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November 11, 2006
Friday night with The Hurdy Gurdy Man
The Klein in Bridgeport might not be the perfect venue for a ’60s folk singer like Donovan, but the veteran performer did his best to make his Friday night concert an intimate affair.
Playing an acoustic tour with Tom Stubbs on stand-up bass and Stewart Lawrence on drums, Donovan breezed through all his hits and some more obscure album tracks from his heyday during the two-hour show, which drew a nice crowd of about 300 to The Klein.
That number is reportedly about par for the course for Donovan’s present tour, but it looks kind of sad in a large concert hall. Still, it was about triple the size of “American Idol� champ Ruben Studdard’s crowd three nights earlier at The Klein.
As for the performance, Donovan played large chunks of the show alone, sitting cross-legged on the stage and strumming “Kelly,� his guitar which is, of course, Kelly green. He even orchestrated a sing-along on the song “Happiness Runs,� which you probably have heard in the recent ad campaign for Fruity Cheerios.
It’s funny, but there are probably generations who only know his music from TV commercials. The crowd Friday night was obviously not from these new generations and was most certainly around for Donovan’s first wave of success in the mid ’60s.
I wasn’t even born when Donovan had his initial string of chart successes, but I am a recent convert to his music. Growing up in the ’70s, AM radio still had his songs in rotation - “Mellow Yellow, “Sunshine Superman,� “Atlantis� and “Hurdy Gurdy Man,� to name a few. And I loved Richard Thompson’s take on Donovan’s “Season of the Witch,� which led me to think there might be more to this guy than just his flower child-folkie persona.
One listen to “Try for the Sun: The Journey of Donovan,� a 3-CD, 1-DVD box set released last year, showed me there was a lot more to Donovan than I could have imagined. There are still some songs which are way too cutesy for me - “Jennifer Juniper� and “Gunievere� pop immediately to mind – but on the whole I found myself listening to the discs over and over (and am listening now as I write this late Friday night, early Saturday morning).
I certainly wasn’t disappointed in the concert, but I would like to see Donovan one more time with a full band backing him up. It would be nice to hear a few of his more up-tempo numbers given an electric kick.
Posted by Sean on November 11, 2006 4:32 AM
