Various Artists - Homeward Bound: A Grammy Salute to the Songs of Paul Simon, Hollywood Pantages Theater, Los Angeles, CA, 4-6-2022

I've recently discovered a bunch of tribute concerts. I find these really interesting, but they seem to often slip through the cracks in terms of being shared bootlegs. So I'm going to try to make posting these a higher priority. Here's a Grammy-related tribute to Paul Simon from 2022. It took place just three days after the annual Grammy Awards ceremony that year, and in the same city, so many of the stars who attended that could attend this one as well.

It goes without saying that Simon is one of the greatest songwriters of all time, so he deserves a tribute like this. In fact, I've found a MusiCares tribute concert from 2001 and a Gershwin Prize tribute concert from 2007 both celebrating his songs that I plan on posting too. Like those, this one features many big stars playing his most beloved songs.

It also features Simon performing a couple of songs of his own at the end of the concert. This is especially significant because he was 80 years old at the time of this concert, and his voice was noticeably weakening with age. He announced a farewell tour in 2018, so this seemed like one of his last public performances. Since then, though, he decided to have one more tour in 2025, with about 20 concerts. Be that as it may, one can hear the change in his voice in this performance. Thankfully, he realized his limitations and had another singer tackle the vocally challenging song "American Tune" while he just played guitar on it.

The music here remains officially unreleased. However, it was broadcast on television, so there are video files of it. I took a high quality version, converted it to audio format, and broke it into mp3s. The sound quality is excellent. I kept most everything, except I cut out some talk from the unnamed female emcee every time there was a commercial break, which happened every few songs. Hopefully this now sounds seamless, without any hints of those commercial breaks.

Some of the banter between songs were little speeches by famous non-musicians, such as Woody Harrelson, Dustin Hoffman, and Oprah Winfrey. Famous rock star Elton John also only talked. In his case, his talk was a video broadcast, so he probably didn't sing as well because he wasn't there in person.

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long.

01 talk (emcee)
02 Kodachrome (Brad Paisley)
03 talk (Woody Harrelson)
04 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Jonas Brothers)
05 talk (Garth Brooks)
06 The Boxer (Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood)
07 talk (Elton John)
08 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
09 A Hazy Shade of Winter (Susanna Hoffs)
10 talk (Herbie Hancock)
11 talk (Sting)
12 America (Sting)
13 talk (Billy Porter)
14 Loves Me like a Rock (Billy Porter)
15 talk (Dustin Hoffman)
16 talk (Stevie Wonder)
17 Mrs. Robinson (Stevie Wonder with Sheila E. & the Jonas Brothers)
18 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
19 Something So Right (Bonnie Raitt & Brad Paisley)
20 talk (Stevie Wonder)
21 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Stevie Wonder & Ledisi)
22 talk (Sofia Carson)
23 Mother and Child Reunion (Jimmy Cliff & Shaggy)
24 Take Me to the Mardi Gras (Trombone Shorty & Irma Thomas)
25 talk (Eric Church)
26 Homeward Bound (Eric Church)
27 Slip Slidin' Away (Little Big Town)
28 talk (Folake Olowofoyeku)
29 Homeless (Take 6)
30 Under African Skies (Angelique Kidjo with Dave Matthews)
31 You Can Call Me Al (Dave Matthews with Angelique Kidjo)
32 talk (Oprah Winfrey)
33 Graceland (Paul Simon)
34 talk (Paul Simon)
35 American Tune (Rhiannon Giddens with Paul Simon)
36 The Sound of Silence (Paul Simon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5j4GUcC1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Vz5ALstXCYeahHB/file 

The cover shows Paul Simon about to receive a hug from Oprah Winfrey. It's from this exact concert.

