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by Seth Rogovoy
NORTH ADAMS, Mass.
The first song Jeff Cannon played in his coffeehouse-style performance at "The NASC Cafe" in the Campus Center at North Adams State College on Tuesday night was a ballad that bemoaned the loss of old-fashioned values.
It was an apt choice to begin his set with, as Cannon's style harkens back to an earlier era, when poetry and sincerity were valued over irony and cynicism.
Cannon's songs are full of the sorts of images and metaphors most contemporary singer-songwriters avoid like the plague. In Cannon's music, rivers flow, leaves fall, a heart beats a rhythm, a rosebush loses petals in the rain. Cannon uses all of these natural occurences to suggest a sort of fatalism or inevitability in the ebb and flow of human relations.
"True," the title song of his debut CD, is Cannon's declaration of intent. "I burned the marching orders," sings Cannon, referring to his decision to quit his day job two years ago to commit himself to being a full-time musician.
That commitment at times has found Cannon entertaining commuters in Boston subway stations during rush hour and living out of his car in Cambridge for a few months last fall.
For Cannon, these old-fashioned, troubadour-type experiences are just fodder for songs. "Big World" was inspired by a late-night talk in a coffee shop with a schizophrenic who thought he was the messiah.
Cannon didn't arrive in the world of contemporary folk as a musical novice, however. A classically trained singer, he enjoyed stints in a rock band and as a commercial pop songwriter, and all those influences were readily apparent in his performance.
"Love Illusion" - like many of his tunes more akin to '70s-style soft-rock than what passes for contemporary folk music - was a showcase for his commanding voice: deep, resonant and able to leap two octaves in a single bound.
"Tarzan and Jane" was an upbeat, folk-rock tune that pictured the darker side of marriage, musically reminiscent of Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson."
Throughout Cannon's set in the Grove, the snack bar that unfortunately serves as the setting for this new, free coffeehouse series presenting the cream of the crop of up-and-coming Boston area singer-songwriters, an older couple were moved to dance along to the music.
While superficially incongruous - contemporary folk music is not known for its waltz-ability - this gesture fit perfectly with Cannon's sincere, old-fashioned sensibility.
(This article first appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Feb. 8, 1996. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1996. All rights reserved.)
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