Two years after Guest Host, Stew released his second album under his own name, 2002’s The Naked Dutch Painter and Other Songs. This was his second straight album to top Entertainment Weekly‘s year-end best-of list, and again, I don’t know how I missed that. It would be another year-plus before I discovered him.

Naked Dutch Painter was mostly recorded live, though a few songs have studio parts blended in. It’s not a concert album but rather an album he chose to record in front of an audience. You don’t hear the crowd except for some polite applause at the end of some songs.

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