Still Innovative After All These Years
By STEVE DOLLAR
April 22, 2008
The tribute concert — sometimes scary, sometimes thrilling — is a tricky concept. It can be a venal and indulgent celebrity death match, where pop stars du jour compete to deliver the lamest cover versions of a classic song simply because their management insisted they be there. Or, a tribute show can yield quirky epiphanies by turning overfamiliar material sideways and reclaiming a song from the dusty jukebox of the mind.
As the Brooklyn Academy of Music's monthlong series of concerts devoted to the music of Paul Simon concludes this week, it's clear that this comprehensive mini-festival is striving for the unexpected. This week's performances, which will showcase Mr. Simon's "American Tunes," don't immediately promise some of the inherent magnetism of the two previous themed programs in the BAM series: "Under the African Skies," which revived Mr. Simon's ground-breaking fusion of New York urbanity and South African township music on the classic "Graceland" album, and "Songs from 'The Capeman,'" which showcased the only thing people seemed to like about Mr. Simon's maligned 1997 musical.
This week's shows, which begin tomorrow and run through Sunday, focus primarily on the songwriter's pre-"Graceland" body of work, but take in some of his more recent fare. The material ranges from the cringingly overexposed "Bridge Over Troubled Water" to the witty ironies and bittersweet asides of his most popular 1970s solo albums, "There Goes Rhymin' Simon" and "Still Crazy After All These Years," and on to the overlooked "Surprise," a 2006 collaboration with ambient-music kingpin Brian Eno. The guest performers include some names a Simon fan would probably expect, like the plaintive singer-songwriter Gillian Welch, and the Roche Sisters — New York folk music royalty whose 1975 debut album was produced by Mr. Simon. The same can be said of the house band, with its assortment of session professionals (drummer Steve Gadd, percussionist Cyro Baptista) and musicians whose association with Mr. Simon dates from the "Rhythm of the Saints" days (namely the wizardly Cameroonian guitarist Vincent Nguini).
But Mr. Simon, apparently, likes to shake things up. "I knew about him, but if I had heard his music I wouldn't have known," the Harlem performer Olu Dara, a jazz musician turned bluesy raconteur, said recently. Mr. Dara sups deeply on the same gumbo of traditional American sounds as Mr. Simon, but in all their mutual decades of playing in New York they had never crossed paths until two months ago. Mr. Dara, who will bring his smooth and devilish Mississippi wiles to bear on "Still Crazy" and "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover," made contact with Mr. Simon via an unanticipated third party: the young neo-soul singer Joss Stone, who suggested Mr. Simon check out Mr. Dara, who was conveniently playing a date in Norwalk, Conn., not too far from Mr. Simon's residence.
"The best thing about it is I get to do the songs the way I want to do them," Mr. Dara said. The 67-year-old performer has an interesting method. He's learning the material through his guitarist, who sings the lyrics to him. "He can't sing, either. It's like a handicap. I like handicaps. I love to create things off the top of my head. That keeps it really fresh. I can't wait to see [Mr. Simon's] face when I do it."
During the 1980s, Mr. Dara was known as one of the city's leading jazz cornet players. He played alongside a budding Wynton Marsalis in a brass group known as the New York Hot Trumpets, and he was featured on one of that decade's greatest jazz albums, David Murray's "Ming." He later picked up a guitar and recorded a couple of belated albums for Atlantic Records, but only after his son, the rapper Nas, became a hip-hop icon. These days, Mr. Dara prefers to sing, mostly. But he likes to play a little pocket trumpet. "I saw these horns for $199," he said. "Little kids were playing them. Their parents thought it was a toy. I thought, this is a really beautiful thing."
That spirit of spontaneity also abides in Grizzly Bear, the Brooklyn-based experimental rock band that also seems to have stumbled onto the "American Tunes" roster through a side door. Again, there was a third party involved, this time the Canadian singer-songwriter Feist, with whom the band shares a manager. Mr. Simon, whose son is a huge Feist fan, was at her sound check for an appearance on "Saturday Night Live" the same day that Grizzly Bear was performing in the city.
"She mentioned that we do a cover of 'Graceland,' and an hour later he showed up at our concert," Chris Bear, the drummer for Grizzly Bear, said. They all hit it off, and before long Grizzly Bear was hunkered down in its Greenpoint rehearsal space cooking up a new version of "Mother and Child Reunion." Mr. Simon dropped in one day and gave an impromptu performance.
"I doubt if anyone in the band has a super-deep connection to 'Mother and Child Reunion,'" Mr. Bear said. He grew up listening to "Graceland" and "The Rhythm of the Saints," Mr. Simon's richly percussive, Brazilian-themed follow-up. "It's sort of a fun Paul Simon reggae song. But we took it completely out of that context and created our own relationship with it. He's got a very specific lyrical style, often with a lot of words. He tells whole stories. As a band, we are mostly on the brief side with lyrics."
Mr. Bear (his real surname) wasn't quite sure how it would work out yet, he said. "But I hope it meets his expectations."
"Paul Simon: American Tunes" runs between Wednesday and Sunday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (30 Lafayette Ave., between Ashland Place and St. Felix Street, Brooklyn, 718-636-4100
