CONCERT PREVIEW
Elvis Costello. With Larkin Poe. 8 p.m. June 19. $45-$80. Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, 2800 Cobb Galleria Parkway, Atlanta. 1-800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com.
Elvis Costello’s catalog stretches back to the late 1970s, so no one would blame him if he played old hits like “Allison” or “Watching the Detectives” with a going-through-the-motions feel. But not only does Costello indulge his fans with both classics and newer songs, he finds a way to make the older songs feel new to him every time he plays them.
“Coming to them by surprise, or through another route, I think has proven to be the way for me,” Costello said in a recent interview. “It’s not always about totally reworking them so that they’re unrecognizable, because that doesn’t satisfy people’s desire to hear them somewhat like they first encountered them.”
Instead, Costello often chooses different playlists for each show right before each tour stop, picking songs based on an underlying theme, or the feeling he gets from a venue, or the mood he’s in that particular day.
“I have sort of a rough outline of about five different programs inside of which there are then half a dozen choices at key points in the show,” he said. “And then I might tear all of it up and just improvise. That’s the most certain way to arrive at a very well-known song without the usual route.”
So, Atlanta fans who see Costello on his Solo tour, which will bring him to Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre Thursday, likely will see a different show than he played the night before or will play the night after. It’s the first time since 1999 Costello is touring the South without a band, and the man-and-his-guitar intimacy allows him the space to be spontaneous and go where the night takes him.
It’s that same spirit of openness that makes Costello one of the most versatile collaborators in rock. He put out the 2013 album “Wise Up Ghost” with hip-hop group the Roots and 2006’s “The River in Reverse” with R&B artist Allen Toussaint. And Costello, T Bone Burnett, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, Mumford & Sons’ Marcus Mumford, Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Rhiannon Giddens and Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith recorded and wrote together on “Last on the River: The New Basement Tapes,” due later this year and featuring songs using newly discovered Bob Dylan lyrics.
“Mostly, you don’t decide you’re going to do it — the circumstances present themselves,” Costello said. “You can’t invite yourself round to Paul McCartney’s house to write songs, you have to be asked. Somebody has to say, “Hey, it’d be great if you wrote a song,” and that one song leads to a whole album.”
His offbeat partnerships are often serendipitous. He offered the example of Georgia duo Larkin Poe, opening for him during his Atlanta stop. Costello saw them perform at MerleFest in North Carolina years ago, where they “stole the show,” he said. That encounter led to the group opening up for him during shows in Canada and Europe. And, when a track needed some extra voices while recording “Basement Tapes,” Costello called upon the sisters — who happened to be mixing their album down the street — to lend theirs.
His vast network of musical friends might soon find themselves mentioned in Costello’s upcoming autobiography, though they needn’t worry about him mentioning drunken nights or embarrassing stories. Costello, as usual, is interested in getting at the music that fuels the stories.
“It’s not an everything-I-did kind of biography. I have no interest in that,” Costello said. “It’s much more about the way I hear and the way I’ve heard music. So many lines are drawn between things by experience. I just found that that’s a more unusual tale to tell. With the other stuff, you’re arguing with an account of yourself that already exists out there, so why bother?”
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