Kris Kristofferson as folk poet

Concert Review


Last Sunday evening, with no fanfare, no announcement and not even a stool to sit on, Kris Kristofferson strode onto the stage of the Fred Kavli Theatre and showed an enthusiastic audience why he is one of American music’s treasured folk poets.

For more than two hours, Kristofferson rattled off more than two dozen of his own compositions— most of them classics.

Kristofferson, who had recently completed a grueling twomonth summer tour in Europe during which he performed nearly every day, was rested, having spent most of September in Hawaii, where he makes his home.

In a phone interview from there, he showed his enthusiasm for performing has not faded: “I had a great time over there. I was afraid that the economy was going to hold the crowds down, but it was sold out everywhere.”

Kristofferson is a Rhodes scholar who served in the army as a helicopter pilot in West Germany. He got his start in music through a legendary stunt when he landed his chopper in Johnny Cash’s yard and handed him some demo tapes. Since then, his songs have been recorded by many of country and pop music’s elite, although Kristofferson himself only had one hit as a recording artist (“Why Me”). His most famous songs stand as classics, including “Me and Bobby McGee” (Janis Joplin), “Help Me Make It Through the Night” (Sammi Smith), and “Sunday Morning Coming Down” (Johnny Cash).

At 74, Kristofferson has a craggy voice, but it has always been that way. His lower register is gone, but the audience didn’t seem to care. With just his guitar and harmonica (played from a rack) as accompaniment, Kristofferson, dressed in black and wearing his “cleanest dirty shirt,” reduced the cavernous Kavli to an intimate supper club atmosphere. He concluded each song with an abrupt “thank you” before proceeding to the next one. Memorable phrases rolled over the audience like gentle waves: “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” “From the rockin’ of the cradle to the rollin’ of the hearse” and “Never’s just the echo of forever.”

Of his one-man acoustic set, Kristofferson told me, “I was a little afraid of it when I first started out doing it, but I’m glad I did, because there’s an intimacy where there’s not much between you and your audience. But I feel like it’s direct communication in the best instances.”

The songs rolled along: tender love songs, aching songs of loneliness, lullabies written for his children and the occasional political statement, both musical (“The Circle,” a song about a stray U.S. bomb that killed Layla Al-Atar, a famous Iraqi artist) and spoken (a barbed joke aimed at George W. Bush and Dick Cheney) that brought a rude comment from the rafters: “No politics!” in response to which Kristofferson apologized: “I didn’t mean to rub politics in your face.”

He also sang a passionate song about Native American activist John Trudell (“Johnny Lobo”), which he wrote when he was performing as part of the Highwaymen supergroup with Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.

Kristofferson also showed his witty side with a song he wrote when he was in the army: “Sky King,” patterned after Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John,” which was then a hit, and his morality tales, like “To Beat the Devil” (which he wrote for Cash) and “Here Comes That Rainbow Again,” a lovely slice-of-life song that tells of the basic goodness of human beings.

“I feel like the songs are like my kids,” Kristofferson told me. “I love them all.”

So do his fans.


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