PHOTO: AL PEREIRA | A couple songs into his crackling set at The Birchmere, Marshall Crenshaw stated his purpose. “I’m still flogging the ’40 Years in Show Biz’ thing,” he said, though it’s been 43 years since his first single “Something’s Gonna Happen” and 42 since the self-titled debut album that became a classic. Freed from that round number, though, he traveled throughout his career, over nine different albums.
For the affable Crenshaw, 71, it became something of a parlor game, identifying each song with its year, defying what would seem to be the simplicity in his songs that made them so popular with driving, complex, interlocking rhythms from his talented band.
His guitarist Fernando Perdomo looked like he could play any kind of lead guitar, including metal, but was on point—and seemed to be having a ball—adding his leads to Crenshaw’s melodic tunes. Bassist Derrick Anderson was just as inventive in his approach, while drummer Mark Ortmann, once of The Bottle Rockets, pounded out his own rhythms.
Crenshaw is a decent guitarist himself and the four of them turned out wheels within wheels on highlights like the opening “Fantastic Planet of Love” to “Move Now.” He’d include a couple of things from albums out this century—”Live and Learn” and “Passing Through” from 2009’s Jaggedland.
But if he got too far off track, it was easy to reel fans in with the opening strains of “Whenever You’re on My Mind” early in the set, “Cynical Girl,” and “You’re My Favorite Waste of Time” and the set closing pairing of “Mary Anne.”
He paused before his breakthrough “Someday, Someway” to pay tribute to Bethesda-born rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon, who first recorded the song before he did, and seemed to reconsider some of his overlooked songs from “Our Town” and “Monday Morning Rock” from Field Day to “Calling Out for Love (at Crying Time)” from Mary Jean & 9 Others.
If he was really reflecting back on a four decade career, he said one of his biggest honors was portraying his hero Buddy Holly in the 1987 motion picture La Bamba, before reprising the song he did in it, “Crying, Waiting, Hoping.” Of his other covers, the loping “I’m Sorry (But So is Brenda Lee)” from Ben Vaughan still fit his wry style; Grant Hart’s “2541” retained its tunefulness.
As much as Crenshaw carries on the traditions of, say, Buddy Holly, he also seemed to pick up something from the time way back in 1978 when he had the John Lennon role in the musical Beatlemania. He still conjures that image with his tiny sunglasses and by chewing gum between songs.
When it was time to address the cloud of contemporary issues, he said he had replaced a more “end of the worldy” song from the set for the more hopeful (or at least bemused) “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream.” It’s a song not often played by anyone; its 11 verses not easy to navigate. But Crenshaw seemed to enjoy its turns, and he was accompanied near the end by the show opener James Mastro on harmonica.
As much as Crenshaw complained of being old, or the eldest on stage, there retained a youthfulness and zest to his material and his approach to it. Still, a couple of times when he had to switch guitar, it took so long he had a recording of some cheesy instrumental “guitar changing music” played while he did so.
He sounds like he has another decade or two ahead of him.
In addition to his brief harmonica helper during the Dylan song, Mastro opened the show with his own solo set. Familiar as a band guy—from The Bongos to the Health & Happiness Show to backing rockers from Ian Hunter to Alejandro Escovedo—it seemed odd to see him alone with an acoustic guitar.
But on the closing night of their nine-night swing he acquitted himself well with a short set of strong songs from earlier in his career, along with selections from his recent solo album Dawn of a New Error.
