Reviews: Paul Simon's 'A Quiet Celebration' Tour and Mumford & Sons' 'Rushmere' Tour
Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
When Paul Simon announced his retirement a few years ago, I resigned myself to living with the fact that I would never see him play live. Sure, many performers (and quarterbacks) fake out a retirement and, whether or not they actually believed it themselves, make their way back to live performing sooner or later. But when I saw Paul show up on that terrible KayRod show on ESPN to talk Yankees and sing a little "Mrs. Robinson" just a few years later, well, let's just say I thought he picked a good time to hang it up.
But just like the rest, he couldn't stage away from the stage. I bought tickets to the Vienna, VA leg of his "Quiet Celebration Tour" as soon as they went on sale - I wasn't going to miss this one.
Even though I bought my ticket with genuine dollars, I suppose I still wasn't guaranteed to hear Paul Simon. Those of us sitting on the lawn at Wolf Trap's outdoor venue for the Friday night show were first treated to a whole lot of nothing. No sound coming from the speakers. Now, that's not Paul's fault per se; he stopped and started a few times, confused about what was going on, but he did ultimately choose to carry on before the problem had been fixed. The jokes wrote themselves. I heard someone say, "That's the sound of silence," while the lady next to me said, "Well, he did call it a quiet celebration." I was just glad he started with the new album and I wasn't missing much.
He starts the show playing the entirety of his 2023 record Seven Psalms, which would be many a songwriter's finest achievement, but ultimately lands as more of a postscript to Simon's greater discography. The highlight of that set, after we were honored with the gift of sound by Wolf Trap's engineers, was Edie Brickell, who joined her husband for a few songs. Her voice hasn't aged a day. She was the main topic of conversation among intermission chatter.
After a short break, the band returns for a set that Paul calls "Hits and Deep Cuts," and that's exactly what he delivers. "Homeward Bound" and "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" are joined by "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War" and "Rewrite." I'm fully aware that I missed the farewell tour, and that this show very much isn't that, but I couldn't believe the songs left off the list. This isn't a complaint, it's a compliment - what other musician, if they wrote it instead, could leave "Still Crazy After All These Years" off their setlist? Most songwriters would do terrible things to have written "Father and Daughter," maybe his seventeenth-best song, a tune he just ripped out for a cartoon.
His voice, as expected for an octogenarian, isn't the same as it once was. The show is, without a doubt, a quiet celebration of his catalog. But when he encouraged the crowd to sing "The Boxer," perhaps his finest tune, in the encore, he showed that his songs, some nearing 60 years old, aren't for looking back in the way that farewell tours are for looking back. They're for here and now and forever and for whoever is singing them. I'm happy to have seen Paul Simon sing them in what very well could be his actual final tour.
A few weeks later, I caught British folk band Mumford & Sons at Maryland's Merriweather Post Pavilion, a similar venue just up the road from Wolf Trap. I originally intended to write two different pieces on these two concerts, but when it dawned on me just how much this group owes to Simon and his music (and not just because their version of "The Boxer" appears on their best top-to-bottom record Babel), I thought the two reviews could work together as one.
The show starts with London-based indie rock group Good Neighbours, whose music you might've heard on TikTok. I enjoyed the set just fine, even if nobody bothered to tell lead singer Oli Fox that Maryland isn't pronounced Mary-land. A lot of their stuff reminds me of Ben Folds' song "Rockin' the Suburbs" if it was totally sincere.
Mumford & Sons, now a trio after the departure of banjo player Winston Marshall, kicked off their set with a few songs from their latest record, Rushmere, including the title track. Overall, it's a return to form. As the group continued putting out records, they got further and further from the folk songs for the pub crowd that made them famous, leaning more and more into a more amplified rock sound. That's all fine and well, and I enjoy a number of those songs too, but when lead singer Marcus Mumford says, "We didn't come here to fuck around," before the band launches into one of their earliest hits, the quite bluegrassy "Little Lion Man," the crowd's energy transformed. I wasn't the only one there to hear the early stuff, which I consider to be their finest work.
The rest of the show is an eclectic mix of tunes because they've made a variety of records over the years. New banjo player Matt Menefee received a warm welcome from the band and the crowd during "Awake My Soul," a song off their debut album, showing the band could still play the classics even with new members. "Lover of the Light," from their Grammy-winning Babel, with a big brass section on stage, sounds the most like '80s Paul Simon, like it could've come right off Graceland. And debuting a new, unreleased rock song "Icarus," with the lyrics displayed on screen to help ease the crowd in, the group was joined by Good Neighbours' singer Fox, returning to the stage dressed in coveralls like he does oil changes in Lansing.
Right when you feel like you've got them down, they'll change up the vibe. That's what they do on the albums, after all. They started the encore set on the B-stage with the three members sharing one microphone like they're cutting a new track at Sun Records. After a few of those (including "The Boxer"), they literally ran back to the main stage to rock out on four more songs. If you're there for one type of Mumford & Sons (I lean more toward "I Will Wait" than most anything off of Delta), you'll get your fair share. If you're there for all kinds of Mumford & Sons, you're in for a real sonic treat.
Promising a lot more albums on the way, there's bound to be even more shades of their folk rock country bluegrass jam band sound. One day, I'll go to the tour after the farewell tour and be bummed that I didn't hear "Awake My Soul."