Van Dyke Parks & Clare & the Reasons played the Bell House (pics)

October 5, 2010

DOWNLOAD: Clare & the Reasons w/ Van Dyke Parks – “He Needs Me” (Harry Nilsson cover) (MP3)

…remarkably, until now Parks had never toured.

“I’ve had some incredible recognition for a person who has always really treasured the blessings of anonymity. But this is the first tour,” Parks says on the phone from a tour stop in Grand Rapids, Mich. “Why now? Because I’m 67. ‘If not now, when?’ is the question I would ask. And ‘Why not?’ is the next one. Because it’s there!”

Opening for Parks [on the tour] is the Brooklyn chamber-pop band Clare and the Reasons, who lured the Los Angeles resident to the road. Clare is Clare Muldaur Manchon, daughter of folksinger Geoff Muldaur, whom Parks knew in the ’60s, and some of the Reasons’ string section will back Parks during his set.

Clare and the Reasons, according to Parks, are part of a new crop of “young moderns,” artists who have “no fear of trying to acknowledge that music can still have a street sensibility and appear in a parlor. That hyphenate of plain and fancy, that’s where I’ve found a lot of fieldwork in my life.”

Parks has several projects in the works, and the tour is a prelude. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Van Dyke Parks‘ rare tour with Clare and the Reasons, which passed through Pop Montreal and Philly, and is now over, brought him to The Bell House in Brooklyn on Saturday (10/2), More pictures from that show, and some videos, below…

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Clare & The Reasons