Marc Cohn at the Town Hall NYC : 2011 0108

Last night, Annie and I attended a show by Marc Cohn with Suzanna Vega at the Town Hall NYC.

Playlist

• Ghost Train
• Perfect Love
• The Calling (Charlie Christian’s Tune)
• Dance Back From the Grave
• 29 Ways
• Listening to Levon
• My Sanctuary
• Walking in Memphis
• Into the Mystic
• Only Living Boy in New York

We stayed for most of Suzanne Vega’s act.  I don’t really know Ms. Vega’s work so I didn’t capture an accurate playlist and I can’t really comment on her performance.  I was reminded that for me (and I’ll apologize to any Vega fans out there), I like her songs on occasion but couldn’t really listen to a whole album of them.

Marc Cohn’s portion of the show was everything I’d hoped for, though.  (It was a little short for him, but that’s the result of the double-billing.)  I was a bit taken aback by the realization that this month marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Marc Cohn, his debut.  He’s probably getting a little tired of reciting the story about Muriel at the Hollywood.  🙂  His band was excellent, including as always the amazing Shane Fontayne on guitar.  I found the playlist interesting, as there were some rarer bits (“My Santuary”, for example) and some missing favorites (such as my personal one, “Dig Down Deep”).  He played surprisingly few from what he jokingly calls his “Greatest Hits album, released first”.

He did two from Listening Booth: 1970.  While I like the album well enough, I am less excited to hear other people’s songs than Cohn’s.  But he put a really nice spin on “Into the Mystic”.

It’s been too long since I’d been to a Marc Cohn show — this past summer, it seemed like he would play a city only after I’d left it 🙂 — and it was a nice refresher.