STILL CRAZY: CELEBRATING THE SONGS OF PAUL SIMON
Where: Charlie White Theatre, 2243 Beacon Ave., Sidney
When: Sunday, Sept. 8, 7 p.m.
Tickets: $40 from
Note: The group will also perform Thursday at Courtenay’s Old Church Theatre (755 Harmston Ave.) and Friday at Parksville’s Knox United Church (345 Pym St.)
Over the span of a decade, Cumberland musician Doug Cox has helmed several tributes to iconic artists, including concerts honouring David Bowie, James Taylor, John Prine, and Carole King. For his latest, he zeroed in on one of the best songwriters of all-time.
Still Crazy: Celebrating the Songs of Paul Simon unites singer-guitarist Cox, a ​Juno Award nominee, with a number of established performers, including multi-instrumentalist Tom Landa and fiddler Kalissa Landa of Juno Award winners the Paperboys. Also on board is Juno Award-winning singer-keyboardist Helen Austin and guitarist Mick Sherlock, who represent the core quartet for Simon celebrations on Thursday at Courtenay’s Old Church Theatre, Friday at Parksville’s Knox United Church, and Sunday at the Sidney’s Mary Winspear Centre.
“I don’t want to call them tribute shows because it sounds like we’re trying to sound like the artists, or dress like them,” Cox said. “That’s not what we’re doing at all.”
The unit, with backing from the rhythm section of Robin Layne and Bennet Pullen, of Vancouver band Locarno, eschews impersonation for something closer to interpretation, Cox said. “It’s not a lookalike tribute.”
The first project of this kind for Cox was a tribute to The Beatles, who are one of his all-time favourite bands. But he realized quickly that was the wrong vehicle for his talents. “It’s the music that I love, and music that I thought would be really fun to perform. But these projects have to be music that isn’t being done to death. I would want to do CCR — there’s a few things you wouldn’t want to touch. Because it is a fair amount of work.”
In 2017, Cox and an esteemed group of collaborators unveiled Starman: A (Mostly) Acoustic Evening of David Bowie Songs. The celebration — one of only a few Bowie-specific ones at the time — was met with a huge response, eventually leading to a concert at the University of Victoria’s 1,200-seat Farquhar Auditorium. But in the months following Bowie’s death, the project eventually lost its momentum.
Celebrations of Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder and others followed, before Cox eventually set his sights on the vast catalogue of Simon, a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and 16-time Grammy Award winner. In addition to being one half of the immensely popular Simon and Garfunkel, he’s considered one of the top the songwriters in the history of contemporary music. Finding a way into the songs wasn’t impossible, according to Cox, given how familiar every member of the group was with his music. But it was interesting balancing the range of viewpoints.
“Tom and Kalissa, they are younger than me, so they love Graceland [Simon’s landmark 1986 album]. Helen is a little bit in the middle — she’s from England, and was more affected growing up by [Simon’s 1973 album] There Goes Rhymin’ Simon — while Mick’s tendencies are across-the-board. We all had different reference points to different parts of his career.”
That is what Cox enjoys about the project. For those sitting in the audience, the variety of approaches widens the artistic scope of the artist being celebrated. “If you only knew of Paul Simon from the Graceland days, you might not necessarily think of him as a brilliant acoustic guitar player, as you would in the earlier days.”
As musical director for the project, Cox was tasked with charting the course for each song, while giving each musician ample opportunities to put their own stamp on the proceedings. And while Cox is known for being a highly skilled guitarist, even he was surprised at the difficulty he encountered.
“The interesting thing with Paul Simon, it’s not easy music to play,” Cox said. “Working on his guitar parts was crazy. His first album [1965’s The Paul Simon Songbook] is one of the finest acoustic guitar albums I’ve ever heard. The guitar work on it is brilliant.”
Cox said only one song, Darling Lorraine, proved insurmountable (“It’s an amazing song,” Cox said, “but I tried to figure out a version that would work with an acoustic guitar leading it, and it just didn’t work.”) He tried to avoid easy choices, however. The life of the project lies in the band’s ability to communicate with the audience, even when a classic song is sung in a different key.
“They want to hear the essence of the song. We’re not getting too out there with anything, because the lyrics are so important and the music is so well thought out. It would be strange to take a song and completely mess with it. We show more respect for his songs. But we don’t try and copy his voice. We don’t try and do impressions. It’s more moving when a person interepting the music is allowed to do it in a way that is real and comes from them.”
