New and Old

What's the difference between the "Old" Kingston Trio and the "New" Kingston Trio, one might naturally wonder?

Well, two thirds of a personnel change for one thing. A passage of 18 years for another, perhaps more significant change. While never having seen either the old or the new Kingston Trio before their arrival at Granny's Dinner Playhouse this week the present country tone of the Trio came as a bit of a surprise

Is that being trendy a trio remembered for their folk-pop record hits, an early flavor of the calypso sound? Indeed that calypso influence was responsible for their title when Bob Shane, Dave Guard and Nick Reynolds hit the kind of instantaneous stardom you get on records in 1958 with "Tom Dooley."

OBVIOUSLY Shane, the remaining trio member, does not wish to be frozen in time, although "Tom Dooley" and other old record hits like "Scotch and Soda" must be done to accommodate an audience that probably was primarily drawn to the theater by a nostalgic factor.

Any group seeking to reenter the hit record charts these days might naturally be searching into a more country-fied vein which characterizes the new music portion of the show the trio is doing in a 10-day stand at Granny's Dinner Playhouse which temporarily has abandoned the customary dinner theater play fare for club type shows.

Shane, looking early middle-aged with salt-and-pepper hair, has joined with youthful Bill Zorn, adept at banjo, and Roger Gamble, an amusing country type pixy somewhat remindful of Mac Davis, for the "now" Kingston Trio.

THEY DO some Gordon Lightfoot, a batch of other things by Nashville oriented writers of songs, and lyrics, mixing in the new with the old. A good portion of this new type material is comic in nature, which may be a way of trying to establish something uniquely catching about what the Kingston Trio is in 1975.

The Opening Show at Granny's had a loose, almost winging it quality, much time spent in the tuning up of instruments between numbers, a lot of between tune banter, some of it very fun, a few shots in the groan category.

But what a relief it is to see a musical group today not all but physically and audibly overwhelmed by monster amplifiers and speaker cabinets surrounding the group leaving them to look like midgets trapped at the base of Century City.

OF COURSE, the group does use standard amplification but you still get a natural sound out of the soft brush of fingers across the strings of Spanish guitars. How satisfying that is in this era of plastic mechanized sound. I have often wondered what would happen to one of the contemporary groups if the power supply went off. Would they freeze on stage like toy figures atop a music box that has run down?

No danger of this from the Kingston Trio. They may not bowl you over with decibels of sound, garish costumes and freak events. They are rather simple, or pure, if you prefer in their approach -- which is refreshing whether their music is exactly your taste or not.