It took two decades for A.J. Croce to come around to playing his dad’s music.
The son of folkie-crooner Jim Croce of “Operator” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” fame, the younger Croce was always set on becoming a professional musician, but he wasn’t setting out to be billed as “the son of Jim Croce.” So, he forged his own path, which included starting to play professionally at the ripe age of 12, kicking around in garage rock bands by the time he was 16, and playing for Cowboy Jack Clements by the time he was 17. He did all that without acknowledging or relying on the music of his father, who tragically died in a plane crash when A.J. was barely 2 years old.
A.J. Croce will return to Durango with a performance at the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College on Wednesday.
“For most of my career, certainly the first 20 of the last 32 years, I didn’t want to talk about him in interviews, I really wanted to create a distance for my own identity. Then it got to a place where I had had chart success, 15 or 16 top 40 singles, and I felt like I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. And behind the scenes I had been working on his publishing, his legacy and maintaining his catalog of songs and songwriting and recordings for many, many, years. And it was a behind the scenes kind of thing that I felt I could really contribute in a way to help keep the music alive,” A.J. Croce said. “So it wasn’t that I didn’t love his music and wasn’t proactive in trying to keep it alive, it was that I needed to have my own identity as an artist before I dove into this.”
If you go
WHAT: Croce Plays Croce with A.J. Croce.
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.
WHERE: Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College, 1000 Rim Drive.
Tickets: $26.10-$45, available online at www.durangoconcerts.com.
MORE INFORMATION: Call 247.7657 or visit www.durangoconcerts.com.
Billed as “Croce Plays Croce,” it’s a show that connects the dots between the original music A.J. Croce has been playing his entire career with the music his father wrote and recorded, along with the music from their personal record collections that influenced them both; they’re all linked through the music.
“It’s about the connections I have with my father’s music, with music that influenced us both. I play the hits my father wrote – you’re going to hear ‘Don’t Mess Around with Jim,’ ‘Operator,’ ‘Time in a Bottle,’ ‘Leroy Brown,’ and all of that stuff,” he said. “But also, some of the stories of how they came about, some the lesser-known songs that he wrote, but still the relatively popular tunes, top 10 singles and what not. And then 30 years of my music and the music that really connected us.”
Described by Croce as an “energetic” show, it’s a concert where he acknowledges his father’s music while digging into his own catalog, which is 10 albums of original music along with some influential covers. He’s also backed by a killer band, and even those familiar Jim Croce ballads are given a spin, while those connections Croce mentioned are explored. It’s a package of past and present from the elder and younger Croce.
“Everything’s connected, not just the connection with my father. I’m not trying to perform these songs exactly like they were recorded. I’m not an impersonator, but I interpret the songs and some of them we play very similar to the original arrangement, and some are a little bit different,” Croce said. “’Leroy Brown’ is hugely influenced by the R&B from the 1950s and early ’60s. It’s like stuff Jimmy Reed would have recorded. In hearing those connections, I think you get to hear the music in a new way.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
