By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent Media
The dilemma of Paul Simon came to the fore in one brief moment at Sunday night’s concert at the Toledo Zoo.
He’d just performed “Stranger to Stranger” the title track from his latest album. That was new, he said, now I’ll play something old. A female voice exclaimed from the audience: “Oh, yeah!”
Simon knows that most of those who packed the Zoo Amphitheatre were there to hear the hits, especially those dating back to his Simon and Garfunkel days. That was evident from the rapturous greeting those numbers received. But Simon has never stopped growing as a songwriter and musician in the almost half century since the duo broke up.
Each album – and that really starts with “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” the last Simon and Garfunkel studio effort that is a bridge into Simon’s solo career – has been a sonic experiment, first in the textures of the sounds of the American soul – rock, jazz, gospel, rockabilly – and later extending to South African, Brazil, and electronics.
He’s grown into the most sophisticated American pop songwriter, whose evocative lyrics float over complex, multi-rhythmic grooves.
Encapsulating such multidimensional body of work into a single concert is daunting. Simon and his wildly talented band of musical wizards managed it easily. Like his albums, the zoo show had a unified sound that captured the textures of Simon’s various musical phases.
He opened with a blast – “Boy in the Bubble” from 1986’s “Graceland.”
“A bomb in a baby carriage shattering a shop window,” he sang, a line sadly still current.
The “Graceland” album was the most referenced during the set. The best-selling album’s infectious cross rhythms provided consistent bursts of energy.
Simon negotiated the audience’s expectations. After the opener, he slipped into the familiar “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover,” with drummer Jim Oblon paying homage to, but not aping, Steve Gadd’s original funky, march cadence.
Given Simon’s taste in collaborators, the band was playing in the shadow of musicians who left indelible marks on his music. The presence of Bakithi Kumalo, the original bassist from “Graceland” was a boost. Too bad guitarist Vincent Nguini, also from that band, had to bow out because of illness leaving guitarist and baritone saxophonist Mark Stewart to fill the void.
Having served up something familiar, Simon slipped into something that should be more familiar “Dazzling Blue” from 2011’s “So Beautiful or So What.”
At 75 Simon voice has a certain graininess, he still sounds great, and his enunciation of his lyrics is clear, a plus for his less well known songs. Each word registered. Each phrase was well shaped. Each song a drama in its own right.
Then it was back to the “Graceland” album for the zydeco romp “That Was Your Mother,” before 2011’s “Rewrite.”
Having made it clear that he had more in his bag than what his fans may remember, he dropped the first Simon and Garfunkel number, the evocative ‘America,” The band brought the Saginaw to New Jersey road trip vividly to life. Here as elsewhere, Simon freshened up his own melody.
He stayed in more familiar territory with two hits from his first solo album from 1972, the reggae number “Mother and Child Reunion” and “Me and Julio,” before going into less familiar territory with two numbers from “Rhythm of the Saints,” the follow up to “Graceland,” that took him to the jungles of Brazil and took his groove sampling technique to new heights.
As he hit “Stranger to Stranger” I sensed the crowd growing just a bit restive. So it was time for a singalong on “Homeward Bound.”
Simon’s way of reworking old material was evident next as the band played an instrumental version of the Peruvian folk song “El Condor Pasa.” Flutes of various types blended with accordion by Joel Guzman. This served as an introduction for “Duncan,” from his first solo album but also on his latest in a live recording made on Prairie Home Companion.”
“Duncan” is a short story set to music with one of the great opening lines: “Couple in the next room bound to win a prize.” and it closes with Duncan “just thanking the Lord for my fingers, for my fingers.”
Now we’re in the home stretch. “My Little Town” was extended and mutated. Taking his cue from the line “twitching like a finger on the trigger of a gun,” C.J. Camerieri on trumpet introduced a long spacy jazz coda that evolved into an explosive solo by pianist Mick Rossi that shredded the harmonies and cracked apart the scales.
Simon then kicked the main part of the show to a close with a pair of “Graceland” classics. “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” rocked right into “Call Me Al,” with Kumalo stepping forward to play his dazzling bass fill.
Then the band departed. It was clear as the technicians refreshed the guitars on the stage that they would soon reappear, and they did not disappoint.
Simon returned with “Wristband,” the hit from the new album. It’s a novelty song with a knife twist at the end, and catchy enough to satisfy those hearing it for the first time. Then “Graceland” with drummer Jim Oblon rooting the rhythm in a rockabilly groove.
Simon rounded out this subset with “Still Crazy After All These Years.” Saxophonist Andy Snitzer blew a solo that both paid homage to the late Michael Brecker’s iconic improvisation, while passionately extending it.
After a brief exit Simon was back. He spoke about how he had been inspired by biologist E.O. Wilson’s book “Half Earth” and by Wilson’s belief that the earth could be a paradise in a century. That’s why, Simon said, he’s plowing all the profits from the summer tour into the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation.
All Simon’s skills as a musical storyteller came to the fore on “Questions For The Angels,” from “So Beautiful or So What.” It’s a wandering, meditative song, a melancholy study of contemporary America, a descendant of “America.”
And it served as the perfect lead in to “The Boxer,” again given a picaresque reading that highlighting the resources of the band.
And my anticipation at this point is that “The Boxer” would lead into the song most of us knew was coming, “The Sound of Silence.”
But Simon and friends detoured into some serious rocking with “One Man’s My Ceiling,” the sole representative of Simon’s sophomore solo effort after the breakup, “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon,” and “Late in the Evening” from “One Trick Pony.”
After which the band departed, and Simon citing “my own shocking age,” indulged in a sermonette. “Anger is addictive, and we’re becoming a nation of anger,” he said. Regardless of the source of the anger it must be guarded against. “Decision making is best done with a calm mind.”
Then alone on the stage, “a one-man band,” he delivered “The Sound of Silence,” the audience quietly singing along. The song was the softest exclamation point you’ll ever hear. Everyone knew the night was over, and started to exit to, in a flash of humor, Frank Sinatra belting out “Mrs. Robinson.”
It served as a reminder that Simon could have put together show of another two dozen of his songs that would have been just as satisfying. As long as he ended with “The Sound of Silence.”
