Live Listening: WAC brings distanced concerts back indoors

When Paul Thorn last performed at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville in the fall of 2018, he was riding the high of a new collaborative project that took him back to his Pentecostal roots. His thoroughly Southern, restless, rocking blues music took a back seat for a little while so Thorn could release the gospel album he'd always wanted to record.

Five-time Grammy Award-winning gospel icons the Blind Boys of Alabama joined Thorn on his tour to support "Don't Let the Devil Ride," and the album was praised both for its musicianship and its genre work.

"That chapter is behind me now, and I'm looking over my shoulder gladly at that. But this new record, it's really something I'm proud of," Thorn says, looking ahead.

He returns to the Walton Arts Center Dec. 3, and he's got a new batch of songs to try out on the audience that take Thorn back to a different part of his musical beginnings.

"It's unlike anything I've ever done; it's real stripped down, and it's not a whole lot of orchestration," he says of "It's Never Too Late To Call." "It's really built around me and acoustic guitar."

Luckily, Thorn says, thinking back on his time in the church, he's been standing up and singing in front of people his whole life. And now that a global pandemic has dictated that Thorn will be performing solo acoustic shows for the foreseeable future, he's thankful to have experience in that arena to fall back on.

Officially debuting next year, "It's Never Too Late To Call" was actually recorded in January. It's just by fortuitous happenstance that Thorn took that stripped-down approach to the new music even before the coronavirus utterly changed the music industry, because, he says, the good news is that he can perform all the new tunes on his own until he's able to travel with his band again.

"Sometimes people say God gives you songs. Well, maybe he does, but I think of it like this: God gives you life, and life gives you songs," Thorn muses on the album's title track. Thorn's sister was a night owl, he shares, and he recalls late nights calling her to talk after shows. The intimate song, released Nov. 13, is in tribute to her.

"I couldn't have written 'It's Never Too Late To Call' if that hadn't happened to my sister," he goes on. "That song, I believe is a good song because it came from something real, and I truly believe the listener, it's going to touch them. It came with a heavy price, though. My sister had to die for that song to exist. I wish she was still here but since she's not, I'm going to sing in her memory.

"What a great phrase, though," he adds, brightening. "'It's never too late to call.' If somebody tells you that, and they mean it, you've got something. Everybody that hears that song, they can make their own story that will fit with it. And that's why I believe in it so strongly."

Jazz with Emmet Cohen

Also coming live to the Walton Arts Center -- this time on Dec. 5 -- is jazz piano prodigy Emmet Cohen and his trio. And what an unlikely moment it is for them to be making their first visit to Arkansas. Yet, here we are, because the threesome -- like nearly every other musician in the world -- have been conscientious in their adaptability, flexibility and, of course, improvisation in order to continue to "bring the music to the people."

"We need to play," Cohen asserts. "That's what we do, that's how we express ourselves, that's how we meditate, that's how we come together in communion, that's how we find joy."

And so for 31 weeks, the trio's namesake, along with bassist Russell Hall and ebullient drummer Kyle Poole, have invited viewers into Cohen's home in New York City every Monday night for their streaming concert series Live From Emmet's Place. Their music, Cohen explains, has always centered around bringing people together, sparking joy, honoring the past, and bringing some sort of positivity and light into the world. He knows it's something others are hungry for as well, because the series has garnered millions of views in the last eight months, and hundreds have supported the band through the new exclusive access membership program on his website.

"I live on the same street that Duke Ellington and a lot of members of his band lived on, called Edgecombe Avenue. So there's a spiritual element to what we're doing in Harlem, as well," Cohen shares. The concerts, he muses, feel akin in a way to the rent parties of the Harlem Renaissance. Overlapping with Prohibition, the rent parties became the backbone of Harlem nightlife, particularly for the African-American community, by establishing a symbiotic relationship between the entertainers, the revelers and those just trying to scrape next month's rent together.

"That has been one way that we have been able to keep going and upgrade every aspect of the livestreams, and maybe take gigs that wouldn't normally pay enough and go do them to bring the music to people. It's been a cool form of crowdfunding and sourcing to be able to kind of bring our visions to life."

It's circumstances like this -- that only could have grown out of such a bizarre and difficult and painful year -- as well as the trio's recent European tour that show Cohen jazz truly does have the power to change the world, he says earnestly.

That's right -- recent trip. The Emmet Cohen Trio, through their agency Music Works International, had the chance to hop across the pond for three weeks of European performances in October. Though the borders were still closed to many, entities on both sides of the ocean were diligent in researching and accommodating every safety precaution, every bureaucratic requirement, every risky financial detail to make possible what was likely the first European tour for an American band since the lockdowns began in the spring.

"Since we're a family, we decided to take the risk together and be in it together, whatever happens," Cohen says of his bandmates. "And I said, 'You know, Dizzy Gillespie would try to go over there and bring the music to the people and heal the world and be an ambassador to this music, and that's what we have to do, too. No matter what my mother says,'" he adds cheekily.

"Everything's connected and seems to have purpose and lead to the next thing -- in my life and a lot of the people around me," Cohen reflects. "So I'm fortunate for that and grateful, and I try to give it back any way I can."