Marc Cohn on His Latest Tour, His Career, and Returning to Annapolis

Singer/songwriter Marc Cohn hasn’t played in Annapolis for quite some time.

“I remember playing two shows a night at Rams Head [On Stage]. That place was kind of my home in that area for a while,” Cohn says.

This Sunday, though, he’ll be performing at a different venue when he plays for the first time at Maryland Hall.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he says. “I have a great band with me for the show. I’ll have another guitar player, Randall [Bramblett, who will do an opening set and then play keyboard for Cohn], a great percussionist, and myself—so it’s going to be a pretty full sound. I do songs from most, if not all, of my records.”

Yes, He Went to Memphis

Cohn’s set list will, of course, include songs from his 1991 eponymous Grammy-winning one—which was not only his first album, but also the one with his biggest hit, “Walking in Memphis.”

The question lots of folks still want answered is: Is the song truly autobiographical?

“Some of it was, and some of it wasn’t,” Cohn says with a laugh. “I did go to Graceland. I did see the Jungle Room. I did go to Al Green’s Church. I did meet a girl named Muriel. She did ask me if I was a Christian, but I didn’t say, ‘Ma’am, I am tonight!’ I made that up. So it was a little of both.”

Cohn also tries to mix it up when it comes to his set lists. “I try to find other songs that maybe I’ve ignored, try them out, and replace some of the ones that have been in the set for a long time. It’s constantly changing; it’s a fluid thing,” he explains.

“There’s a song of mine, which I think is one of my best–if not my best–called ‘The Things We’ve Handed Down.’ I wrote it right before my first child was born. I’m very proud of that song, and I’m very proud of my kids. I think of them when I sing it,” Cohn says.

Cohn has four children of his own from his first two marriages as well as two stepdaughters with his wife of nearly two years, Lisa Cohn.

Singing on Commercials and Demos

Although Cohn was in his early 30’s when his first album dropped, he says that he’s been lucky enough to work as a musician most of his life.

He was trying to land a record deal in Los Angeles, to no avail. In his early 20’s, he headed across the country to try again.

“A girl—which was often the case—is what brought me to New York. I followed her back to where she lived,” he says with a laugh.

While the relationship didn’t last, playing music did.

“In pretty short order, I started getting calls because of a demo that I made of me at the piano singing four or five of my songs. I hadn’t written ‘Memphis’ or any of those songs yet. But people wanted me to sing on demos or commercials,” Cohn says.

For a few years, a lot of what Cohn did was sing and play on commercials and demos. It was the time, he says, when the ad people wanted commercials to sound more like records and not “jingles.”

“Because I had a raspy voice, and Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seeger and great artists like that were popular, they wanted somebody that could approximate something like that. So that helped,” says Cohn. “But the best part for me was doing demos for some amazing writers. I did demos for Jimmy Webb and Leiber and Stoller [Jerry, the lyricist, and Mike the composer], where they were working on music and needed to get it out there. They used me to sing them.”

(Webb, known for hits such as “Up, Up, and Away” and Leiber and Stoller known for those such as “Jailhouse Rock” and for co-writing “Stand By Me” and “On Broadway” are all Grammy-winning artists.)

“No matter what, I was going to be an artist of some kind,” he says. “And [this] was incredibly helpful. It funded my ability to take time off and write more music.”

New Music 

“My audience is very patient. I mean, I haven’t had much new music for years. The fact that they keep coming back to hear, essentially, a lot of the same songs–I’m grateful for that,” admits Cohn. “That said, I do have a few songs I wrote during COVID and shortly after, with a great artist named Lori McKenna. So, I do have a couple of new songs, and I’ll probably play one or two of them at that show.”

Cohn will be making more trips to Nashville, where he met McKenna, to work with other songwriters there.

“It’s an interesting turn for me. I’m going to keep doing that for a while and see what happens,” he says. “And maybe not wait until I have an album’s worth, but just release things as they get written.”

Looking Back

When looking back over his career, Cohn says he would love to go back to Australia, where he played with Bonnie Raitt in 1992.

“We did a bunch of shows together, and then we opened up for Bob Dylan. That was a really memorable couple of months, and it was a beautiful tour,” Cohn says.

As his career has progressed, Cohn thinks his music has gotten deeper and richer, but the songs themselves haven’t changed as much as the production of them has. (He has primarily worked with his friend, producer John Leventhal, who besides being known as a multi-Grammy winner is also married to Rosanne Cash.)

Cohn used to meet fans after his shows to talk with them or sign CDs—which ceased for many during and after the pandemic. “I miss that dearly,” he says.

Whether that part ever comes back or not, Cohn will keep doing what he’s doing—traveling and entertaining audiences with his music.

“The road in music and the musicians I play with teach me something every day. I’ve learned how hard it is to be a musician—not an artist, per se, but a working musician, trying to find jobs and trying to contribute to something,” he says. “That’s not so easily done, and I have great admiration for the people that I play with, that I get to work with—even the people that do the sound and help the tour go smoothly. All of that is tough. It’s a difficult and wonderful life. And I guess I’ve learned to be more grateful for it all than I have ever been.”

Marc Cohn performs on Sunday, September 15, at Maryland Hall in Annapolis. For more information or for tickets, click here.