Brad Paisley & Friends - An Acoustic Evening with Brad Paisley, BBC, London, Britain, 11-6-2014

Here's something out of left field compared to my usual stuff, especially for a BBC album. When it comes to TV entertainment, I enjoy stand-up comedy. The other day, I was looking through Netflix options and saw "Brad Paisley's Comedy Rodeo." It's a comedy special from 2017, with country star Paisley as the host, plus a handful of comedians doing short stand-up sets. I have to admit I pay virtually no attention to modern country music at all. I have only a vague idea of who the biggest stars are. I'd heard of Brad Paisley, but I couldn't name a single song he did. I'm sure there's a lot of good music there, but I haven't had time to sort the wheat from the chaff.

However, after watching that show, I decided several things. 1) Paisley obviously has musical talent. (He was on stage for much of the special, and played comedic parody versions of some of his songs.) 2) A problem I have with modern country music is that it's so formulaic, but he seems to push the envelope with songs about topics you don't usually hear in that genre. 3) I knew Paisley almost always plays with a band, and he's known for his lead guitar playing. But for this special, he just played solo acoustic guitar. If you've followed this blog, you'll have noticed I have a special fondness for songs done in the solo acoustic format.

So, based on all that, I wasn't intrigued enough to check out much of his usual studio albums, but I thought it would be interesting to hear him do a solo acoustic concert. After a search, I found one such concert that stood out from all the others in terms of sound quality, and it's this show here. After watching it on YouTube, I decided it's good enough to convert to mp3s and share with you. 

As I'd expected, Paisley does do well playing solo acoustic. Not only are the songs here pretty good, they cover all sorts of unusual topics. For instance, he's got a song that mocks reality show celebrity culture ("Celebrity"), a song about living a more interesting alternate life on the Internet ("Online"), a positive song about Barack Obama being the first black US president ("Welcome to the Future"), and more. 

It turns out that while the vast majority of the songs on Paisley's albums are written by him, they're almost always co-written with a few professional songwriters. For this special, he had three of those collaborators on stage with him - Chris Dubois, Kelley Lovelace & Lee Thomas Miller. Paisley did the vast majority of the singing, but the others would sing bits of the lead vocals here and there, and sing back-up. The four of them also talked a lot between songs, sharing the ideas and inspirations behind the songs. I found all that entertaining, even for someone like me who didn't know Paisley or his songs from a hole in the ground.

I still haven't checked out any of Paisley's studio albums. Maybe I will eventually, but from the little I've heard, they have the generic slick modern country production sound that I'm not a fan of. That said, I dig this concert and I'm glad to have it in my music collection. I hope you'll feel the same, even if you're like me and you're not into modern country music in general. 

(And by the way, if you are a fan of that genre and know of any artists you think rise above the usual and would appeal to someone like me, please let me know.)

This concert is 59 minutes long. I suspect it was edited down to fit for an hour-long BBC TV show.

01 Southern Comfort Zone (Brad Paisley & Friends)
02 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
03 Put a Little Mud on the Tires (Brad Paisley & Friends)
04 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
05 The World (Brad Paisley & Friends)
06 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
07 Celebrity (Brad Paisley & Friends)
08 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
09 Online (Brad Paisley & Friends)
10 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
11 Online [Reprise] (Brad Paisley & Friends)
12 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
13 I'm Still a Guy (Brad Paisley & Friends)
14 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
15 Letter to Me (Brad Paisley & Friends)
16 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
17 This Is Country Music (Brad Paisley & Friends)
18 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
19 Harvey Bodine (Brad Paisley & Friends)
20 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
21 Welcome to the Future (Brad Paisley & Friends)
22 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
23 Perfect Storm (Brad Paisley & Friends)
24 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
25 Alcohol (Brad Paisley & Friends)
26 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
27 The Mona Lisa (Brad Paisley & Friends)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15328125/BradPais_2014_AnAcoustcEvningwithLondnBrtain__11-6-2014_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is a screenshot I took from the YouTube video. By the way, the title of the BBC show was actually "An Evening with Brad Paisley," but I added the "acoustic" to make that aspect clear.