Aging Gracefully: Nick Lowe @ the Birchmere
How bad can it be to be Nick Lowe? That shock of fluffy white hair notwithstanding, the guy seems like he doesn’t know what stress is. The onetime Brinsley Schwartz pub-rocker, seminal Stiff Records producer, and punk pioneer releases albums at a glacial pace. He enjoys critical respectability coupled with the kind of low-level semi-fame that comes from being known more for your songwriting and production work than for your singing. In addition to manning the boards for Elvis Costello’s breathless first five albums and penning “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” -- which remains one of the most popular tunes in Costello's catalog -- he produced The Damned’s debut in album in 1977, and The Pretenders debut (with Chris Thomas) in 1980. He also had a minor stateside hit of his own in “Cruel to Be Kind” around the same time. Lowe's own late 70s albums Jesus of Cool and Labour of Lust are classics of the New Wave era, introducing listeners to the wry sensibility that Lowe retained even as his musical interests shifted to roots-rock in the 80s and country in the 90s. But for the vast majority of his four-decade career, he's been beloved by music geeks and -- with the exception of the occasional blip here and there -- largely unknown to the general public.
His current phase began with 1994’s The Impossible Bird, the first of four short and seriously soulful albums of pithy and insightful country-pop. When Johnny Cash covered one the songs from that record, “The Beast in Me” for his career-reviving, Grammy-winning 1994 American Recordings LP, it solidified perception of Lowe as a respected elder of songcraft (though he was only in his mid-40s at the time), a persona he acknowledges in the title of his new album, At My Age. (Bruce Springsteen is the same age – 58 – but he’s calling his new album Magic. Whatever you say, Boss.)
Lowe actually appears older, and not just because of those snowy locks and twinkly blue eyes. He may look like everybody’s Grandpa; in fact, it was only a couple of years ago that he became a father. At his age, indeed.
But this much is certain: When Lowe shows up at the Birchmere to play solo acoustic, as he did on Monday night, the audience goes nuts for him. The 20-song set was a cocktail of his late-70s semi-hits (“Cruel to Be Kind,” “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll”) and his late-period character studies, of which “The Beast in Me” which closed the show, is certainly the best and best-known -- though a song from the new record called “I Trained Her to Love Me” comes up close. In a recent Fresh Air appearance, Lowe told Terry Gross that invariably the song – written from the perspective of a vengeful misogynist, albeit one who retains some measure of self-insight – is met with at least one guttural cry of “Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” every time he plays it live. Indeed, that guy was in the house at the Birchmere Monday night.
Opening with “People Change,” the first of five new songs he’d perform, Lowe looked and sounded like the epitome of loose-limbed cool. You’d never guessed this was the opening night of his first tour in a couple of years, or that he’d spent the night before suffering in “the immigration hall at Dulles,” as he later lamented. Introducing “Indian Queens,” he held forth on one of the advantages of the acoustic singer-songwriter idiom: “In the folk tradition, I can blather on about what inspired me to write” each song, he said. “It’s all tosh. What it is, is it’s a chance for me to catch my breath!”
Actually, his singing sounded effortless, and 'tween-song patter was fairly minimal by Birchmere standards. It's not as if songs like “Lately I’ve Let Things Slide” or “All Men Are Liars” need a lot of decoding.
Opener Ron Sexsmith paid tribute to his host during his set, covering Lowe’s “Where’s My Everything.”
Our only complaint — and its a significant one — is that Lowe performed for only 70 minutes. For a guy with as deep a catalog as he’s got, and who tours infrequently, that’s pretty lame. But you need only look at the pace of Lowe's releases to see he's a quality-over-quantity guy. And God knows there are few enough of those around. (I'm looking at you, Ryan Adams.)
A recording of Nick Lowe's performance at the Birchmere is available for free download here.