There’s a reason why A.J. Croce draws from so many styles of music: Along with being a gifted songwriter, pianist and guitarist (and the son of the late legend Jim Croce), A.J. is also a diehard music fan and record collector.
“I’ve been collecting since I was a kid,” he said this week. “Sometimes I’ll play DJ on the tour bus and people will turn me on to any number of things, and it’s all relevant to me.” When he lost his sight as a child (he regained it after six years), his record collection became a good friend. “When I was young and couldn’t see, I would listen to all the records but put the ones I really loved on the left side, because I was left handed. Ray Charles became my gateway drug. But there was music of my own generation I thought was wonderful, like Elvis Costello and Squeeze. All that became part of who I am as an artist, along with the rootsy Americana that I’m known for.”
Croce hits the Cabot in Beverly this Sunday behind a new album, “Heart of the Eternal,” which typically puts some serious thoughts on life and love into a rocking and uplifting setting. One of its deeper tracks, “Reunion” was written with John Oates, one of a few significant names (including Leon Russell and soul legend Dan Penn) that he’s written songs with.
“Every collaboration is different. With Leon, we could talk for hours about our favorite piano players, so it was informed by that music we both love. When I met John Oates he had just visited his dad, who was 100 years old, at a nursing home in Philadelphia, and his dad said he was ready for a reunion with the people he loved. John thought that would make a good gospel song, but he’d written it in 4/4 time. So I said, no, for it to be gospel you have to put it in 3/4, and once we had that vibe it all came together.”
When AJ last toured, he was featuring his father Jim’s music in a show called “Croce Plays Croce”— something he’d held off on doing for many years, until his discovery of a home rehearsal tape. Since AJ was only two when his father died, they’d never had the chance to bond over music.
“It was maybe 20 years ago that I found this recording he’d made, with him practicing these unusually deep cuts by artists that by today’s standards are pretty obscure — there was some Fats Waller, Pink Anderson, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. And song for song, everything on this tape were songs that I’d played in my set at one time or another, a few were. Even on my records. So in that moment I realized we had a deeper connection. So that was one step, the other was when I played some of his songs for what would have been his 70th birthday, the reaction it got was very powerful and emotional. But as much fun as that was, it wasn’t something I’d want to do as an artist unless there was something of mine in the set, or some of those songs we have in common. So it took time to get comfortable with playing the music, creating new arrangements and telling the stories behind the songs. It changed my life in a lot of ways, and his music will be part of my set going forward.”
But if you ask AJ his favorite Jim Croce songs, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” or “Time in a Bottle” aren’t the ones he’d name. “No, it was always the deeper cuts that I really went for — ‘Lovers Cross’ and ‘Box No. 10,’ I loved those since I was really young. I’m a B-side kind of guy, as you can probably tell.”
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