AS: I should play the Barbican every night.

ND: I understand your other UK tour stops [Fall 2005] are selling well.

AS: We seem to be on a roll at the moment. I just did a run in the northeast and in Texas, and they were all good. I guess. We've got to get back to Baltimore.

ND: I agree.

AS: Have you heard the new record [A Beach Full of Shells]?

ND: (Giggles.) Oh, you're going to interview me? All right. I love the new record.

AS: (Impishly) Oh, good!

ND: It's a wonderful record. There's just so much depth in what you do, and when you compare it to most of what you hear in the mainstream marketplace... It's just a refreshing change, something that makes you think and feel.

AS: What are your favorites?

ND: My favorite song on the album is "Katherine of Oregon."

AS: Oh, that's great, 'cause I like that one. It's the simplest one, in a way; it sort of wrote itself, but it has a certain charm to it.

ND: What led you to write that song?

AS: (The sound of Stewart's trademarked tenor comes through the phone as he sings some of the opening lyric.) "When I get even more old than I am now / I'll have a house overlooking the water..."

I don't know if I will ever have a house overlooking the water. Well, it's the onset of old age, isn't it? Sixty was looming at me and I thought, well, I just might move down to L.A. (from his previous Marin County residence). Then I thought that we're running out of time here, and I wondered what could I possibly do that I haven't done. And I thought it would be nice to sort of sit on a beach somewhere in a comical hat and be, as I say in the song, "an ancient curmudgeon." (We laugh.) It seems that's the most obvious future I can think of.

ND: Well, I'm a bit of a grayhair myself, so this song resonated with me on a lot of levels. I kind of see myself becoming the curmudgeonly grandma.

AS: That's our duty in life, to become curmudgeonly.

ND: I suppose. But perhaps we aren't too old to shake things up. Who knows? Perhaps we can.

AS: There you go. But yeah, it's a straightforward song about growing old — or about thinking about growing old.

ND: It's the latter — neither of us have reached the former yet. (Al cracks up.) I also liked "Mona Lisa Talking." That ought to be a single. Are you thinking about radio at all?

AS: You know, it should be a single, in the fantasy world. Probably if I was still living in, um, 1974, it would be a single. But in the real world of Eminem...