"I have no idea, really, what I'm going to do when I stop,” said Paul Simon during Wednesday night’s installment of Homeward Bound: The Farewell Tour at a nearly packed Bridgestone Arena. He’ll probably still write music once the tour’s done, he told the audience, as he’s always got a song or two bouncing around in his head. But outside of that, he’s not really sure. “I find it very liberating.”
Simon has a few months before he has to figure it out, though, as Homeward Bound still has slated stops in Sweden, the U.K., Orlando and Atlanta to get to, not to mention a couple nights at Madison Square Garden and elsewhere. He is, of course, part of an extremely exclusive (i.e., two-member) club: finely voiced 76-year-old guys named Paul who can strike out on an international tour of sports arenas and deliver two-hour sets of truly iconic, genre-defining songs. Simon isn’t like a lot of the other arena-touring legacy acts in his (general) age group. He doesn’t have, for instance, the age-defying stamina and knee-slides of Bruce Springsteen, or the intricate pyro and production of Roger Waters.
Thing is, Simon largely doesn’t need them. His answer to pyro is his self-referential, jovial and occasionally name-droppy anecdotes — like the one about how he wrote 1983’s “Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War” while flipping through a book at Joan Baez’s house. His knee-slides are his hit-riddled encores (he played two), and his answer to Waters’ massive Wall is an instrument-swapping band of world-class musicians and his own mellifluous pipes, which are still in working order. And that’s not to mention timelessly potent lyrics like those of "Obvious Child" and "Graceland," both of which were on Simon’s 27-song set list.
The crowd Wednesday night certainly wasn’t the most diverse we've ever seen. There were lots of kindly-looking grandpas in their summertime shorts and middle-aged couples. But it was a happy crowd — if a sit-down one — in a nearly full house. There were a few empty rows up in the nosebleeds here and there, but if you're asking if Paul Simon can still move lots of tickets on a Hump Day in Music City, the answer is yes. Simon opened with Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” after wandering onto the stage sans fanfare, and he’d go on to play a handful of other S&G numbers before the night was through — a reconstructed and reclaimed “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and the tour’s titular “Homeward Bound” among them.
It also wasn’t the most intimate show we’ve ever seen from Simon (that award goes to a 2014 charity event at a Belle Meade mansion we described as looking like “a secret level on GoldenEye”), nor was it technically our favorite (that’d be Ryman Simon 2016). But it was full of special if carefully crafted moments, like the extracurricular horn riffing on “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” and Simon’s small amount of footwork during the zydeco honk of “That Was Your Mother.” It was hard to make out just how many players there were onstage at any given time (12? 15?), but familiar longtime Simon sidemen like silver-maned guitarist Mark Stewart and Nashville-residing drummer Jim Oblon were visible amid the sea of bongos and rack toms and mic stands. A semicircle of string and wind players surrounded Simon during the aforementioned "Rene" as well as "Can't Run But," and a nice moment came when the singer dedicated “Spirit Voices” to his recently deceased guitarist and friend Vincent Nguini.
After wrapping their main set with percussion-solo-replete renditions of Graceland’s “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” and “You Can Call Me Al,” Simon and band issued two separate encores. The first was the nostalgia triple-shot of “Graceland,” “Still Crazy After All These Years” and “Late in the Evening.” The second featured four Simon & Garfunkel tunes alongside “Kodachrome,” a cover of The Everly Brothers' “Bye Bye Love” (with a surprise appearance from Don Everly!) and a cavalcade of old tour photos and lyric sheets flashing on the big screen behind him.
"We can argue about who wants to thank whom," said Simon at one point, after shouts of gratitude went up from the audience. It seems to be the case that artists like Simon and his fellow long-touring icons are road animals, perhaps not sure of how to function if they're not bringing the hits to the people. Well, whatever it is Simon decides to do with himself once this tour is through, at least he didn't leave anything to be desired on his last official shuffle through Music City.
Set List (per SetList.fm)
America
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
The Boy in the Bubble
Dazzling Blue
That Was Your Mother
Rewrite
Mother and Child Reunion
Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard
Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War
Can’t Run But
Bridge Over Troubled Water
Wristband
Spirit Voices
Obvious Child
Questions for the Angels
The Cool, Cool River
Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
You Can Call Me Al
Encore No. 1
Graceland
Still Crazy After All These Years
Late in the Evening
Encore No. 2
Homeward Bound
Kodachrome
The Boxer
Bye Bye Love (with Don Everly)
Old Friends (with Bookends Theme Reprise)
The Sound of Silence
In The Spin — the Scene's live review column — staffers and freelance contributors review concerts under a collective byline.
