KARLA BONOFF
ArtsCenter (Carrboro, NC)
February 13, 2010

By Peter Blackstock

"That was scary. I haven't played that song in about 25 years," Karla Bonoff confided to the crowd of a couple hundred after performing "Only A Fool". It was a surprising revelation, given that the song is one of the better-known tracks from her 1979 sophomore album Restless Nights. What prompted Bonoff to mothball it for a quarter-century is unclear, but let it be said that the rendition she delivered on this quiet winter's night proved the song was well worth being added back into her repertoire.

In a way, Bonoff's comment wasn't all that out-of-line with her own artistic profile in general. While she's not exactly a recluse, she's also far from a spotlight-seeker. After an auspicious introduction to audiences in the mid-'70s through songs of hers that were recorded by the likes of Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt, followed by the release of Bonoff's classic self-titled solo debut in 1977, she gradually withdrew from sight. Another record came in 1979, then 1982...then 1988......and then nothing, for two decades, until a live album that surfaced a couple of years ago. (In fairness, there was also the rekindling of Bryndle, an early-'70s partnership with Wendy Waldman, Kenny Edwards and Andrew Gold, which reunited for a couple of albums in 1995 and 2002.)

How often she actually tours these days, I'm not really sure, but I do know that despite having been a fan of her music ever since I heard that first album in my teenage years, she's one singer-songwriter I'd somehow never managed to see in concert. It seemed worth doing something about that, and her performance on this night indeed fully rewarded the effort.

I'd written a little something about Bonoff a couple years ago on an earlier iteration of the ND website (the passage is now posted HERE if you're interested) shortly after the Live album arrived at my doorstep in 2007. The record had been a nice reminder of my appreciation for Bonoff's songs and singing, and I found it intriguing that fully eight tracks from her first album were rendered on the live disc.

We got five of those songs on this night, with somewhat mixed results. "Home", the fourth song in her set (after two Bryndle numbers and "Trouble Again" from Restless Nights), was every bit as good as remembered; somehow I'd been unaware that Bonnie Raitt had recorded the tune back in the day, and so Bonoff's mention of this was a welcome invitation to track down the Raitt version over the weekend.

"Isn't It Always Love", delivered after Bonoff had switched from acoustic guitar to piano, didn't fare as well; somehow the sound wasn't right, and she seemed to know it, asking the soundman to tweak several things after the song was done.

"I Can't Hold On", a little later in the set, was just fine in terms of Bonoff's performance, but somehow seems incongruous with the artist's persona so many years later. It sounds like a twentysomething heartbreak song, and it's a very good one at that, but it strikes me as something that would be harder for its writer to relate to a couple of decades later.

I suppose the same might be said for "Falling Star", which followed "I Can't Hold On" in the set -- but it's just such a fabulous song that any such thoughts are completely transcended by the beauty of the melody and those high flights that Bonoff still reaches with her voice. I'm not sure how often this one has been covered, but it strikes me as the number in Bonoff's catalogue that's most worth being revisited by other artists.

Not surprisingly, the show concluded (before encores) with what's probably considered Bonoff's signature song, "Someone To Lay Down Beside Me". If it's not my personal favorite of everything she's written, it's nevertheless unmistakable as a truly great composition, from the dramatic, almost classical piano progression that sets the tone from the beginning to the way that major and minor keys push and pull against each other throughout the duration of the tune. No wonder it became one of Ronstadt's most recognizable numbers.

If I came to the show mainly for those early songs, it should be noted that several of her later ones compared quite favorably. "Goodbye My Friend" is probably about as fine a song anyone has ever written for a beloved pet, and its piano opening was second only to that of "Lay Down Beside Me". That was one of four tracks Bonoff pulled from her largely forgotten 1988 disc New World, and the quality of those tunes suggest the album probably never got the recognition it deserved.

Bonoff also did three songs from the Bryndle records, appropriately enough given that her Bryndle cohort Kenny Edwards was among her two accompanists for the evening (the other being Nina Gerber on electric guitar). Bonoff also allowed Edwards (who opened the show with a short solo acoustic set) to step out front in the middle of her set for a song called "On Your Way To Heaven" (from his new album Resurrection Road) that was well worth the accommodation she provided for it.