We’ve seen Marc Cohn in concert a few times, but he’s never been better than last night at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
Actually it was a bit of a surprise that he was there at all. The night before, he had cancelled a show in nearby Franklin, TN.
Cohn apologized to anyone who had tickets to that show, and said that nothing gets you back on your feet more quickly than opening for Bonnie Raitt at the Ryman.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” he said.
His set was brief, but compelling. He said he set out one day years ago to explore new places as a cure for writer’s block and found his way to Memphis. That in turn inspired his biggest hit, “Walking in Memphis.”
Cohn laughed and said if he had dropped by Music City first, it could just as easily been “Walking in Nashville,” with Music Row supplanting Beale Street.
The evening’s highlight was “Listening to Levon,” his tribute to the late Levon Helm, which he recorded in 2007 on Join the Parade.
The only disappointment was that Cohn didn’t play anything from his outstanding 2010 album Listening Booth: 1970, a collection of covers from that year. Still, it’s hard to complain when Cohn packed so much great material in a 30-minute set, and closed with “Silver Thunderbird,” a song that should have been every bit as big as “Memphis.”