Three Rivers Arts Festival

Kris Kristofferson

17 May 2010 by Ross Scarano in Music

Anecdotes from Kris Kristofferson’s life speak volumes about his diverse talents. With Kristofferson, tiny moments have this way of unfolding into other tales from a life almost too packed with adventure and accomplishment to be real. For instance, he wrote “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” one of his most popular, achingly romantic numbers, sitting on top of an oil platform. Why was Kris Kristofferson sitting atop an oil platform? Because he worked as a commercial helicopter pilot for Petroleum Helicopters International during the late 60s. Kris Kristofferson can pilot a helicopter? Of course he can – he learned during his time in the Army, shortly after he completed his BPhil in English Literature at Oxford. Kris Kristofferson went to Oxford? (And you see how this can continue endlessly).

This chain of adventures only hints at Kristofferson’s most well known talents. Though he was a Rhodes scholar, a highly gifted rugby player, an Army Ranger, et cetera, most of us know him as a singer/songwriter and actor. In the 60s, he puttered around Nashville, working a variety of jobs and writing songs, hoping to find success as a musician. Here’s how Kris Kristofferson looked for success: He landed his helicopter on Johnny Cash’s front lawn and passed to him a number of demos Kristofferson had recorded, including a version of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” a song Cash would later cover. This meeting led to Cash introducing Kristofferson to the world at the Newport Folk Festival. By now, Kris Kristofferson had arrived.

He released his first solo album, Kristofferson, in 1970, but it barely made a mark. It took Janis Joplin, one of Kristofferson’s old flames, covering “Me and Bobby McGee” for his solo career to take off. Following Joplin’s success with the song, Kristofferson’s label reissued his debut album, changing the title to Me and Bobby McGee. This time, it sold.

1971 saw the release of The Silver Tongued Devil and I, still regarded as something of a definitive work by music scholars. The album cemented Kristofferson’s status as one of the most remarkable songwriters working in Nashville at the time. From 1972 on, he divided his time between music making and acting, starring in a number of films like A Star Is Born and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which he made alongside Barbara Streisand and Bob Dylan, respectively. Unsurprisingly, Kristofferson proved to be a talented actor, typified by his raw performance in A Star Is Born, for which he received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.

From the 70s to now, Kristofferson’s career has ebbed and flowed, marked by a number of marriages, time spent in not one but two country supergroups, inductions into the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and a recurring role in the Blade movie series, just to cover some of the highlights.

In 2009, Kristofferson released Closer to the Bone, an album he describes as being “about making sense of life at the end of this game.” A reflective work like this has become something of a staple in any long-lived musician’s career. Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon – they all recorded albums that fit that description. But few artists achieve the intimacy and honesty Kristofferson finds on Closer to the Bone. Whether he is paying tribute to lost friends, like on “Good Morning John,” a moving paean to Johnny Cash, or promising his children that he will always love them, as on “From Here to Forever,” Kristofferson never strays into the sentimental. He lives up to the record’s title, making Closer to the Bone–even if it doesn’t prove to be his last album–a perfect capstone to a long, storied career.

Kris Kristofferson is well aware of the effect his songs can have on a live audience. “God knows there’s better guitar players and singers [than me],” he will readily admit. But there is something in the “essence of the songs” that makes “direct communication with the audience.” Be apart of this communion on June 11 at the 2010 Three Rivers Arts Festival.

Kris Kristofferson
7:30pm, Friday, June 11
Dollar Bank Stage at Point State Park