Veteran singer-songwriters Marc Cohn, 63, and Shawn Colvin, 67, put on a tandem clinic Friday night at the Sheldon, the ideal listening hall for a night of the duo’s songs and storytelling. Despite their well-traveled history, the two sexagenarians on stage were among the youngest people in the building. Indeed, the Sheldon’s Folk Series subscribers tend to be seasoned music listeners, and they proved it with rapt attention and cheers of recognition for song intros all night.
They had 14 such opportunities, as Cohn and Colvin performed an old-fashioned guitar pull, taking turns singing and assisting each other’s songs accompanied only by journeyman percussionist Joe Bonadio and providing backstories before each tune.
The pair bookended the show with covers with both singers trading verses and playing acoustic guitars, opening with a lovely version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Tougher Than the Rest.” The set then moved to Cohn’s “Perfect Love” as Colvin supplied a crafty thumb-slapping percussion on the guitar and sang the song’s hook between Cohn’s hushed verses. Colvin finished the song by singing un-mic-ed, one of those only-at-the-Sheldon moments of acoustic enchantment.
Colvin then took over for a five-song run of her tunes starting with “Trouble,” backed by Cohn’s electric piano. Cohn left the stage as Colvin performed a solo “Polaroids,” one of the night’s most exquisite moments, and a delightful rendition of “Ricochet in Time” that was punctuated by plucked high-E-string pops and Bonadio’s thigh-slapping hand percussion.
“Cry Like an Angel” was next, a setlist audible, with Colvin working a sliding-chord figure, followed by her big 1996 smash “Sunny Came Home,” noting that Steve Earle once dubbed it the “ultimate break-up song.” The crowd hummed appreciatively each time Colvin or Cohn dropped anecdotal names (Earle, Suzanne Vega, David Crosby) though some guy — the Windbag, let’s call him — sitting behind me was unaware in 2023 that audience members are not supposed to chime in with their own commentary.
For Colvin’s part, she remains a vocal marvel with her singular synthesis of tonal vapor and pristine clarity, and she has a remarkable alacrity for honoring her songs’ melodies while still experimenting, jazz-like, with gorgeous improvisational note placement.
Colvin’s storytelling was not always as fluid, but she won over the crowd by reminding them that her middle and high school years were spent in Carbondale, Illinois, including a stint at SIU. “I’m still waiting for my honorary degree,” she joked. (“It’s coming!” promised the Windbag unhelpfully.)
Cohn and Colvin covered plenty of topics with both their banter, including adventures in marriage, New York City, therapy, San Francisco (“Were you sitting by the dock of the bay?” asked the Windbag) and the songwriting process. In fact, the evening served as a nice songwriting symposium: Colvin, for instance, broke down the magic of epiphanous “free” songs — those that come to her in dreams.
Once Cohn returned, he held forth from the piano on “Silver Thunderbird,” featuring a new Colvin-sung intro, the David Crosby-dedicated “Old Soldier,” and, of course, “Walking in Memphis.” Cohn turned his songs into more uptempo affairs filled with repeat-after-me singalongs, growly soulman ad-libs and gospel gambols on the piano. For “Walking in Memphis,” he reworked the melody enough to avoid a maudlin reading though he was wise enough to let the audience take the climactic “Man, I am tonight” line.
Colvin returned to sing “That Don’t Worry Me Now” from 2006’s These Four Walls, an intro met with a smattering of applause. (“Oh, you’re the three who bought it!” howled the Windbag gallingly), and Cohn performed “Walk Through the World,” one of his best songs, bolstered by Bonadio's kick drum that, along with Cohn’s left hand on the keys, vibrated the venerated concert hall’s wooden seats.
A cover of Bob Dylan’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” was a crippler, highlighting Colvin’s stellar fingerpicking, after which she declared a final appreciation for St. Louis, recalling how during one childhood visit her father bailed out of one of the Arch’s elevators just before it started moving.
For an encore, the duo locked eyes and voices on Leonard Cohen’s “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye,” singing harmonies delicious enough to make you wish the evening featured more of those kinds of conjoined vocals. But one more familiar song, Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic,” sent the crowd home on a nostalgic note and left even the Windbag speechless.
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