wraps his arms through the decades in D’Arrietta’s unique interpretations of his work, conversing on life’s biggest themes.
With relish D’Arrietta takes up the New Orleans influence in some of the legendary Newman’s pieces and takes the audience through the world of a musical genius who collected multiple Grammys, Oscars and an Emmy.
Growing up in the Big Easy as a child, Newman brings out the swamp land piano man in D’Arrietta. Rolling Stone magazine once described Newman as an artist with, “Slippery storytelling, pointed, social observation and rapturous melodies,” It is fair to say that D’Arrietta will honour that descriptor, and then some.
Songs from A Randy Kind Of Feeling range from ‘Mama Told Me Not To Come’, made famous by Three Dog Night and ‘Leave Your Hat On’ as immortalised by Joe Cocker, to the tender ‘I Think It’s Going To Rain Today’, ‘Feels Like Home’. A mere glance at the title is more than enough to give you an inkling of the terrain D’Arrietta explores with his deft and devilish irony. These are songs from one of the greatest writers of his century and this one. They cover terrain of tenderness to terror, and everything in between. D’Arrietta’s characteristic gravel-voiced sensitivity bring out the shapes and shades of this legend, in which these songs speak.
Beneath the roaring bluster and cyclonic musicality, the sinewy strands of romance weave poignant and compelling stories of life, love, lust and loss – this performer’s favourite themes.