Kelly Kristofferson has the giggle. On stage with her father, the duo are singing “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33” and whenever they reach the chorus, whenever they sing “He’s a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he’s stoned”, Kelly looks over at Kris and can’t stop laughing. It was the most revealing moment of the evening.
At the Concert Hall on Saturday Night the 76 year old Kris Kristofferson performed 33 songs in an 135 minute including intermission, playing the songs accompanied by just guitar, and harp and sometimes he didn’t have the wind for the harp, and an errant daughter for a handful of Spirituals. He played the hits, the biggest one “Me And Bobby McGee” the third song of the evening, and the other ones “For The Good Times” before the encore, “Loving Here Was Easier (Than Anything I’ve Ever Do Again)” , “Here Comes That Rainbow Again”, “Help Me Make It Through The Night” and “Why Me, Lord”. And he performed the story songs that are his reason for being, “Jody And The Kid”, “Darby’s Castle”, “Casey’s Last Ride”, but he wasn’t particularly revealing.
It was as good as Kris could have possibly been. His voice is gone and he croaks in tune, and his ease on stage is a form of magnetism, but he isn’t a talker, and when a singer songwriter of Kris’ reputation takes to the stage we expect a lot more insight into his technique and into the man. It is an odd skill to have had such a public life and yet manage to stand alone on stage shrouded in mystery, a cipher.
It was a strong, strange, mysterious performance. Spanning over four decades of songs, it seemed to be adding up to a world vision but stopped short time after time. Kris dedicated his 1986 “The Heart” to his father but what he didn’t mention was that his father had been a U.S. Air Force Major General or that Kris was pressured into joining the Air Force himself so when he sings “If they deal you down and dirty in a way you don’t deserve, you’ll feel better if you take it like a man”, it is a statement that resonates through generations.
This lack of an overreaching context worked against Kris this night. His unwillingness to work the audience despite his glad handing at the end, left them, fanatics one and all, in the shadows. The entire audience breathed in as one during “For The Good Times” just waiting for his permission to take over the chorus. The permission never arrived. Kris was so firmly concentrated on performing the songs, he was also processing himself in them, and us. We as well were part of the remembrance and embrace of a long career travelling from country to folk to pop and back again.
Or perhaps it took all his concentration to maintain on target, to simply remember all the songs. 76 years old is a certain age where the memory does become impaired and Kris answered a song request by telling the simple truth , he couldn’t remember the words any more.
The set was long but tight, he didn’t meander, he played a song and when the audience stopped standing up and cheering he played the next one. The country star (and movie star) began his career as a songwriter and it is worth quoting Wikipedia here, to give you a taste of who sung which of his songs: ” Roy Drusky (“Jody and the Kid”); Billy Walker & the Tennessee Walkers (“From the Bottle to the Bottom”); Ray Stevens (“Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”); Jerry Lee Lewis (“Once More with Feeling”); Faron Young (“Your Time’s Comin'”); and Roger Miller (“Me and Bobby McGee”, “Best of all Possible Worlds”, “Darby’s Castle”); Ray Price (“For the Good Times”), Waylon Jennings (“The Taker”), Bobby Bare (“Come Sundown”), Johnny Cash (“Sunday Morning Coming Down”) and Sammi Smith (“Help Me Make It Through the Night”) and then he got hot.
What brought him into super stardom was ex-girlfriend Janis Joplin’s version of “Me And Bobby McGee”. And then, naturally, he took off and crashed and took off and crashed, and… well “A Star Is Born” anyone? There are stories behind all of this, stuff like Kris landing his helicopter on Johnny Cash’s lawn to hand Johnny some songs he had written, with no prior warning!
But on stage on Saturday, the songs are there not to illuminate the man, but to illuminate the songs. Spirituals, stories, and heartbreak after heartbreak. On “Best Of All Possible Words” he sings the dream, whose repercussions become obvious only much later on “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and the breaks up and breakdowns Kris chronicles in a voice this side of spoken and that side of melodic, are far from a nostalgia act (his latest album, Feeling Mortal, was released this January), not even a self portrait or a “this is me” or… The thing about Kris is the songs and now he isn’t the jock or the scholar or the pop star or movie star or even the highwayman of the past, he is something much simpler but more difficult: he is a songwriter and the set was about the songs and that was what they were about. Even the adoration of the audience was secondary.
Still, after his songs there is always his family and watching his 22 year old daughter watching her father as they joined together for a handful of God songs, was revealing enough for any set. He sang his old the Highwaymen track towards the end of the evening. “Life is the question and life is the answer and God is the reason and love is the way”. Amen to that, Kris.
Grade: B+