David ByrneEvery long-lived pop musician who achieves success as a young artist eventually confronts the legacy problem: How much of your back catalogue do you take with you when you hit the road to promote your new music?
David Byrne, who never actually spoke the name of the great little band he fronted back in the 1970s and ’80s during his gig at Wolf Trap Saturday night, has hit upon a more elegant solution than most. Last year, he and Roxy Music keyboardist turned professional egghead Brian Eno made Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, a sterling collection of modern country and gospel songs (that sound nothing like country or gospel songs), marking their first collaboration in 27 years. Byrne has thus devoted his current roadshow, which kicked off last fall, to the songs of Byrne and Eno.
This gives him a cohesive framework in which to present the new(ish) stuff, pieces from their 1981 sampling-before-it-had-a-name collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and yes, tracks from that classic trio of Talking Heads albums — More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, and Remain in Light that Eno produced between 1978 and 1980. In other words, the crowd gets to hear the old hits but Byrne doesn’t have to feel like a washed-up nostalgia act. It’s win-win, Baby!
