Steve Forbert teaming up with Freedy Johnston to tour sounds like a perfect match, until you imagine them trying to combine their distinctly rough-hewn, sometimes ragged voices as they tool down the road.
That may be the reason why the two never quite share the stage in shows like the one Saturday night in northern Virginia. Instead, the idea that each brings their audience along to appreciate the other’s set which are after all pretty simpatico in lyric smarts and tuneful melodies (if not always the smoothest of pipes).
Johnston, the Kansas native, burst on the scene with a bunch of fine songs in his early albums 30 years ago. Songs from his 1994 This Perfect World still comprise about half of his freewheeling solo set (which was pretty different from the set a week before). But he had songs from three other albums, including his latest, the 2022 Back on the Road to You, as well as a new, yet unrecorded tune about the time he tried to be a drummer in a band but was fired (since he had no experience whatsoever behind a set).
“I’ve played here about 200 times,” he said to the familiar settings of the strip mall club in Vienna, VA. “It’s great to be here for the 201st!” He didn’t dress for the occasion, in his ball cap, black T shirt over black long sleeve T-shirt, jeans, and a key ring outside his belt loop, janitor-style. But he had a good rapport with the fans, requesting some “hot liquid” two songs in because “my voice needs help.” He weighted the end of his set with “This Perfect World,” his cover of Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman” to his conclusive “Bad Reputation.”
His fans followed him out to his merch table and there was some chatter that underlined the start of Forbert’s set. Unlike Johnston, who performed solo acoustic, Forbert was accompanied by a keyboardist, Rob Clores, which added a little color and counterpoint to the sound (and was pretty much a mandatory accessory for a guy whose biggest hit, “Romeo’s Tune,” is built on a catchy piano riff).
Like the opener, the bulk of the set came from an early album, his 1978 debut Alive on Arrival, and its songs seemed as fresh and immediate as ever, starting with the set opener, “Thinkin.’” But almost immediately he gave a taste of his latest work, the title song from his 2022 Moving Through America that seemed to perfectly reflect his touring, with its mention of odd towns in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and, for the occasion of the second to last tour date, Virginia on a Saturday night.
Forbert tried to get the idea going that he had a lot of dance songs, so he kept encouraging it with upbeat songs like “That Sweet Love You Give (Sure Goes a Long Long Way),” from his second album of 1979, Jackrabbit Slim, to the newer “Living the Dream” and penultimate “What Kinda Guy?” A case could be made that he had a band up there, with five different elements—Clores on keyboard, and Forbert on vocals, guitar, harmonica, and foot-stomping.
His style is eyes-closed and looking skyward as he plays and sings—connecting with something. And there is a connection to a long history of American music, showing itself mostly when he does a Jimmie Rodgers song, “Any Old Time.” “I’m from the same town,” explained the Meridian, MS, native. “I have to play his song. It’s the law!”
And just about every song had either a melodic or rhythmic turn, or more often a well chosen lyric that demanded attention, from the line “I saw a man break down today” in “Tonight I Feel So Far Away From Home,” or imagining what the connection between John Lennon and Paul McCartney on their first meeting in “You’d See the Things I See.”
Clores fit in an accordion a couple of times, evincing a whole other feel on the long-distance longings of “My Seaside Brown-Eyed Girl” (“I’m in Tennessee … You’re in Springsteen land”) and about traces of American history in “Buffalo Nickel.” He held “Romeo’s Tune” until the end, preceded with a line from The Beatles’ “Good Night.” And when he returned for an encore, he preceded “You Cannot Win If You Do Not Play” with the intro to The Rolling Stones’ “Midnight Rambler.”
But he still couldn’t get anybody in that crowd to get up to dance.
STEVE FORBERT’S SETLIST
Thinkin’
Movin’ Through America
That Sweet Love You Give (Sure Goes a Long Long Way)
Any Old Time
Goin’ Down to Laurel
Living the Dream
I’m in Love With You
If You’re Waitin’ on Me
Tonight I Feel So Far Away From Home
My Seaside Brown-Eyed Girl
No Use Running from the Blues
You’d See the Things I See
Let’s Get High
Buffalo Nickel
So Good to Feel Good Again
What Kinda Guy?
Goodnight / Romeo’s Song
Midnight Rambler / You Cannot Win if You Do Not Play
FREEDY JOHNSTON’S SETLIST
We Will Shine
Happy Birthday
Gone Like the Water
The Lonely Drummer
Evie’s Tears
Tryin’ to Move On
This Perfect World
Wichita Lineman
Bad Reputation
STEVE FORBERT PHOTO: MARCUS MADDOX
