Over more than 30 years, virtuoso pianist and multi-instrumentalist A.J. Croce has built a career in the music business. He has released acclaimed albums and toured the world, making a name for himself. With his tour “Croce Play Croce,” he wanted to play homage to his father Jim Croce by playing his songs and sharing stories about him.
The tour will visit Fox Tucson Theatre Tuesday, Sept. 15, and the Mesa Arts Center Wednesday, Sept. 16.
This is part of the last leg of a five-year tour.
A.J. has been performing well-known songs and deeper cuts by Jim, including “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)” “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim,” “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” “Rapid Roy (The Stock Car Boy)” “Lover’s Cross” and “Time in a Bottle.”
The song “Time in a Bottle” was written for A.J., in fact.
On the tour, A.J. also performs original songs from throughout his own career.
“It’s definitely a tribute to my father’s musical legacy, but to do it right, I felt like I needed to put myself in it. It had to be about the two generations of American music, just how much we love what we do and draw from so many different influences and places. I think it makes the show a lot more dynamic,” A.J. said.
The show also includes music from artists who have inspired A.J. and Jim, such Bessie Smith, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Mississippi John Hurt.
A.J. said both he and Jim have been influenced by different artists and styles of music.
“I grew up with his record collection, which was my inspiration. That’s how I discovered Ray Charles. That’s how I discovered Fats Waller, Bessie Smith and all this old blues and rock ‘n’ roll. I think that his influences are really present in all of his music, but it’s definitely him. In his earlier recording with my mother in the ‘60s, you could really hear more of his influences worn on his sleeve…I can hear Jimmy Reed in a song like ‘You Don’t Mess Around with Jim.’ The lyrics are like a Leiber and Stoller song except he personalizes it….You hear Chuck Berry in ‘Rapid Roy,’ and you hear those influences of the R&B and the rock ‘n’ roll that he grew up with as a kid. Then, of course, there’s the folk music that made a huge impact on him in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. He was playing more of that Kingston Trio thing, that style of folk music, Woody Guthrie, the Weavers. By the time he recorded the albums that everyone knows, he’d really made it his own. Songs like ‘Operator,’ ‘Time in a Bottle’ and ‘I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song’ are really uniquely him,” A.J. said.
Jim put out five studio albums and a number of singles between 1966 and 1973. He died in 1973 in a plane crash during the height of his career.
Jim’s posthumous fame has lasted decades longer than his recording and touring career. Through albums released before and after his death, he has gained a following among different generations.
A.J. decided to do a tour highlighting his father’s music when he thought the time was right.
“I played for 30 years and toured for 30 years before I ever played my father’s music. Now, I think I’ve played it longer than he has… I never thought I would do it, and I’m so glad that I did… It just needed to be organic. I’d been asked since I was 16, offered record deals to do his stuff since I was a teenager. I just didn’t feel like there was integrity in that. I needed to have my own career. After a period of time, I had my own identity as an artist and felt confident in taking that on. It was the 50th anniversary of his albums. I wanted there to be a presence out there, and I felt like I could do a great job of it,” A.J. said.
Leading up to the tour, A.J. and his band gradually started adding some of Jim’s songs to their sets.
A.J. said for him, it was important to honor his father but bring his own interpretation of his music.
“I grew up playing improvisational music, playing jazz, blues, R&B and rock ‘n’ roll. That’s who I am as a player. If someone’s wanting to hear it exactly like the records, they should listen to the records. When I go and see a concert, I want to see someone really playing the songs. They feel alive, I think, when little things are different,” A.J. said. “Not very many people saw my father perform. I’m able to do it with a full group. He only played mostly as a duo and mostly opening for other artists until the last three months of his life. I’m able to perform this with a full band and singers… That being said, there are certain songs that are precious and need to be treated more like the originals. I’m not going to try and copy his voice. I’m not going to try and copy everything, but I’m going to play it pretty authentically.”
During performances, A.J. and his band take requests from audience members.
“Every night, I open the request line and let people shout out the songs they want to hear. A lot of times, it’s deeper cuts we haven’t played. Sometimes, it’s a hit we haven’t played… I have a skeleton of the way the set’s going to go, a beginning, a middle, and an end, but it changes based on the audience, based on my mood and then of course based on the requests… I started off playing in piano bars and jazz clubs, playing other people’s music, playing standards. Having your own interpretation of those standards was the job,” A.J. said.
A.J. said audiences have requested songs from a range of artists, including The Beatles, Mose Allison, Rod Stewart, the Faces and Elton John. Often, they want to hear music from artists A.J. has worked with, such as Ray Charles or Leon Russell, or whose songs he has covered.
They get audiences who are familiar with A.J.’s music and career as well as those who are more well-versed in his dad’s body of work.
“It’s really fun to be able to have audience that doesn’t know my music, and I get to introduce myself. That’s a joy for me. Obviously, there’s a lot of people that are coming for the nostalgia. … Once I walk on stage, and I begin to play, there’s something magical that happens. That nostalgia becomes not just a memory in the past, but it brings it forward to the present. It feels very real. It becomes three-dimensional,” A.J. said.
Some fans come out to see the show anywhere from seven to nine times, following them on multiple stops on their tour.
During performances, A.J. mostly plays guitar, but on certain songs, he gets on the piano. This is his way of bringing his own flavor and interpretation, especially on some of the deeper cuts.
During the show, videos play in the background. There are also eight cameras onstage showing the individual musicians playing their instruments.
Throughout the show, A.J. shares anecdotes about the songs and his family.
“It wouldn’t be a real tribute to my father’s legacy without it. He could play for two and a half hours and only play five or six songs, he had so much to say. We’re not going to do that, but the stories are a huge part of it,” A.J. said.
A.J. started playing the piano at a young age. He picked up the guitar in his 30s.
“I applied a lot of the knowledge that I had from playing piano since I could crawl…I love playing guitar. It’s really enjoyable. I had never played this much guitar in a show, not even close to it, before ‘Croce Plays Croce.’ There just wasn’t a need to. This music really requires having two guitars playing these lines that are iconic,” A.J. said.
A.J. has released 11 studio albums and had over 20 songs on Billboard’s Top 40 charts in different genres.
He has toured with Ray Charles, B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Lenny Kravitz and Earth, Wind & Fire.
For his 2017 album “Just Like Medicine,” he worked with legendary producer, songwriter and singer Dan Penn and with artists Vince Gill, Steve Cropper, David Hood and the McCrary Sisters. The album features A.J.’s recording of his father’s unreleased song “Name of the Game.”
His 2021 album “By Request” was inspired by nights with fellow musicians, during which he would sit at the piano and take requests. It features 12 carefully-chosen covers spanning different genres.
“That album was more about the memorable evenings that I would have. It was not necessarily my favorite song of a particular artist, but a great memory of the night that it was requested,” A.J. said.
A.J. Croce Presents “Croce Plays Croce”
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 15
WHERE: Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress Street, Tucson
COST: Tickets start at $45.82
INFO: foxtucson.com
