Amidst the ‘60s-era American folk freakout which idolized cats like Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, John Denver and Johnny Cash, there’s always been a name that stands alone — Tom Paxton.
The singer/songwriter stands even somewhat behind the scenes, but is still just as legendary. Perhaps even more so.
Paxton is somewhat of a folk song revolutionary as he helped popularize the craft of penning one’s own words and music within a genre that, at that time, was still heavily laden with traditional tunes and cover songs.
(Ironically, most of those afore mentioned folks covered one or more of Paxton’s songs at some point in their respective careers.)
Anyhow, in that regard, the aging yet vivid Paxton is used to blazing trails.
He’ll be blazing yet another and likely setting a few fires of thought as he makes his first trip to Kitsap in the four decades he’s spent as a traveling troubadour, coming to Bainbridge Performing Arts for a 7 p.m. show Oct. 7. Tickets are $23 in advance/$25 at the door general and $10 for youth.
His reputation precedes him, as it should.
“Every folk singer I know has either sung a Tom Paxton song, is singing a Tom Paxton song or will soon sing a Tom Paxton song,” said fellow activist singer/songwriter Holly Near.
In a lyrical sense, Paxton doesn’t tread lightly. True to his activist roots which reach back to the legendary 1960s Greenwich Village scene, he speaks his mind in a social and political key exposing the absurdity, obsession and corruption in modern culture through broadly cast stories.
There are his ballads like “The Bravest” — an ode to the firefighters who gave their lives trying to rescue others on 9/11 — and “My Son John” — about a soldier who returns from war and can’t even begin to describe what he’s been through. Then there are his coined “shelf-life-songs” in which he comically lambasts kooky current events — like “Bobbitt” lampooning the 1990s John and Lorraine Bobbitt fiasco and “Tinky Winky” which pokes fun at Jerry Falwell’s defamation of the purple Teletubby.
“Every song is about something, every song has a message of some kind,” Paxton said, taking a break from recording to speak with What’s Up via cell phone from Nashville. “Most of the time the implication of my songs is on the human family … more so than jukebox music.”
Though he is a fan of the jukebox, Paxton’s musical style is more traditional, with the meat in his uber-relevant and long-lasting lyrics.
Each song tends to evoke a different emotion. Just on a travel through the free samples at his Web site — www.tompaxton.com — one can travel from outrage and political dissatisfaction to astronomical humor onto nostalgic sorrow and back around to the Falwell absurdity.
Then you pick up one of the more than 50 albums he has created in the past four decades and those emotions read almost like a musical book. And when you see him live, its more like a social commentary comedy hour with wonderful folk tunes.
Paxton has traveled the world more than once with tours in the United Kingdom, Scandinavian, America, Japan and beyond since the ‘60s. However, the 60-something-year-old said his tours have slowed with each birthday, and though he said he’ll never retire from the music, Oct. 7 at BPA may very well be the last chance for Kitsap to catch the legend.
