Master musical storyteller returns to World Records
In conversation, John McCutcheon is blunt and engaging. His responses are thoughtful with rarely a word wasted, done so with a warm, friendly ease and a lively sense of humor. His music is equally so, performed with the kind of immediate intimacy as if he’s visiting with a friend he’s known for years.
On his latest album, “Together,” he’s managed to create that by doing just that. Released in October, the work is a collaboration with his friend and fellow folk music singer-songwriter Tom Paxton.
“The folk music community is a small community and we met back in the late ’80s,” McCutcheon said via phone interview from his home in Smoke Rise, Ga. “We were booked into a double bill in Boston, and we had certainly heard of one another, but we never met.”
“We did the gig and just enjoyed one another’s company; we found we had a lot in common, we both liked baseball, we both just love it when some idiot politician opens his or her mouth and just hands you a song.”
Even though Paxton had an equal hand in writing and performing on all 14 tracks on “Together,” McCutcheon will tour solo in support of it.
“Tom is 86 years old,” McCutcheon said. “He is less interested in touring than I am.”
He’ll be doing so with five decades worth of quality material, songs from 46 albums and elsewhere, and an array of musical instruments at the ready, including the dulcimer that McCutcheon performs masterfully. Local audiences will get a chance to experience that for themselves when he returns to World Records on Saturday as part of its seemingly eternal “No Stinkin’ Service Charge” concert series.
“I love World Records,” McCutcheon said. “I love Pat (Evans, World Records’ owner). I think I’ve said it before, if I lived in Bakersfield, Pat would be my best pal.” (McCutcheon did say that in an interview last year.)
“I don’t know what it’s like for the audience, but it’s a great place to play.”
When I spoke to him about “Together,” the topics turned to politics, most notably the sad, rancorous political hyper-polarization happening right now; the history and potential responsibility of social protest in folk music, his family, musical instruments, our famous national short-attention span and pretty much anything but the album we were supposed to be talking about. Instead, I fell victim to the very thing we were actually talking about.
After a while, McCutcheon, cognizant that we’d found ourselves in the wilderness of periphery, gently guided us and the conversation back on track. This wasn’t done so much out of a sense of pragmatic self-interest — I think — but more out of a sense of sudden self-awareness that one of us had to find our way back to shore.
McCutcheon gets that because he’s a storyteller and he fundamentally understands that stories can sometimes be tethers to understanding. The tales he tells are vivid, genuine and compelling, usually of characters found in transformatory moments. Moments that transition them — and the listener — to a greater understanding of our place in the world.
For a moment, there’s consideration and meaning, then life starts back up again.
“What music is able to do is take people out of their lives and maybe spend an empathetic three minutes inside of someone else’s story,” McCutcheon said. “That’s why I use stories so much.”
He’s done so since his fantastic 1977 debut, “The Wind That Shakes The Barley,” and through his Grammy Award-nominated series of children’s releases and songs including 2006’s “Christmas in the Trenches,” which documented the temporary Christmas cease-fire on the Western Front in 1914 during World War I.
The real power of the song isn’t just in the quiet humanity, nobility and tragedy of these soldiers from warring sides playing soccer and music together, trading photos, drinks, chocolates and cigarettes and singing Christmas carols. This particular “Silent Night” was just that for a fleeting moment, up until the temporary truce was over and the two sides went back to killing each other with a greater understanding of who was on the other side.
By the end, the song’s narrator, Francis Tolliver, sums it up, “That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and the lame/ And on each end of the rifle we’re the same.”
The real power in the song is in how it never talks down to the listener, regardless of their age. It embodies the very spirit McCutcheon internalized from his early days learning Woody Guthrie songs on a guitar from a songbook checked out from his local library: “Pay attention, tell the truth, remember who you’re writing for and don’t treat people like idiots.”
The various songs that make up “Together” range from the poignant to the bold, with its track order sequenced by design to be listened to in order.
“It’s the one thing I love about the job I have,” McCutcheon said. “Is that I get to take people on these little trips and sometimes, yeah, you say what you (expletive) feel like (the protest song) ‘Ukrainian Now’ or you try to disarm people with ‘Everything,’ because you can’t argue with that. That really is everything Jesus said about homosexuality.”
“Then there’s ‘The Invisible Man’ (about the working poor and destitute around us) or the story of this Jewish immigrant in the song ‘In America,’ or the two old lovers in ‘Together.’ Who’s writing the songs for people our age who have been in longterm relationships? It’s a different kind of companionship and love.”
That title track is indeed a lovely, intimate testament, quietly sung by Paxton with McCutcheon on the piano, to the persistence of love and promises kept. The track “Life Before You” plays like a particularly tender love song as well until the final few lines where, in a particularly clever twist, I realized that this love song isn’t who I thought it was for. I won’t spoil it, but it’s a good one.
The album even has another Christmas song, “Christmas in the Desert,’’ where the narrator comes across a scared and defeated young couple in the Arizona desert in need of help. It sounds familiar for a reason.
The album’s lightest moment though is the song “Same Old Crap,” written on a particularly uncreative day that ended up, as the song so succinctly put it, with “brand new crap.” The duo of Paxton and McCutcheon is a dynamic one that works very well together.
The last time McCutcheon performed in Bakersfield was around this same time last year. I couldn’t make the concert because I had a gig of my own that same night but managed to catch up to him after his set while he was still decompressing from his show.
What struck me though was the audience that was still there after the performance. They were almost in a giddy awe of what they’d had just seen.
“Did you see the show?” one woman asked me. “It was amazing!”
It’s fun to see folks genuinely illuminated like that after a musical performance because I’m of the firm mind that it’s not how well an act performs that dictates how good a show was, it’s how the audience reacts after.
For McCutcheon, the warm host and consummate, empathetic storyteller who helps people get to the middle with tales of transformation, transportation and wonder, the feeling is mutual.
“It’s just fun to be in Bakersfield, you know? It’s got such a great musical tradition there and I’m honored to be coming back.”
John McCutcheon, doors open at
6 p.m., show at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, World Records, 2815 F St. $40, available at 661325-1982; shopworldrecords.com.
CESAREO’S PICK
Darren Carter, doors open at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m. Saturday, The Well Comedy Club, 7401 White Lane, Suite 7. $20, $60 for VIP booth for two; thewellcomedyclub.com.
The Fresno-born/L.A.-based Carter has performed stand-up since the 1990s and has hit pretty much every podcast (his current one is called “Pocket Party”) as well as late-night guest/comedy special/ neverending touring milestone a stand-up comedian can reach. He’s also one of my personal favorite working comedians today.
Performing Saturday at The Well Comedy Club, the self-proclaimed “party starter” is fall-out-of-the-chair funny and his “I like my women like I like my ...” improv bits he does, where he asks the audience the question and the members of the audience yell out answers he responds to (example: “I like my women like I like my ... 401(k)!” “Showing interest.”), have racked up millions of views on social media for good reason. They’re the highlights of his sets.
If you’re a fan of comedians like Pablo Fransisco or Robin Williams, check him out. He might be a Los Angeles comedian but his vibe is straight-up Central Valley and expect him to banter with the audience with the confidence of a local because, well, he kinda is.
Buy your tickets early to avoid the upcharge at the door and get to The Well early to lock in a seat. The $60 VIP table for two is the best deal, but sit next to the stage at your own risk. You’ve been warned.
One last thing: The show is 18 and over, but viewer discretion is advised.