Photos and review by ALYSON CAMUS
LOS ANGELES – Warren Zevon may have been dead for 22 years, but his music was fully alive at the United Theater in downtown Los Angeles.
A plethora of talented musicians paid homage to the famous singer-songwriter during a glorious three-hour tribute show organized by the Wild Honey Foundation. “The Songs of Warren Zevon” featured an all-star cast including Jackson Browne, Zevon’s longtime collaborator Jorge Calderón, Dwight Yoakam, Fountains of Wayne, Marshall Crenshaw, Shooter Jennings, Jordan Zevon (Warren’s son), and many others.
The Wild Honey Foundation, which has organized numerous tributes to rock & roll legends since 1994 while supporting autism research and musicians in need, collaborated with the Zevon family to celebrate Zevon’s legacy. It also partnered with two other organizations, with proceeds from the concert benefiting the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization and the Ed Asner Family Center.
Like many others, I was introduced to Warren Zevon through another artist covering one of his songs. But Zevon’s world of songwriting is vast, diverse, and extraordinarily rich. As a highly underrated songwriter, he deserves to be regarded as one of the greatest of his generation. That recognition will finally come this month, when Warren Zevon is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the “Musical Influence” category on November 8. “Finally!” as veteran rock writer Chris Morris, who hosted the event, put it.
So, this tribute show was perfect timing — the ideal occasion to celebrate just how influential Warren Zevon’s music was, because Warren Zevon was extremely influential: The Eagles played and sang on several tracks from his first Asylum album; Linda Ronstadt recorded four of his songs and even named an album, “Hasten Down the Wind,” after one of them; Neil Young played on Zevon’s records and joined him on stage; Bruce Springsteen co-wrote a song with him and often covered his work in concert; Bob Dylan performed a mini set of Zevon songs during his own shows and called him “the musician’s musician” and Jackson Browne produced his first two albums. Zevon’s final work, “The Wind” — recorded while he was dying of lung cancer at just 55 — featured many of his friends and admirers, including Browne, Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, Tom Petty, Don Henley, Dwight Yoakam, Joe Walsh, and Ry Cooder.
This night was a 3-hour marathon of music celebrating a gifted storyteller with a diverse musical and lyrical palette, whose raucous songs about love, loss, pain, violence, addiction, redemption, mortality, and the absurdity of the human condition are as moving as they are darkly funny. In these turbulent times, the relevance of his songs remains undeniable.
Chris Morris introduced each song and the many performers — a large ensemble of rotating musicians and vocalists who explored Zevon’s vast catalog throughout the night. He compared Zevon’s remarkable ability to chronicle Los Angeles’s dark tales to that of Raymond Chandler, John Fante, and Joan Didion.
The evening opened with Jordan Zevon, Warren’s son, who performed an upbeat “Johnny Strikes Up the Band.” At times, it was striking how much he sounded like his father, without any visible effort to imitate him. He later delivered the bleakly funny “Studebaker” with the same conviction and talent.
The night featured dozens of singers and backing musicians, and from start to finish, the show proved to be an emotional — yet always uplifting — tour de force, thanks to Zevon’s many friends, collaborators, and admirers. One thing became clear: it brilliantly demonstrated that Zevon’s range was limitless, and that his legacy was far more than a funny song about werewolves. But everyone there already knew that.
Although the night was headlined by longtime friend Jackson Browne — who didn’t close the show himself — it’s hard to pinpoint a single highlight from the three-hour concert, as it was filled with powerful moments. The duet between Inara George and Eleni Mandell on the colorful “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” sounded like a beautifully twisted murder ballad with the biggest chorus imaginable. Steve Stanley and Kristi Callan playfully harmonized on the early track “Follow Me,” while another oldie, “Outside Chance,” was performed by Dennis Diken, Scott McCaughey, and early-era Beach Boy David Marks.
Adam Weiner (of Low Cut Connie) called Warren Zevon “the piano fighter” and delivered a raucous — and deeply satisfying — rendition of “My Shit’s Fucked Up.” He was followed by Fountains of Wayne, who offered an irresistibly upbeat take on “Poor Poor Pitiful Me,” complete with wild violin solos.
