Jesus of cool And so it goes… Nick Lowe can still shake and pop (when he wants) By: David Sanderson Posted: 4:40 PM CDT Wednesday, Jun. 12, 2024

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This article was published 12/06/2024 (830 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a highly lauded tunesmith who has penned dozens of memorable songs over a decades-long recording career, Nick Lowe isn’t usually lost for words.

But when he is informed that nary a weekend goes by in this corner of the world when his 1985 smash I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock ’n’ Roll) doesn’t have people filing onto the dance floor at one wedding social or another, the most he can come up with is, “Well, I’ll be.”

He asks a reporter to explain the concept again when reached over the phone at his home in West London, a week ahead of an abbreviated Canadian tour that includes a June 15 stop at the Burton Cummings Theatre.

It’s called a social and it has become tradition to play a canned version of his old chestnut?

“Isn’t that the craziest?” he says.

What’s doubly hard to believe is that Saturday will mark the first time Lowe, 75, graces a Winnipeg stage.

He performed at the Winnipeg Folk Festival “a few years ago, when it was quite mosquito-y and humid” he recalls, gasping, “Oh my god, has it been that long?” when it’s mentioned said appearance was in 2002.

For whatever reason, though, he has never played the city proper. Not during his tenure as a member of legendary British pub-rock groups Brinsley Schwarz and Rockpile, nor as a solo artist, which he has largely been since the unveiling of his 1978 debut album Jesus of Cool, retitled Pure Pop for Now People in North America.

“My dear friend Ron (Sexsmith), whom I’m sharing the bill with this time around, has been on me for a number of years to come do some shows with him in Canada, and despite this being a brief (tour) with only, I believe, five cities, I am certainly looking forward to it,” Lowe says.

Saturday’s concert will see Lowe alone with his six-string. It was another old pal of his, Elvis Costello, who first coaxed him into doing acoustic shows, beginning in the early ’80s.

He was initially resistant.

“No, no, I need to have some drums,” came his reply. Looking back, he’s glad he heeded his chum’s advice.

“He said if I were to do this, by standing up in front of a crowd with just my guitar, it would really improve my songwriting, and he was 100 per cent right. You realize fairly quickly that a song has got to work and be impactful in order for you to put it across in such an intimate setting,” says Lowe, whose mournful The Beast in Me was covered by his former father-in-law, Johnny Cash, in 1994.

Lowe — whose most recent release was the four-song EP Lay It On Me (2020), and who has a new full-length album, Indoor Safari, due out in the fall — calls his current setlist career-spanning.

Sure, he’ll trot out classics from his punk pioneer days, such as Cruel to be Kind, his lone Top 40 Billboard hit, and (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding — a track that generated a hefty nest egg for the songwriter when it was covered by Curtis Stigers on the 45-million-selling The Bodyguard soundtrack in 1992 — but he will also sprinkle in perhaps lesser-known, countrified numbers from his ongoing second phase as a silver-haired troubadour.

He has delivered some of his best work in this, his late period, he contends. He made his mind up when he was in his 40s, “when my time as a pop star was in the rear-view mirror,” to reinvent himself, using the fact he was getting older to his advantage.

Sometimes he feels a bit like a craftsperson who can still turn out a thatched roof or stone wall, only songwriting is his time-honoured trade, he adds.

Lowe is pleased to report that his audiences, like his song selection, also tend to be multigenerational. By only doing a few concerts here and there, he has successfully avoided turning into what he calls a perennial on the oldies circuit.

“I’ve worked hard at trying to attract younger people to my shows, and by young I mean people in their late 20s and 30s, so I’m not just preaching to the old punk rockers from the ’70s. To have to behave like you did when you were in your 20s so that an audience can relive its youth through you? How awful would that be?” he says.

Besides a recording career, Lowe has also been a much-sought after producer, having worked with a who’s who of artists, including Costello, the Damned, the Pretenders and Graham Parker.

His expertise in that area is no longer in great demand, he says with a laugh, but that could change if his 19-year-old son Roy, a burgeoning musician, was to set foot in the studio in the near future.

“My son has just got into his first proper group and as I speak, they’re doing it old-school, doing one-nighters across Europe,” he says, chuckling again when asked how old Roy was when he realized his dad was a god-level musician.

“A couple of times we’d be out, going to the cinema or something, when somebody would tap me on the shoulder, but it wasn’t till a well-known musician he was very familiar with stopped me in the street to chat when Roy was like ‘How do you know him? What’s going on here?’”

“At the end of the day, it’s a very nice way to earn a living.”–Nick Lowe

Lowe, who expects to do a few tunes in tandem with Sexsmith on Saturday, hopes this won’t be the last time he passes through these parts.

“I still feel good, I feel I can still do it and I of course have people surrounding me who have firm instructions to nudge me in the back to say I should pack it in because I am now making an outright fool of myself,” he says, apologizing for background noise he attributes to living in “the shadow of the flight path into Heathrow.”

“All kidding aside, as long as I’m physically able and people still dig it, I’d be a mug not to. At the end of the day, it’s a very nice way to earn a living.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca