Pittsfield — Jackson Brown tribute band Running on Jackson will play at the Colonial Theatre on Friday, March 22, at 7:30 p.m.
Jackson Browne is all about songs. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him number 37 in its list of the “100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time.” In fact, he made his mark as a songwriter long before we heard his singing, which turned out to be sufficiently distinctive that he successfully covered material by other writers, like John David Souther, and still gets airplay for it. But he wrote songs for The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Tom Rush, Nico, Steve Noonan, Gregg Allman, Joan Baez, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, and The Byrds before releasing his own versions of them.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Elektra/Asylum record company wouldn’t exist if not for Jackson Browne, who stayed with the label for 30 years. Although he recorded his most commercially successful album entirely on tour, the seven-times platinum “Running on Empty” consisted only of new material. Besides the title track, the album contains some of his most popular songs, including “Rosie” and “The Load-Out/Stay.” It was this release, in 1977, that assured Jackson Browne a place in pop music history as one of the most iconic artists of his generation. Browne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004 by Bruce Springsteen, the same year he was named an honorary doctor of music by Occidental College in Los Angeles for “a remarkable musical career that has successfully combined an intensely personal artistry with a broader vision of social justice.”
Vocal performances are critical in a tribute show like this. Plenty of people can play these songs at a professional level on guitar or piano. But the vocals? That is a challenge for any tribute band (or the original artists, for that matter), especially if the people with sufficient knowledge and chops to pull it off are in their 50s, 60s, or even—gaaah!—their 70s, a time when most singers (including operatic voices) are showing unmistakable signs of age in their voices’ upper range (not to mention their abdomens’ lower range). For example, Roger Daltry doesn’t scream “yeah!” quite the way he used to, unless he is in a recording studio (which, of course, is where he was the first time he did it).
Singers who never sang prettily in the first place, like Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, don’t have this problem. They just keep sounding more and more like themselves as they embrace geezerdom. (This is true even of Joni Mitchell, who did sing prettily at one time, before cigarettes took her voice.)
It would be most unkind to point all of this out were the vocals in Running on Jackson subpar. But the fact is, the band’s lead singer could fool a lot of people into thinking Jackson Browne were singing. Compared to that one, preeminent requirement, everything else the band has to do is like falling down stairs.
Hear the Running on Jackson tribute show at the Colonial Theatre, 111 South Street, Pittsfield, on Friday, March 22, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets, $30, are available here or by calling (413) 997-4444.
