Using a standard six-string guitar, a steel guitar, and the beautiful and unusual harp guitar, Bennett presented an eclectic mix of traditional, patriotic, classical, and hymn tunes; ragtime, Beatles, Stephen Foster, film music (including his one singing number, "If I Only Had a Brain" from "The Wizard of Oz"); and nearly twenty of his own compositions. "Guitar players, watch carefully," he instructed. "At no time do the fingers of my left hand actually leave my left hand."
Guitarists in the audience, when asked what looked odd to them during a playing of "Linda," a song Bennett wrote to his wife, remarked on the fact that he was fingering on both sides of his capo. "It's not even legal in most states," he joked, speaking of the fact that he was using a shortened capo on the standard guitar to change the pitches of only five strings instead of all six. "The chord shapes don't work the same way."
To an audience member's "What is it?" Bennett described his second instrument as a National steel resonator guitar--"It came off the line in 1930, and many people wish it hadn't. It is in fact just an empty can." The steel guitar, he said, is a cousin of the dobro, which got its name from the Czech-born Dopyera Brothers who manufactured both. In Bennett's hands it is capable of anything from a hauntingly lovely version of "America the Beautiful" to the driving rhythms of his own "CEO," which he introduced by saying, "Enough pretty stuff, it's time to show just how obnoxious this instrument can be."
"How many haven't seen one of these?" he asked as he picked up the harp guitar. On finding that some of his hearers were unfamiliar with it, he explained that it was nothing more than a standard guitar with an extended sound chamber arching out of the top shoulder. "I've got bass notes here," he said, pointing out the six additional strings that resonate in sympathy with the higher-pitched strings, or can be plucked for an extra dimension of harmony; and concluded, "I never actually play anything on this--but it looks great!" The audience was relieved to find that he didn't really mean it, as he swung immediately into what he called "the tune everybody wishes they'd written"--"Bridge Over Troubled Waters."
Perhaps the quality that came through most clearly in Bennett's playing was joy of living, something that he admits to having lost temporarily after the events of September 2001 and a number of personal disappointments and sorrows that followed it. "My advice [in such circumstances] is to get a couple of kittens"--as he said, it was the antics of his own two kittens that reminded him of "how wonderful life is, how good it is to be alive." As for the song he wrote in their honor, "Alpine and Coco"--"They don't like it at all. But what do they know? They're only cats."
A standing ovation after the final number confirmed that Bennett had the unanimous approval of his audience. As for the secret of his appeal, it might lie in a phrase he used in introducing one of his compositions--"It's all about the attitude." Certainly his latest performance at RCC could be summed up in the one-word title of that same composition--"Flawless!"
Stephen Bennett at a previous concert at RCC
The first picture on this page belongs to Mr. Bennett and is used with permission. Thank you!