~ Live Show Review ~

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Dan Bern Paints the Night Fantastic

Live at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Santa Cruz, California, 3/6/99, produced by Snazzy Productions. Reviewed by Snoozy.

Despite all the attempts to put Dan Bern in a box, it seems it just won't happen. Sure there are the comparisons to other singers past and present, but Bern simply writes and paints what feels right. On Saturday, March 6 it was right.

Perhaps some more than others, but Dan had the audience in the palm of his guitar pickin' hand. He told 'em, "I was sick last year when I was here and I'm not feeling great now. Can't get used to clean air." Says a lot about life in Santa Monica versus Santa Cruz. After much reading about Dan Bern's music, performance artistry, and commentary by friends and fans, I came to see and hear what I missed the last time he played at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center. Was I expecting folk?, rock?, jazz?, blues? punk? Whatever! Bern supplied a bit of it all, but he made it difficult to note titles of new or less familiar tunes. So, Reader Beware: the song titles in this review are occasionally impressionistic.

My favorite of the evening was one such tune. It was a most melodic, upbeat love song (as if that meant anything), and I couldn't tell you the name then; I now can: One More Life (R//M), "one more star in heaven tonight, one more candle burning bright, one more star by twilight."

Dan works the audience. He had earned backstage praise for exactly that from U. Utah Phillips when they performed on the same bill in Santa Cruz last year. This time the audience was prepared to sing along, even though Dan may not have been. He seems to sing in a stream of conscience, the still small voice booming out lyrics that catch the right and wrong of life. How can you sing along with that . . . but you do. Dan Bern sang this evening from his head, his heart, and his funny bone.

But one so song that would have resonated is "Talk To Your Kids", an anthem performed for the first time on KPIG's Please Stand By, a Sunday morning live music show. He took our breath away with it then. It's poignant and reminiscent of CSNY's "Teach Your Children". It speaks, no, shouts volumes about current events, as any student, parent, or teacher would know.

Dan is someone -- finally! -- who uses cargo pants not for fashion but for a purpose: he warehouses harmonicas, picks, capos, and coins. He wants to know what you want to hear - not titles but subject matter. He has come prepared. "Jerusalem"(R//M) lets us in on the imaginative secrets of not only the past but the very present, from messiahs to munching on Mediterranean olives.

And what is it with the topic of painting? Dan is nearly obsessed with opportunities to sing about painting and colors, especially blue and green. Check it out: the very sarcastic "I'm Blue"; then a delightful screed about politicians not havin' the balls to decide when we can have "A Day to Paint"; then another apparently titled merely "Blue"; later it was "Painting Dreams on the Wall", followed by "Green On You".

Dan can turn it on with hits like "Tiger Woods"(R//M) or "Marilyn Monroe", which again got the house singing and giggling about the culture of celebrity. You gotta "have big balls" to write about this kinda stuff, and then perform it as well. It is clear that Dan Bern is well endowed.

 

(Excerpted material recorded at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center on 3/6/99. Mix by Julie Rix. Recorded by Dave Nielsen of Technica Gratia Artes.)

 

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