Paul Simon performs in 2021. The singer-songwriter took the stage at Toronto’s Massey Hall on Tuesday for the first of three shows in the city as part of his A Quiet Celebration Tour.CAITLIN OCHS/Reuters
As Paul Simon walked on stage for his second set at Toronto’s Massey Hall on Tuesday, a man in the audience yelled, “Welcome to Canada.”
As it turned out, Simon had already planned to say something about that.
Wearing jeans, a ball cap and a purple jacket, he began strumming the 1968 Simon and Garfunkel song America before soon stopping.
“I wrote that song many years ago,” the 83-year-old singer-songwriter explained, in a voice much softer than it would have been in ‘68. He said America was about anger and division, and that today we have a similar situation, with millions of people (like the song’s young lovers on a Greyhound bus) looking for the “real” U.S.A.
“I’m happy to report that I’ve found it,” he said. “It’s here in Canada. You really are a beacon in the darkness at this point.”
So said the diminutive man in the spotlight.
It was not ingratiation. He and his gentle big band then performed Graceland, an Afro-rhythmic song less concerned with the Elvis Presley mansion (with its white pearly gates) than it is with healing. Paul Frederic Simon was going to a grace land − “Maybe I’ve a reason to believe, we all will be received” − and he was taking his audience of some 2,700 people with him on a night of hopes, dreams, story songs and melodic communion.
The New York native and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer is on what is being called A Quiet Celebration Tour, his first run of dates since his “farewell” tour in 2018. There are two more concerts at Massey Hall on Thursday and Friday, with three shows at Vancouver’s Orpheum in late July.
Because of a loss of hearing in his left ear, Simon wasn’t expected to tour again. But he released his elegant song cycle Seven Psalms in 2023, and showed up at the televised SNL 50th anniversary special earlier this year to sing Homeward Bound with pop star Sabrina Carpenter.
At Massey, he performed Seven Psalms in its entirety to open the concert. He wore a suit for this part of the show − this was serious, thoughtful, musically meticulous, lyrically mystical business. The 33-minute piece in seven movements is a product of Simon in seeker mode.
Tribal voices
Old and young
Celebrations
A history of families sung
The endless river flows
The Seven Psalms set was a pop-spiritual Americana symphony, with moments of harmonium, flute, strings, chimes and intricate percussion. There were two (mostly acoustic) guitarists, which permitted Simon to take his right hand off his own instrument here and there. He would wave it in a slight, gesturing way, as if to caress the lyrics coming out of his mouth.
His voice? Weakened, but in key. Some songs were half-spoken. He has earned that allowance.
For The Sacred Harp, his singer-songwriter wife Edie Brickell joined the ensemble. On the duet, Rhymin’ Simon kept the couplet about the Lord being a “puff of smoke” and “my personal joke” for himself.
The second set was populated with adult-contemporary arrangements of hits and what Simon called “deep tracks.” Titled Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War, that 1983 song was always going to be to be one of the latter. Simon told the story behind it before performing it, as he did with The Late Great Johnny Ace.
Johnny Ace, Simon said, was an R&B singer who died by a self-inflicted gunshot − Russian roulette gone wrong − in 1954. The song also references John Lennon and John F. Kennedy; photos of all three flashed above the stage.
Brickell came back for a whistling solo on Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard. An encore set included 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover and the Simon and Garfunkel classic The Boxer.
Simon was solo for the one-song second encore. If there are 50 ways to leave your lover, there was only one way for the troubadour to leave his audience.
“Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again…”
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