Enlow Recital Hall at Kean University will present “The Soul of Burt Bacharach,” Nov. 8.
I didn’t see this one coming. Mike Griot — a member of one of New Jersey’s best blues bands, Blues People, and a longtime pillar of the blues scene in New Jersey and beyond — has put together a show paying tribute to the complex pop songs of Burt Bacharach, and will premiere it at Enlow Recital Hall at Kean University in Hillside, Nov. 8.
He calls it “a bucket list item in my life.”
The bassist has put together a 16-piece orchestra — including string and horn sections, and harmonica player Rob Paparozzi — with Vivian Sessoms, Mike Davis and possibly one more vocalist to be announced later, handling the singing.
Bacharach died in 2023, at the age of 94. Working with Hal David and other lyricists, he composed the music for 52 Top 40 singles, including hits for Dionne Warwick (“Walk On By,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose”), B.J. Thomas (“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”), Jackie DeShannon (“What the World Needs Now Is Love”), The Carpenters (“Close to You”), Tom Jones (“What’s New Pussycat?”), Christopher Cross (“Arthur’s Theme”), Dionne Warwick & Friends (“That’s What Friends Are For”), and others.
I spoke to Griot last week.
Q: I was surprised, when I heard about this show, because I think of you as a blues guy. Can you tell me about your interest in Bacharach — how that developed and where you got the idea for the show?
A: Sure. Essentially, I’ve been hearing Bacharach since I was a kid. I came up originally as a classical cellist from the age of 9, till about age 15. But when I was a kid in Bloomfield, N.J., playing cello, I was also a radio freak, just like every other little kid. And back then, the radio was much more broadly programmed, so you could listen to any station and hear multi-genre music.
Q: Is this, like, the late ’60s, early ’70s?
A: Early ’70s. We’re talking about, around 1972, 1973. And I remember orchestral pop music speaking to me, because I played cello. I was doing a lot of orchestra stuff but I really kind of wondered whether it would be a better feeling if I could play on these records, playing cello. It didn’t work out because what I really wanted to do was be in a band and have girls kind of pay attention to me (laughs). So I taught myself how to play bass because I was already literate on cello, and that’s how I started playing bass. But that feeling never left me.
MIKE GRIOT
Q: Have you done anything like this before?
A: This actually is a bucket list item in my life. My mother always envisioned me being sort of the Quincy Jones type, the Rickey Minor type. So predictably, I’ve been a bandleader my entire life, and this is the biggest expression of something like that original thought of leading an orchestra, and doing the arrangements and the charts, and essentially envisioning the libretto. I’m totally comfortable as I navigate all of this, because it’s familiar territory. It’s just the biggest presentation I’ve ever done of this thing.
Q: When you say “libretto,” do you mean, like, how you introduce the songs?
A: No. “Libretto” meaning that there’s going to be a narrated storytelling element to the show. Dave Popkin from WBGO and I actually created a storyboard which takes the audience through Bacharach’s life and career while I sort of take the orchestra through its paces.
Q: And Dave will be kind of the narrator, or host?
A: Yes.
Q: So I assume you’ve got all the songs picked out.
A: Yeah. There’s 17 songs that we’re doing. And I’m mixing the arrangements between Bacharach’s recordings with the original artist and then covers other famous people did. For example, I’ll do the original (Dionne Warwick) version of “Walk On By,” but I’ll do the Isaac Hayes version of “Look of Love.”
Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach’s 1998 album “Painted From Memory” included “God Give Me Strength” and other songs.
Q: Can you give me a couple of other examples of songs you’re particularly excited to do?
A: Yeah. We’re doing “Close to You.” We’re doing “That’s What Friends Are For.” We’re doing a collaboration between Bacharach and Elvis Costello, which is a lot of people may not be familiar with, but it’s called “God Give Me Strength.” It’s probably my favorite song of the show. And a bunch of signature hits.
The problem with Bacharach is that there are so many hits that even doing 17 is just a portion of his catalog. So I had to really prioritize. I want it to be a big sing-along, and it’s going to be that, but I want to make sure that we hit all our marks, in a sense.
Q: So is this, like, a test run? Would you like to do this again, in other venues, or are you not really thinking about that at this point?
A: Actually, it’s more than a test run. I can’t say who, but the show has already been bought by another venue, and I haven’t even done the first one yet. But yeah, I’m definitely taking this on the road.
Q: That’s awesome because, you know, there are so many tribute shows these days, and a lot of them are very redundant because you’ve got, like, 10 different bands doing Fleetwood Mac and all the different bands doing The Beatles, and so on. As far as I know, no one’s done this kind of show before.
A: Yeah, it’s sort of surprising. But I’m really an audience guy. I really respect what audiences need and want and I think it’s the emotional component of Bacharach’s book that … I mean, it seems like a slam dunk to me. And it’s going to be like one long sing-along. So in a sense, I’ve already won because I know the emotional effect on the audience. They will literally be exhausted from singing and smiling and clapping by the time we get to the end of the show because they will have participated the entire way.
Burt Bacharach, in a 1974 publicity photo.
Q: I guess maybe there are two reasons why no one’s tried it before. One, it’s a show that … it’s got to be in a concert venue. It can’t be in a nightclub; it’s got to be in a certain kind of venue. And two, it’s challenging to put together a show with so many musicians. The finances get tricky, and the logistics.
A: Absolutely. For example, I just know from programming performing arts centers, which are now … probably 75 percent of their program is tribute stuff. I know for a fact that if you’re doing a 300-seat venue, and then you juxtapose that with a 2,000-seat venue … for my purposes, those are two different bands. So I have a nine-piece small ensemble version of this that I’ll do, as well as the full 16-piece orchestra version.
Enlow Recital Hall at Kean University in Union will present “The Soul of Burt Bacharach,” Nov. 8 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Visit keanstage.com.
(Note: I remembered, after doing the interview, that there was a tour paying tribute to Bacharach, featuring Todd Rundgren and others, earlier this year, though it featured a nine-piece band, not the larger kind of ensemble that Griot is putting together.)
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