It takes a lot for us to dare venture outside the borders of the five boroughs and into Westchester towns like Tarrytown. But if any musician is worth a trip up north, it's certainly Randy Newman. Newman brought his acidic wit, self-deprecating humor, and froggy sadness to the historic Tarrytown Music Hall last night for an intimate, solo-piano 34-song performance. Entertaining a nearly sold out crowd filled mostly with retired, suburban hippies, Newman adroitly weaved his way through his back catalog, filled with vignettes of drunks, racists, egotistical world leaders, aging singers and sheepish women. As he put it, "It's called showmanship."
Newman is one of the great songwriters of the 20th century, but he has been misunderstood all along the way. He's been awarded two Academy Awards, three Emmys, five Grammy Awards, and the Governor's Award from the Recording Academy, but some older audiences confused his controversial, ironic story-songs for confessional singer-songwriter garbage. And people of more recent generations either know him as the guy who soundtracked the Pixar movies, or as a marble-mouthed one-off joke on Family Guy.
But Newman is a storyteller and showman in the classic sense: a surveyor of the foibles of man, be they domestic or political, recording the darkest of emotions with levity and humor, traveling the country with a trunkfull of melodic three-minute stories. During the show, he slipped in anecdotes about his 40+ years in showbiz, including one hilarious bit about Robert Goulet covering his Toy Story hit, "You've Got a Friend In Me," only to awkwardly throw in the word "baby" after every chorus line. Highlights of the show included the Karl Marx-baiting "The World Isn't Fair," the sex-crazed "You Can Leave Your Hat On," the rollicking "It's Money That I Love," and six songs from his masterpiece, Good Old Boys.
Newman performs again tonight at Town Hall, and you can buy tickets at their site, or try to grab a couple in person off the street. Below, you can see a video performance of one of his masterpieces, "Political Science," and the set list from last night:
Setlist:
1. It's Money That I Love
2. Mama Told Me Not To Come
3. Living Without You
4. Birmingham
5. You've Got a Friend In Me
6. Short People
7. Marie
8. The Girls In My Life (Pt. 1)
9. The World Isn't Fair
10. I Miss You
11. Great Nations of Europe
12. I'm Dead (But I Don't Know It)
13. Losing You
14. Political Scientist
Intermission
15. Laugh and Be Happy
16. Love Story
17. In Germany Before The War
18. Baltimore
19. Still The Same Girl
20. Red Bandana
21. You Can Leave Your Hat On
22. Rollin'
23. Dixie Flyer
24. Louisiana, 1927
25. Shame
26. Rednecks
27. Real Emotional Girl
28. Harps and Angels
29. I Love LA
30. A Wedding In Cherokee County
31. Feels Like Home
Encore
32. Sail Away
33. God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)
34. Last Night I Had A Dream
