Tribute band recreates timeless music of Jim Croce

If you remember the 1970s and songs like “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time in a Bottle,” Jim Croce is likely a familiar name.

Those hits, and others — including “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim” and “Operator” — are on the set list of a tribute concert scheduled for tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at the Western Manitoba Centennial Auditorium.

The five members of the band presenting “The Life and Times of Jim Croce: A Canadian Tribute” weren’t even born when Croce was alive, but that just proves how timeless his music is, said one of the lead vocalists, John Hewitt.

“We’re old souls,” Hewitt said during a recent phone interview with the Sun as the group was driving from Alberta to Manitoba.

“We’ve spent the last three months not just curating the show, but making sure that the arrangements are either true to the recording or true to our musical abilities. We’re really trying to represent the music,” he said.

“And people should come to our show for the catalogue of his work. It has connected with people for well over 50 years, from young kids singing “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” to older folks who were there when the albums were released and remember when he passed away. I think there’s a connection there.”

Croce died in a plane crash on Sept. 20, 1973 when he was 30 years old. Before his death he had recorded five albums, two in the 1960s.

In 1972 he released the breakthrough album, “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim.” The following year, he came out with “Life and Times” and “I Got a Name.”

Sharing vocals and adding his acoustic guitar on stage with Hewitt is Benjamin Williams. The two have been performing and touring together on other musical projects over the last seven years.

“Croce would write about people he knew and worked with in the odd jobs he would take on while he was trying to make it as a big-time singer-songwriter,” Williams said.

“So John really appreciates Croce’s storytelling, but I’m more of a music guy. So I really appreciate the acoustic guitar interplay that is in a lot of the songs.

“From the laid-back, blue-collar type songs like, ‘Speedball Tucker,’ ‘Rapid Roy’ or ‘You Don’t Mess Around With Jim,’ to the prettier, perhaps more white-collar type sophisticated songs like ‘Time In A Bottle,’ that sort of thing,” he said.

“We’re trying to bring out the best of both worlds when it comes to Croce’s catalogue.”

Both Williams and Hewitt said they don’t put on an impersonator show, but that they replicate not imitate Croce’s music.

Audience members can expect a two-set concert with stories from Croce’s life along with the “regular on-stage banter,” Hewitt promised, adding he hoped people will “tap their toes, clap their hands, get up and sing and dance around if they feel so inclined.”

The three additional bandmates provide backup vocals, piano and organ, bass guitar and drums.

“We believe there are very few who compare to the prowess that Jim Croce had with his songwriting, his performance and overall musicality that he had in his short career before he tragically passed away,” Hewitt said.

“And I think there’s something to say about the mid ’60s, ’70s quality of the songwriting that I don’t think has been duplicated since then.

“So, we’re just a couple of young guys who kind of wish we were born in the ’40s, grew up in the ’60s and lived in the ’70s.”

Tickets for “The Life and Times of Jim Croce: A Canadian Tribute” are $47.25 plus fees.

For more information, call the WMCA box office at 204-728-9510.

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