Tom Paxton: A Fond Farewell

THERE WAS NO SENSE OF MELANCHOLY in Tom Paxton’s performance on Oct. 19 as he entertained a gathering of the faithful at the Eighth Step in Schenectady. True, it was part of his final tour before a well-earned retirement (he’ll be 87 on Hallowe’en), but he was as engaging as ever, a dynamic presence with a catalog of classic songs to his credit. And he was supported by the duo of Don Henry and Jon Vezner, known as the DonJuans, who have been performing and songwriting partners with Paxton since 2017.

Jon Vezner, Tom Paxton, and Don Henry

During one of his tours with the Kingston Trio, I interviewed Paxton in his dressing room after a show and mentioned how envious I was of him with so many tour dates ahead. He looked at me as if I were nuts. “It’s an awful grind,” he said. “Nothing to be envious about.” That was about forty years ago. Paxton estimates that he’s been on the road for sixty. A grind it may, but I’ve shared a lot of pleasure with an audience that has attended concert after concert, and that knows all the words and isn’t afraid to use them.

Thus it was, even as he launched into his opening song, “I Can’t Help but Wonder,” that the audience was right there with him, murmuring the lyrics as if they were emerging like apparitions in a dream. Because that’s the feeling you get when invited to sing songs you’ve know all your life, songs that are poignant and meaningful or just plain fun. All of that. Even better, you’re singing them back to the fellow who wrote them. And who is not above being in thrall himself to fellow artists: he noted that the fact that Johnny Cash recorded “I Can’t Help but Wonder” on the sixth (and last) of his “American Recordings” series was a dream come true. (And Paxton did a spot-on impression of Cash’s voice while telling us about this.)

I’ve seen Paxton share the stage with a variety of performers. Some, like the Kingston Trio, perform in separate sets, coming together for a few songs at the end. Janis Ian was a full partner, with the duo sharing space on each other’s songs. Eric Weissberg was more or less and accompanist (although “Dueling Banjos” crept into the show). I missed his recent appearance here with John McCutcheon, but their recording “Together” presents them as songwriting and performing partners.

The DonJuans and Paxton have achieved a performing symbiosis befitting the talents of each. Henry and Vezner won a GRAMMY for their hit song “Where’ve You Been” (which they obligingly, and movingly, performed here), a song that also grabbed all of the other major song of the year honors, including the Academy of Country Music, CMA, and Nashville Songwriter’s Association International awards.

They opened with “On with the Show,” with Jon on guitar and Don on ukulele, a funny, far too self-effacing introduction – but it set the stage for the mixture of humor and emotional intensity that would follow (“We may not be the best / But the best in our price / Range”). The wistful “We Used to Ride Horses,” for which they switched to guitar (Don) and keyboard (Jon), is also the title track of their newest album, which I urge you to obtain.

Henry, Paxton, and Vezner at the Eighth Step
Photo by Mary Kozlowski

They introduced Paxton with the warning that they wouldn’t be performing any political songs, which I took to be joke – but it turned out to be true. Of course there are some hard-to-miss subtexts in the songs, but I missed the ones of the “One Million Lawyers” variety. However, that’s my only complaint. “If the Poor Don’t Matter,” written by the three of them, confronts the issue of poverty by way of Christian billionaires. “I don’t mind if God tells them what to do,” Paxton notes in his intro. “I mind if God tells them to tell me what to do.”

The mixture of old songs and new was very effective; among the latter were “Old Friends Last Forever,” recently written with Dan Boling, a current member of the Limelighters, and “My Time Is Mine,” written Vezner during a Zoom session. “Whose Garden Was This?,” intended merely for the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, unfortunately has never aged, and the boisterous “Bottle of Wine” closed the first half.

And, in a way, it opened the second, as Paxton explained that the song was influenced by the sound of Mississippi John Hurt, a performer who recorded a bunch of songs in 1928 and then seemed to disappear. Thanks to the inclusion of two of those songs in the Anthology of American Folk Music, released in 1952, Hurt was located and persuaded to come north and perform and record. Paxton wrote “Did You Hear John Hurt?” in tribute to Hurt’s appearances at the Gaslight in 1963, where Paxton also performed at that time.

Among the duo’s songs were “All the World Is Green” and “Dreams and Things,” sung by the two of them, the latter sporting the effective lines “Can’t untouch the darkest part / Can’t unsee the secret heart.” And “Everything Will Be Okay” became a reassuring sing-along written by Don and Jon and performed by all three (with us, of course, on the chorus).

