Jan. 26, 1979 Gusto review: Harry Chapin in Kleinhans Music Hall

 

Getting cozy with the late, great Harry Chapin.

Jan. 26, 1979 

The Good Part Is Reliving the Old Times

         Going to a Harry Chapin concert is like spending the evening with a long-lost cousin. First you’re obliged to grin and bear the small talk and the updating. Then you get down to the good part – reliving the old times.

         So it went in a sold-out Kleinhans Music Hall Thursday night. The affable Chapin strode out first, a casually handsome figure – tall, trim and curly-haired, square of jaw and broad of forehead. No superstar coyness for him. He plunked himself down on the traditional folksinger’s high stool and cozied up the mood by his lonesome.

         “What you’ve got here is an opening act,” he grinned between tunes. “I’m gonna warm you up till the group comes out. Now there’s two things that an opening act can do – you can either be so good that people feel real happy or so bad that you’ve got them yelling: ‘Throw the bum out.’ I promise to be one of the two.”

         Actually, the singing, songwriting storyteller turned out to be a little bit of both. The sound system acted up and so did his voice, which remained raspy throughout the three-hour show. His early stories meandered, his early songs sagged in the middle and the crowd got its early jollies by whooping it up whenever he mentioned Upstate New York place names. Were there really that many partisans there from Watertown?

         Nevertheless, his easy charm held things together and his sure-fire sentiments sparked every time, like his definition of adulthood: “Adulthood is that state when you can hold mutually contradictory truths without getting anything worse than ulcers … or VD.”

         He’d been winging it for nearly half an hour when his back-up quintet slipped in to sing a cappella harmony with him on a song for his daughter. A sharp little folk-rock aggregation they were, with brother Steve Chapin on piano and Kim Scholes tracing marvelously sensual counterpoint on the cello.

         The first half of the show evolved into long, long story-songs. Aside from “Cat’s in the Cradle,” many of them were from the less familiar part of his nine-album repertoire and the vocals – essential to Chapin’s literary leanings – were lost in the mix.

         The slow sections were redeemed, however, by frequent bantering with the band (bassist John Wallace scored the best one-liner of the first half: “Reality is for those who can’t face drugs.”) and a disco farewell to the ‘70s.

         Intermission gave fans a chance to help World Hunger Year by buying Chapin souvenirs and poetry books in the lobby. Afterward, the program turned to the greatest hits.

         There was “The Pocono Land Development Company,” in which the narrator observes: “If I can’t have my country dream, I’m going to sell it to someone else.”

         There was the one about the singing tailor from Dayton, Ohio, with the choruses laid over a snatch from “O Holy Night.”

         There was the one about the cruelties of sexual acculturation – how “little girls grow up crooked, while little boys grow up tall,” which he dedicated to “Phyllis Schlafly and some of the other male chauvinist pigs.” He dedicated another song to Pete Seeger. He yielded the vocals on “Let Time Go Lightly” to brother Steve, who responded in a clean, clear tenor.

         This all served as a prelude to “Taxi,” his wistful cab-driver’s pipe dream of what might have been. While the meter was still running, he slipped into “30,000 Pounds of Bananas” – a truck crash song to end all truck crash songs, complete with a singalong and a rhythm that accelerated as fast as that brakeless tractor-trailer. He finished it by offering four alternative endings, to which the crowd shouted out the band’s favorite two-word critique.

         For an encore, there was the gently unifying “All My Life’s a Circle,” with Chapin leading a singalong, then stepping down into the audience to hold the mike for a couple avid amateurs. It was great fun and it highlighted the essence of Chapin’s continuing appeal. He’s show-biz, but he’s folk music too. He never lets you forget that under the skin you’re still all his favorite relatives.

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IN THE PHOTO: Harry Chapin in 1979.

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FOOTNOTE: Harry Chapin's most recent record, "Dance Band on the Titanic," had sold poorly, in part because Elektra Records was no longer giving him proper promotional support, but he still was a hit as a live performer. He also was heavily involved in the fight against hunger and gave many concerts to benefit a variety of causes. Five days before the Buffalo date, he did a show in Syracuse to help save the Landmark Theater. He died in an auto accident on the Long Island Expressway en route to another benefit concert in July 1981.

        Setlist.fm lists only two songs from the Kleinhans date – "Taxi" and "Better Place to Be." Since he mixed up his song selection every night on this tour, perhaps the most complete picture is from March 7, 1979, in Tennessee in the Knoxville Civic Coliseum.

Poor Damned Fool

Corey's Coming

If My Mary Were Here

Tangled Up Puppet

Mail Order Annie

Old Folkie

The Day They Closed the Factory Down

Get On with It

Copper

Cat's in the Cradle

Flowers Are Red

Salt and Pepper

Stranger With the Melodies

Pretzel Man

Legends of the Lost and Found

Love Is Not in Season

30,000 Pounds of Bananas

Odd Job Man

Taxi

You Are the Only Song

(encore)

Circle