Upcoming Events at City Winery NYC
Sun Jan 1, 8:00 PM - Sun Jan 1, 10:30 PM
City Winery NYC
155 Varick St, New York, NY 10013
Community: Greenwich Village
Description
When Lou Reed's friend Bill Bentley, now working as an A&R director for Vanguard Records, read Joseph Arthur's moving eulogy in American Songwriter magazine, he approached him to record an album of Lou Reed songs. "Bill told me, ‘Don't overthink it."
Event Details
Arthur set himself up in his Brooklyn studio last December and proceeded to cut twelve of his favorites—using only acoustic guitar and bass, piano and vocals. “The only way I know to give new life to something as rich with life as Lou’s songs and recordings is to go about them in a completely different way. No drums or electricity.”
By stripping these songs down to their essence, Arthur allows us to hear Reed’s music and especially his lyrics, with brand-new ears, from the well-known (“Walk on the Wild
Side,” “Heroin,” “Pale Blue Eyes,” “Satellite of Love” and the first song he attempted, “Coney Island Baby”) to the more obscure (Magic and Loss’ “Sword of Damocles,” Set the Twilight Reeling’s “NYC Man,” Lou Reed’s “Wild Child” and “Stephanie Says,” later reworked as Berlin’s “Caroline Says”). “I put my soul into this record,” says Arthur. “It was like getting to hang out with Lou again, being inside his head.” Indeed, Lou lets you listen to these songs as if you’ve never heard them before. “I only wish he was alive to have heard them,” says Arthur, who wrote in his remembrance, “I’m trying not to focus on the fact that I had him in my life; that I loved him, and he loved me, and not think about the lost opportunity to see him again. We can’t cross over and we can’t come back and those that go before us become one with the mystery of everything. Lou was always of that mystery.”
Doors open at 6pm. Show starts at 8pm.
By stripping these songs down to their essence, Arthur allows us to hear Reed’s music and especially his lyrics, with brand-new ears, from the well-known (“Walk on the Wild
Side,” “Heroin,” “Pale Blue Eyes,” “Satellite of Love” and the first song he attempted, “Coney Island Baby”) to the more obscure (Magic and Loss’ “Sword of Damocles,” Set the Twilight Reeling’s “NYC Man,” Lou Reed’s “Wild Child” and “Stephanie Says,” later reworked as Berlin’s “Caroline Says”). “I put my soul into this record,” says Arthur. “It was like getting to hang out with Lou again, being inside his head.” Indeed, Lou lets you listen to these songs as if you’ve never heard them before. “I only wish he was alive to have heard them,” says Arthur, who wrote in his remembrance, “I’m trying not to focus on the fact that I had him in my life; that I loved him, and he loved me, and not think about the lost opportunity to see him again. We can’t cross over and we can’t come back and those that go before us become one with the mystery of everything. Lou was always of that mystery.”
Doors open at 6pm. Show starts at 8pm.