When you talk about Paxton’s greatest hits, you are talking about songs that embody both of those words. Thus we neared the end of the set with “The Marvelous Toy,” “The Last Thing on My Mind,” and, of course, “Ramblin’ Boy.” The audience didn’t need to be asked to sing along – everybody knew all the words to all the verses. Tom and Don and Jon gave “Last Thing” an a cappella chorus that was very effective. It’s a poignant enough song without it, but something about just those voices in such lovely harmony makes it even more heartbreaking.

Two additional numbers served, I suspect, a dual purpose. “Rosie,” written by the three of them, was a lovely tribute to the woman of the title, whom I suspect was a stand-in for Midge, Tom’s devoted wife, who died a decade ago. And, with “Dream On Sweet Dreamer,” we were assured of the considerable talents of the DonJuans. When we see them next, Tom Paxton won’t be with them – but they are worthy successors to continue to bear the torch he’s passing.

Tom Paxton and the DonJuans
The Eight Step, Schenectady NY
19 October 2024

                                                                                                            

Here’s a bonus, the earliest of my Paxton reviews surviving in my archives. This takes us again to the venerable Eighth Step, for a concert in 1989.

The Unlikely Troubadour

I USED TO THINK Tom Paxton was an unlikely-looking troubadour. You expect a man who makes magic with songs to look somehow different. Paxton is the guy hunched over a cup of coffee beside you at a diner counter late at night. You hardly imagine him picking up a guitar to sing “The Last Thing On My Mind,” let alone taking credit for writing the song.

Seeing him Saturday night at the Eighth Step Coffeehouse, I changed my mind. The angry young fellow who haunted Greenwich Village joints in the early ‘60s is greyer and stockier, but what a legacy Paxton now brings with him! He started right off with “Ramblin’ Boy,” an early success, explaining that he didn’t want to disappoint those who enjoy hearing the old songs again.

“In Oklahoma, where I grew up,” he explained, “we had this saying: ‘You dance with who brung ya.’ This is who brung me here.”

And so we got “I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound” and “Bottle of Wine,” to name a couple of other old friends. But Paxton the balladeer has always had a puckish alter-ego who comments in caustic rhyme on things that annoy him.

“The Day We Lost the Americas Cup” is such a commentary. “My agent assured me that Albany is a big yachting town,” he said, and went on to demolish what ABC News termed the “sporting event of 1983.”

Because of the anticipated size of the crowd, we were moved upstairs from the coffeehouse proper to a large hall, and even given the lousy driving conditions it was pretty well filled. The crowd was there to listen, laugh and sing – and they sang even before being invited to do so.

But Paxton had a special part of the audience in mind for some of his songs. One of his earliest songs is “The Marvelous Toy,” which was a 1963 hit for the Chad Mitchell Trio, and he’s written a steady supply of kids’ songs ever since (you must know “My Dog’s Bigger than Your Dog”). Lately, however, he’s been writing, recording and releasing cassette tapes of children’s songs on his own label.

“At the ‘Quarium” and “How Many Cookies Can Santa Claus Eat” were directed at the many younger audience members, although the adults weren’t in the least bashful about drowning out the kids while singing along.

There’s nothing like spreading a little laughter to open up an audience. By the time Paxton sang “She Sits on the Table,” a gut-wrenching look at domestic violence, the folks were pretty vulnerable to its message and there were sniffles that weren’t a product of winter colds.

Is there a better messenger than a song? At the end of the concert, he invited us to experiment by jangling keys like the Czech protesters in Wenceslas Square. But the songs that framed it – “I’m Driving You Home,” a don’t-let-your-drunk-friends-drive message, and “Peace Will Come,” a straightforward prayer – have a personality that stays with you long into the night.

Politicians have long been a Paxton bane, and much of the second half examined the foibles of individuals (“The Ballad of Gary Hart,” Dan Quayle’s “This Young Soldier Stayed at Home,” “Sold a Hammer to the Pentagon”) and the lot of them as a whole (“We All Sound the Same”).

“Topical songs,” he explained, “are easy to write. They may not go echoing down the halls of eternity, but you can always write another one when some jerk does something weird. Which should only take a couple of weeks.”

He sang “Outward Bound” in memory of Lena Spencer and advised us, as always, to offer our support to organizations like the Eighth Step that provide a forum for troubadours – however unlikely-looking.

The next Eighth Step event is on Jan. 13 and features the New Tony Trischka Band.

– Schenectady Gazette, 18 December 1989