How to go
Who: Leon Redbone
When: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 16
Where: Kuss Auditorium
Tickets: $25 adults, $20 seniors, $15 students; visit pac.clark state.edu or call (937) 328-3874 to order.
SPRINGFIELD — You’ve probably heard this before — you’ve probably said this before.
“Saturday Night Live” just isn’t what it used to be.
Especially when it comes to the musical guests.
Leon Redbone, playing Kuss Auditorium on Oct. 16, made two appearances on the show’s legendary first season back in 1976, which suggests one of two things — that either pop music in 1976 was a lot more inclusive or that the drugs were just that good.
It’s now impossible to envision Redbone back on “SNL.”
His last appearance on the show was in 1983. The next week, Duran Duran was the musical guest.
He never returned, but it’s not like he’s waiting around for an invitation.
“Is it still on?” he deadpanned.
Of course, it’s entirely possible Redbone was being serious there — it’s entirely possible he’s never watched TV, never owned a TV, never heard of this thing called TV.
It’s entirely possible he was told “Saturday Night Live” was a radio show, and that he’d be rewarded with some shiny new 78 rpm records if he just showed up and sang.
There is, after all, a Depression going on, and a man’s lucky to just get work.
That is, in Leon’s world.
Redbone has made a career out of singing songs from the turn of the century.
The last one.
We’re talking ragtime, folk-jazz and the blues.
Can you say cult figure?
If it seemed kinda weird in the ’70s, it’s flat-out strange now — a Tin Pan Alley man in an iTunes world.
“Most people,” he confessed, “don’t have a frame of reference for it.”
And about that whole TV thing?
“The only channel I like,” he said, “is Turner Classic Films, for obvious reasons.”
In concert, it’s like an interdimensional portal opens up, and for 75 minutes, he’s able to safely peer out at 2009 from underneath his Panama hat and shades in 1929.
“What aspect of this music are they interested in that I’m interested in?” Redbone wondered. “If I’m in a noncynical frame of mind, I have to assume it’s because it’s good.”
Redbone — if that’s his real name — doesn’t seem to be the least bit concerned with having hits, getting on the radio, making small-talk with Ellen or Jay or generally being a musical celebrity in the 21st century.
He hates rock music.
“How loud do you have to hear something?” he said. “Volume is only good when it’s presented in its natural way.”
He hates pop music.
“It doesn’t do anything for me,” he said. “It’s hard to fathom sometimes. All I know is what I like and that’s what I concentrate on doing. Perhaps there are a few diehards who still see it my way.”
Thanks to the Web though, his concert crowds are “not any older now than they used to be,” he said.
In fact, a guy like Redbone would seem to be custom-fit for the Web — after all, where else are you going to hear music like this anymore?
But he likes it and he doesn’t like it.
“It’s all thrown into the same cement mixer,” he said. “It’s a diverse grab bag of consumerism, and I’m wondering if the sentimentality has disappeared along the way by creating a hoarding mentality.”
Unbelievably, Redbone was signed to Warner Bros. Records back when he first surfaced in 1975, and even had a Top 40 album (1977’s “Double Time”).
He still makes records (he has his own label) and plans to make another, he said, “sometime in the next hundred years.”
But if Leon Redbone never made a red cent, you get the feeling he’d probably be OK with that, so long as he goes to his grave knowing he never once disrespected the memories of Irving Berlin, Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton.
“All I ever was interested in was making the song live again,” he said. “Apparently, I was unsuccessful.”
Unsuccessful, he said, because people have always been more interested in him than the songs.
“I’m here to sing a song,” Redbone said, “not to tell you about my life. Somehow, today, the person presenting the song has to be amalgamated; melted and poured into the song as if they’re one and the same.
“It’s the song that lives, not the person.”
If anything, Redbone is as unpretentious as they come. His only publicity photo is black and white, and easily a decade old.
He’s one of a kind, but a lot of people have cashed in on his uniqueness — he popularized the “This Bud’s For You” jingle back in the day and did the theme to “Mr. Belvedere.”
That’s him singing “Baby, it’s Cold Outside” with Zooey Deschanel over the end credits of “Elf.”
Bob Dylan once told Rolling Stone that if he had a record label, Redbone would’ve been his first artist.
“The songs sing themselves,” Redbone insisted.
But at the same time, don’t call him retro.
“It’s the only lifestyle I have,” he said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.
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