Longtime collaborator and close friend Jorge Calderón had plenty of stories to share about the genesis of Zevon’s songs as he performed three numbers — “Veracruz,” “Mr. Bad Example,” and “Disorder in the House” — moving effortlessly from melancholia to full-on rock & roll. Along the way, he talked about Zevon’s infamous “couch of pain”: “the sofa that you sit on when you’re really struggling to write that third line, or the third line of the third verse.”
With plenty of conviction, Shooter Jennings covered “Excitable Boy,” backed by a saxophone that evoked the E Street Band, followed by a life-affirming “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.” Dwight Yoakam then delivered a beautifully Tex-Mex, strung-on-heroin rendition of “Carmelita” in his signature high baritone. Chris Stills (son of Stephen Stills) brought high-octane rock energy to the funky disco-dancefloor of “Nighttime in the Switching Yard.”
As Phil Cody put it, it was difficult to follow Billy Valentine’s smooth, gospel-like version of “Accidentally Like a Martyr” — he visibly transformed and stretched the heartbreaking song into something entirely new. But a hillbilly-stoner rendition of “Splendid Isolation,” with Foo Fighters’ Rami Jaffee on accordion, was everything we needed. Susan Cowsill had big shoes to fill by interpreting “Mohammed’s Radio,” famously recorded by Linda Ronstadt, but her luminous voice worked marvels.
Jackson Browne gave a moving performance, playing “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” and later a few more songs, including “Life’ll Kill Ya,” the title track of Zevon’s 2000 album. It was arguably the most precognitive song he ever wrote, which led him to say during his final appearance on David Letterman’s late-night show — just a month before his mesothelioma diagnosis —: “I might have made a tactical error of not going to a physician for 20 years.”
After Browne’s rendition of “Desperados Under the Eaves” and Jorge Calderon’s interpretation of “Keep Me in Your Heart,” the full cast returned to the stage for Zevon’s two most famous hits: “Werewolves of London” and “Lawyers, Guns and Money” — both crowd-pleasers.
The night was a compelling demonstration of Warren Zevon’s unique talent as a songwriter. As an original and terribly underappreciated artist, he effortlessly combined the unsettling and the comforting, the bright and the dark, through colorful narratives. He treated humor, horror, cynicism, and tenderness with the same brutal honesty. On Friday night, the songs of this underdog resonated through the crowd — songs that have long transcended their time to become universal, inspiring generations of songwriters.
Setlist
“Johnny Strikes Up the Band” by Jordan Zevon
“Join Me in LA” by All Day Sucker
“Dirty Life and Times” by Matt Cartsonis
“Reconsider Me” by John Wesley Harding (with Nelson Bragg)
“Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” by Inara George and Eleni Mandell
“Play It All Night Long” by Steve Wynn
“Mutineer” by Leslie Mendelson
“Follow Me” by Steve Stanley and Kristi Callan
“Outside Chance” by Dennis Diken (with Scott McCaughey and David Lee Marks)
“My Shit’s Fucked Up” by Adam Weiner (Low Cut Connie)
“Poor Poor Pitiful Me” by Fountains of Wayne
“Veracruz” by Jorge Calderon
“Mr. Bad Example” by Jorge Calderon
“Disorder in the House” Jorge Calderon
“Excitable Boy” by Shooter Jennings
“I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” by Shooter Jennings
“Carmelita” by Dwight Yoakam
“Don’t Let Us Get Sick” by Jackson Browne
“Nightime in the Switching Yard” by Chris Stills
“Studebaker” by Jordan Zevon
“Sentimental Hygiene” by Marshall Crenshaw
“Accidentally Like a Martyr” by Billy Valentine
“Splendid Isolation” by Phil Cody
“Mohammed’s Radio” by Susan Cowsill
“Tenderness on the Block” by Scott McCaughey
“Monkey Wash, Donkey Rinse” Zevon audio track
“Life’ll Kill Ya” by Jackson Browne
“Desperados Under the Eaves” Jackson Browne
“Keep Me in Your Heart” by Jorge Calderon
“Werewolves of London” by everyone
“Lawyers, Guns and Money” by everyone
