John Gorka - Keeping Good Company At Whitaker

John Gorka - Keeping Good Company At Whitaker

by Benjy Eisen

When John Gorka went back into the studio for his latest album, he decided to shake things up a little. Called “the preeminent male singer-songwriter of the New Folk Movement” by Rolling Stone, Gorka has achieved a level of success — and comfort — in his career that’s afforded him certain luxuries and name recognition. Going into the studio for his ninth record, he didn’t want “certain luxuries” to turn into the “certain stagnation” that’s afflicted so many other once-successful singer-songwriters.

Speaking from his home office in Minneapolis, Gorka told MODE “I think maybe knowing what the process is going to be like, or thinking that you know what the process is going to be like, kind of ruins the adventure of it … I wanted to go into the studio and not know how it would turn out, and not know if it would succeed or fail and I wanted to do it with people who had a similar sense of adventure and whose opinion I liked.” These like-minded people turned out to be a considerable group of well-knowns in their own right: Ani DiFranco, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Patty Larkin, Lucy Kaplanski, and others.

The resulting album, The Company You Keep shows off a group of songs that reveal John Gorka in a much different place than when he first gained a reputation as king of the broken-hearted love song. These are songs of a family man, a folk troubadour who has been domesticated. This domestication has affected not only his subject matter, but his approach to live touring as well. Whereas he used to average as many as 150 shows a year, he’s now down to half that, going on four show mini-tours before returning to his home, where he’s father of two. On the road he’s “John Gorka.” At home, he’s just dad. And the company he keeps? “Mostly little kids these days,” he laughs.

“It’s a constant juggling act,” he admits, “but since there are fewer shows I really look forward to them. I love playing and performing so that’s not hard to do. It’s hard to leave home now, but I still love to play.”

And the shows are different now than they were when he was just starting out, living in the basement of Godfry Daniels, a coffeehouse in Bethlehem, PA, opening up for acts who were passing through. “Instead of trying to find an audience and get to know an audience, it’s like there’s this group of songs I have in common with the audience now,” he said. “In the kind of music I do, I have to be reaching new audiences all the time even to maintain the level I’m at, so that’s kind of a never-ending process. But it is different now in that I feel like the audience, for the most part, knows me and they’re not trying to get to know me.”

In making each night count, and in keeping with the album approach of seeking new adventure, Gorka walks on-stage knowing the first song he is going to play and that’s about it. He hasn’t written a setlist in years and he takes requests throughout the show: “Sometimes people will call out a song and it’s almost in the way that they call it out — it’s not that they’re the loudest voice, but they call it out and it sounds like they really need to hear that song. And sometimes when they call it out, the songs that people suggest are better than the songs that I was thinking about doing.”

Still, in picking out the songs one-by-one he tries to play what’s right for the particular show and not every song can make the cut. Then there are the songs people request that he can’t do simply because he can’t remember how they go. There was a guy in Seattle, he remembers, who was calling out the same song he had called out at a show before that. During the set break, Gorka tried to write down the lyrics but “I wasn’t able to pull it off” he says. “I just try to find what song is right to do next.”

It is an approach that reveals integrity as an artist and it is an integrity that dates back to when he was working as the M.C. at Godfry Daniels, seeing all these acts pass through who were selling records out of the backs of their cars. “They were doing exactly the type of music that they wanted to do and they didn’t have to compromise it. It was very inspiring to me that you didn’t have to play the game in order to play music for a living.”

So while Gorka is touring in support of the new album, when he plays the new songs live it isn’t out of some record-company conceived notion that it will push product. “I’ve just been enjoying doing a bunch of the new ones from the new record. They seem to get along well with the older songs. I don’t always know which ones are going to find a home out there and find a place in people’s lives, and it’s a concert so I try to take my cues from them. Maybe I can do a new song for more experienced audiences or older audiences that have liked my earlier records and get them to look at it in a new way if it didn’t catch their ear from listening to the record.”

When John Gorka brings his live show to the Whitaker Center on July 1, he’ll be playing a show that will be as friendly to new audiences as it will to the seasoned audiences that often fill the seats. “I try to be real, be a human, rather than being Mr. Showbiz with a canned show or a slick show. I just try to be present in the moment for that particular audience alone because that may be the only time that they ever see me. I have to make it special for that audience so that I’m not recreating a record or recreating another performance. I’m making the music in the moment for that audience alone.”

On July 1, “that audience alone” will be at Whitaker Center’s Sunoco Performance Theater where Gorka will share a bill with fellow folk luminary Jonatha Brooke. Tickets are still available and may be purchased by calling 214-ARTS.