WALKING IN MEMPHIS
Cohn much more than one song
There is one compliment that always makes Marc Cohn wince.
“The worst thing you can say to me is ‘I love your song,’” says the singer-songwriter with a laugh, in a phone interview with Postmedia. “I love that they love it, but wait a minute, I’ve been doing this for 35 to 40 years and I have more than one song.”
That song, of course, is Walking in Memphis, the soulful, piano-based opener of Cohn’s 1991 selftitled debut. While it’s perhaps not fair, or even accurate, to call Cohn a one-hit-wonder — Silver Thunderbird and True Companion from the same album also charted — it is safe to say the autobiographical tune is by far his most beloved contribution to popular culture thus far.
As with many artists closely associated with one song, Cohn has gone through some ups and downs in his relationship with it. There was a period early on when Cohn would get a little tired of the walk.
“There’d be a radio drive-time interview in the morning, I’d have to play it then,” he says. “There would be some afternoon visit at a record company or another radio station and I’d have to play in then. Four hours later, there was the show and, of course, I had to play it then. That got to be too much, because it was telling the same narrative over and over in the same day. But, I have to say, when it comes to now just doing it once a night for a show, I’ve rarely had a night when I haven’t felt connected to what that song is about, what it means to me, what it’s given to me.”
Walking in Memphis chronicled Cohn’s near-religious experiences wandering Beale Street as a young man and finding himself overcome with spirituality while listening to the city’s gospel music. It helped turn Cohn, then 31, into an instant star. The song received huge airplay and the haunting black-andwhite video became inescapable on MTV and MuchMusic. But it was also a deeply personal statement, as were all of the tracks on his debut.
To celebrate the album’s 25th anniversary in 2016, Cohn embarked on a tour with The Blind Boys of Alabama that had him playing the album from start to finish. The two acts will again team up to play the Jack Singer Concert Hall on Feb. 1. While the concert will not be a formal revisiting of his self-titled debut, he will draw plenty of material from it.
“Luckily, I wrote songs that were about real things to me,” he says. “Walking in Memphis, like some other songs I’ve written, is ultimately about the transformational power of music, how music can heal and change you. I wrote a lot about my early days when my mom and dad both passed away when I was quite young. So I wrote a lot of stories from different angles about that kind of loss. I’ve always written relatively personal songs. If they weren’t about me, they resonated with me on some level. Luckily, because so many things
I wrote about were real and true and authentic, they hold up for me. I may have a different feeling singing them now, but I don’t feel disconnected at all.”
Another reason the 1991 album may have sounded so fully formed for a debut was that the songwriter had already spent years paying his dues behind the scenes in the music industry before pursuing his own career. He walked away from a stable gig as an in-demand session singer and player — he contributed to albums by Jim Lauderdale, Tracy Chapman and B.J. Thomas, among others — to find his own voice. The songs on his debut were mostly written when he was 25. He didn’t sign a record deal until four years later, and it took another three for the album to be released. All of which might suggest he should have been better prepared than most for his sudden fling with fame.
“One would have hoped,” Cohn says with a laugh. “But looking back now, in all honesty, I wouldn’t say I was all that well-prepared even at 31. Listen, I could have gotten myself in a whole mess of trouble if it had come 10 years earlier. I don’t know what would have happened then. But even at 31, my first child was born right when the first record came out and I went on tour right away. I was gone so much that when I walked in the door my son would cry because he didn’t know who I was. It’s always difficult to have a life that takes you away from the stability of your own home life.”
Cohn continued to pen personal songs and release albums. In 2005, he made headlines again, although for much darker reasons. While in Denver, he was shot in the head by a carjacker after a show. Miraculously, he was treated and quickly released but says the experience left him with post-traumatic stress disorder, which was exacerbated when, not long afterwards, he began seeing on television the ruin in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. As it had been when he was younger, writing became a coping mechanism.
“I was shot and within a few weeks Hurricane Katrina came and all of sudden I was writing a lot of songs,” he says. “Lots of those songs about loss and fate turned into a record of mine called Join the Parade. I don’t think that theme has really crept back in. But, then again, I haven’t had an album of new songs since that record.”
Join the Parade came out in 2007, but that doesn’t mean Cohn has been idle since then. He cowrote a number of songs on Stax legend William Bell’s 2016 Grammy-winning comeback album This is Where I Live. He helped his friend David Crosby with his 2016 record Lighthouse, co-writing the song Paint You a Picture. Cohn also co-wrote a number of songs for his tour mates, The Blind Boys of Alabama, for their 2017 release, Almost Home. One of those songs, Let My Mother Live, recently earned a Grammy nomination for Best American Roots Performance. Cohn says it will be just one of the collaborations with the Blind Boys he has planned for the Calgary show.
These days, he says he finds writing for other artists easier than writing for himself. Nevertheless, he hopes to have his own album out by the year’s end.
“Writing for all these different people and with these different people has started me back on the trail of ‘How do I write for myself again?’” Cohn says. “Luckily, I have three or four in mind.”
Marc Cohn and The Blind Boys of Alabama play the Jack Singer Concert Hall on Feb. 1 at 7:30 p.m.
Walking in Memphis is ultimately about the transformational power of music, how music can heal and change you.