Marc Cohn Dances Back

In the summer of 2005, Grammy Award winner Marc Cohn faced what no one should have to face: his own mortality. While on tour, he was shot in the head during a failed carjacking. Cohn walked out of the ER the next day and went back home to New York. As he recovered, he watched the awful devastation that happened in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit, and something extraordinary happened.

Cohn had been going through a very dry period, unable to write. For many writers, this usually only lasts a couple of months. For him, it dragged on for two years. Close friends good naturedly joked that he should have a lot to write about now, but still nothing came. It didn’t until his friend Michael Silverstone sent him an email.
Marc Cohn recalled that moment in a recent phone interview. “He wrote me: Maybe life was curious to see what you would do with the gift of being left alive.” Everything changed after that, and he was able to come to some kind of understanding about what he had experienced and what the people of New Orleans were experiencing. The result was a ten-song CD, Join the Parade, that lifts up life and sees the joy even when on the brink.

Marc Cohn has had a long career in music. “I started singing and playing guitar when I was about 8 or 9,” he said. “I think I was already writing songs by the time I was 11. I was captivating by music pretty quickly.”

But it wasn’t until he was a freshman in college that he had the courage to play his own music in public. A couple of years later, he was doing the weekly coffehouse/club circuit.

“I moved to LA for a few years and really supported myself by playing all of the gigs that everybody plays out there-steakhouses and clubs and bars. I was lucky enough to be able to get jobs in places where I could play a combination of other people’s music and my own,” he said.

But engaging audiences wasn’t what turned his crank early on. “I spent a lot more time writing than I did playing,” he remembered. “I wasn’t sure early on if playing was what interested me. I knew that writing did.

“I’ve sort of had an odd relationship with being an on-the-road musician. It’s a love/hate relationship. Right now, I’m in the deepest kind of love with it.

In the early part of my record career when I was promoting my first record, which I was fortunate enough to do well with, the touring was so relentless I grew to hate it. But I love it now. It’s probably my favorite part of what I do.”

Back in the 80s, he was desperately trying to find a record deal. “I was lucky enough to have gotten some work as a session singer and piano player so I would sing other songwriters’ demos or play on other artist’s records,” he said. “I was in a community of musicians, producers, and artists.

With some of those people, I formed a 12-piece blues band. It was called the Supreme Court. The last gig we ever played was one that we got hired for by Carly Simon, which was to play Carolyn Kennedy’s wedding. I quit that band because it just was a band that just did really funky, interesting covers, but there was no original music that we played.”

He wanted to write music that moved him like that of Neil Young, Van Morrison, and Joni Mitchell. One of the horn players in the band was a talent scout at Atlantic Records and had send Cohn’s demo to them. He was signed in 1989. Later on, Cohn moved to Decca, and today is independent.

“By the time I did sign with Atlantic, I knew pretty well who I was and what I kind of record I wanted to make. To Atlantic’s credit, they pretty much left me alone. I have no qualms about the music that I’ve put out there. It does represent what I wanted to do at the time. I never felt that I was an A&R man’s project.”

Today, touring has become a major part of Cohn’s plan to share his remarkable new album, especially with people who don’t know who he is. “I obviously want to play for the people who know what they are going to hear and have already been exposed to it. But the reason to go out is to play for the people who have no idea who you were until that night.”

When people come to hear Marc Cohn at the Fargo Theater on July 20, they will be surprised by the depth of the songs coming from this pop singer. His “Dance Back from the Grave” recognizes what he has and also what he sees in the people of New Orleans: resilience and hope. Marc Cohn encourages us all to join the dance.

If You Go

What: Marc Cohn
Where: Fargo Theatre
When: Sun, July 20, 8 p.m.
How Much: $29.50 and $35
Info: (701) 239-8385