Legendary singer/songwriter Steve Forbert will perform at Bay Theatre on Feb. 7.
The Grammy-nominated artist arrived in New York City from his Meridian, Mississippi in 1976 and slotted seamlessly into the “new folk” revival. He quickly won a major label deal with the Nemperor/CBS Records, where he released his heralded debut, Alive on Arrival. It was on his second album, Jackrabbit Slim, that yielded his career-defining hit, “Romeo’s Tune,” that hit #1 on the Billboard Pop Charts
“Like Warren Zevon, Gram Parsons, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Bruce Springsteen, Steve Forbert has left his unmistakable imprint on the landscape of American music,” says American Songwriter.
Steve Forbert is a true American musical treasure, a fact underscored by his newest album, Daylight Savings Time, on Blue Rose Music. Like all his albums of original songs, it’s suffused with what venerated rock journalist Robert Christgau discerned as his “omniverously observant” songwriting, marked by Steve’s gift for finding the deeper meaning and magic within the spectrum of everyday moments, as well as his abundant melodic and poetic enchantment.
As Forbert approaches the milestone of his 70th birthday, Daylight Savings Time contemplates and celebrates the proverbial ‘extra hour of daylight’ that comes with the time change. “Yeah to chirping crickets and to daylight savings time!” he sings on the album’s first single “Sound Existence,” “The best ain’t yet to come, but you could still get by just fine.”
References to the natural world permeate the album. “Birds land in a tree so symmetrically, “ he observes in the album’s opening track “Clouds Roll Past The Sky.” The meditative “One Lone Leaf” augurs the coming end of summer, while “Pour A Little Glitter On It, Baby” salutes the wonder of the blazing hues on the trees in the season that follows.
“Purple Toyota” bemoans how corporate culture has toned down the once more-colorful shades of vehicles on our roadways. A drive along the “Dixie Miles” – which recounts the route he would regularly travel to visit his parents while living in Nashville and raising his twin sons and daughter – notes how, “As far as I’m concerned now the sun’s still way up in a kind, blue sky.”
A songwriter’s songwriter, Forbert’s songs have been recorded by many, including Rosanne Cash, Keith Urban, Marty Stuart and Webb Wilder. In 2017, a tribute album was released with covers of his songs by twenty-one artists.
For ticket information, visit baytheatre.com.
