Steve Forbert’s “Over with You”

By Paul T. Mueller
—Steve Forbert has been around for a long time – can it really have been more than 34 years since Alive on Arrival? – and there’s some weariness showing on his latest album, Over With You. Most of the 10 songs deal with the difficulties of relationships – maintaining one (“Baby I Know,” “All I Ask of You”), losing one (“Over With You”), looking for a new one (“All I Need”), even fantasizing about restarting an old one (“That’d Be Alright”).

Forbert brings to this subject a lot of experience and a plaintive, wistful tone that’s well suited to his material. “Forever’s such an easy word to say or write on paper/All things end in time,” he sings in the title track, a gentle goodbye that transcends the pain of a breakup to wish a former partner happiness and peace of mind.

Forbert takes on a bigger theme in “Pollyanna,” which deals with the struggle to make it in tough economic times. “Your west side home they foreclosed on/is someone else’s dream come true today,” he sings, before concluding, “The world and how to work it/is a book you should have read.”

Forbert gets instrumental help from Ben Sollee on cello and bass, Jason Yates on keyboards, Michael Jerome on drums and Sheldon Gomberg on bass. Ben Harper contributes guitar on several songs, including a nice part on the bouncy “That’d Be Alright.”

Those who remember Steve Forbert mostly from his biggest hit, the breezy “Romeo’s Tune” from 1979, might find this rather somber collection hard to like. But he’s still an intelligent and perceptive writer, and his distinctive voice, grittier with the years, delivers his words convincingly.

(Steve Forbert will appear at the Americana Music Festival in Nashville on Sept. 13.)

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