Karla Bonoff and Nina Gerber performing at the Kessler Theater (Michael Granberry, The Dallas Morning News)
At 62, it’s no secret that Karla Bonoff’s appeal lies in the hearts of Baby Boomers, who filled almost every seat for her show at the Kessler Theater in Oak Cliff on Sunday night. I, too, am 62, and while none of us need to be reminded of our age, she told a sweet, funny story that reminded us nonetheless.
When she signed a deal with Columbia Records to record her 1977 debut album, she got a telegram — yes, a telegram — from friend and colleague Jackson Browne. Now 66, Browne extended his congratulations in the fastest written form then available. Both Bonoff and Browne cut their musical teeth at the Troubadour, the legendary West Hollywood club that birthed the careers of the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt and many more.
Bonoff proceeded to sing a killer version of Browne’s “Something Fine,” which she recorded for the JB tribute album conceived by Dallas energy executive Kelcy Warren. And the aptly titled “Something Fine” may have been the high point of a show whose only criticism is that it could have lasted an hour longer, and no one would have minded. At least no one in the crowd, that is. (A friend of mine who also attended the show emailed me to say that Bonoff’s version of “Something Fine” was more than fine, it was “magnificent.”)
Like many, I suspect, I loved Bonoff’s music from the moment I first heard it, albeit on Linda Ronstadt’s 1976 album, Hasten Down the Wind, which contains three Bonoff classics. It’s sleek, soothing finely crafted pop music with attention paid to real feeling, or for that matter raw emotion. Hers are ballads that hold up perfectly almost 40 years later and address the joy and pain of our early relationships as well as any.
Bonoff walked onstage with her guitar player par excellence, Nina Gerber, and the two of them blessed the crowd for almost 90 minutes with music that qualifies as beautiful regardless of whose ears hear it. She opened with “I Can’t Hold On,” from her self-titled debut album. She sang “Home” from the same album, a song recorded by Bonnie Raitt and even San Francisco Giants third base coach Tim Flannery, as I let you know in this story.
She moved to the piano to sing “Like a Compass,” a song that emanates from her days with Bryndle, the band she shared with Wendy Waldman and two men no longer living, Andrew Gold and Kenny Edwards. She sang “Rose in the Garden” from her debut album; “New World,” the title song from her 1988 album; “Isn’t It Always Love” from her debut album; and “Trouble Again” from her 1979 album, Restless Nights. She sang “All the Way Gone,” a tribute to Edwards, who until his death traveled with Bonoff and Gerber. She sang “Please Be the One”; “All My Life,” which Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville recorded as a hit duet; the sad, sweet elegy “Goodbye, Friend”; and the one that drew perhaps the largest ovation of the night, “The Water Is Wide.”
When she finished, a woman in the crowd shouted, “So, is this intermission?” Bonoff smiled and said, “Whose intermission?” She returned for a two-song encore, singing “Tell Me Why,” which Wynonna Judd made a hit, and closed with “Someone to Lay Down Beside Me.” She then proceeded to the lobby, to sign every CD put in front of her by a Kessler crowd of adoring fans.
Here’s YouTube video of Bonoff performing in Japan: