There are tribute concerts, and then there is Croce Plays Croce. When A.J. Croce took the stage at Seattle’s historic Moore Theatre on September 30, the evening wasn’t about a son simply recreating his famous father’s greatest hits. It was about two generations of musicians finally sharing a stage in the only way they can—through songs, stories and a musical connection that has taken A.J. decades to fully embrace.
Before Croce took the stage, the audience was treated to another piece of American music history with legendary guitarist and singer-songwriter Leo Kottke. The influential acoustic guitarist was an inspired addition to an evening centered on musicianship and storytelling. Kottke’s distinctive guitar work and wonderfully dry presence provided a fitting opening chapter before Croce turned the evening toward his own family’s remarkable musical story.
A.J. opened with “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim,” immediately making it clear this wasn’t going to be a somber walk down memory lane. Croce has spent more than three decades developing his own musical identity through blues, jazz, soul, rock and roots music, and that personality was all over the arrangements. He wasn’t trying to become Jim Croce. He was bringing Jim’s songs into A.J. Croce’s musical world.
“Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues” followed, before A.J. moved into Billy Preston’s funky “Nothing From Nothing.” That choice summed up the evening rather nicely. Jim Croce’s catalog may be the foundation of Croce Plays Croce, but the show also celebrates the music that influenced father and son. A.J. effortlessly moved between his father’s songs, his own material and music associated with artists including Preston, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and Leon Russell.
“Box #10” gave way to A.J.’s “Complications of Love,” followed by “Better Day” and Jim’s “Speedball Tucker.” The transitions made the point better than any speech could: A.J.’s music and his father’s don’t need to compete with one another. They can coexist.
That has not always been an easy place for A.J. to reach. When I spoke with him before the Seattle show, he told me he had been asked since he was a teenager to record and perform his father’s music. He resisted until he had established his own identity.
“I just never felt like there was integrity in doing his stuff until I had an identity of my own as an artist,” Croce told me.
That independence is exactly what makes Croce Plays Croce work.
One of the evening’s most anticipated moments came with “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels).” More than 50 years after Jim recorded it, the song remains a master class in making heartbreak sound conversational. In A.J.’s hands, it didn’t feel like a museum piece. It felt like a great song being passed from one storyteller to another.
A.J. continued with “Rollin’ On,” Leon Russell’s “The Heart That Makes Me Whole,” “Roller Derby Queen,” “So Much Fun” and “Some Day the Sun Won’t Shine for You.” He bounced between piano and guitar, bringing a bluesier, sometimes funkier energy to material audiences may have known for decades.
The middle of the show delivered one of its strongest stretches with “New York’s Not My Home,” “Alabama Rain,” “One Less Set of Footsteps” and “Walkin’ Back to Georgia.” These are songs that remind you just how extraordinary Jim Croce’s storytelling was. He could introduce a person, place or relationship and, within a few minutes, make you feel as though you’d known them for years.
A.J. understands why those songs have survived.
“He was able to make heroes out of everyday people,” he told me in our interview. “These are people that you know.”
That storytelling gene clearly didn’t disappear with Jim.
A.J. was relaxed, funny and completely at home throughout the evening, sharing stories while allowing the music to breathe. There is something particularly moving about watching a son tell stories about a father he barely had the opportunity to know, especially when music became one of the ways he eventually discovered who that father really was.
The mood shifted back toward pure fun with “Hey Margarita” and “Rapid Roy (The Stock Car Boy)” before the inevitable arrival of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” And really, how do you sit quietly through “Leroy Brown”? You don’t. More than five decades after Jim turned the baddest man in the whole damn town into a pop-culture character, the song still has a mischievous swagger.
Then came “I Got a Name.”
If Croce Plays Croce has an unofficial mission statement, this might be it. A.J. Croce has spent his career proving that he does, indeed, have a name of his own. Yet embracing his father’s name has not diminished his identity—it has added another dimension to it.
For the encore, there really could be only one choice: “Time in a Bottle.”
The song carries a different weight when performed by the son of the man who wrote it. Jim Croce died at only 30 years old, when A.J. was not yet two. A song about wishing you could save time suddenly takes on an entirely different meaning when the person singing it knows better than most that time isn’t something any of us can keep.
There was no need to overplay the emotion. The song did the work.
What made the evening special was that Croce Plays Croce never became an impersonation act or a greatest-hits jukebox. It was A.J. Croce’s show. His father’s spirit was everywhere, but so were the blues, soul, jazz and rock influences that shaped A.J. into his own musician.
A.J. told me before the concert that he initially thought of the project as a tribute to his father’s legacy. Somewhere along the way, that changed.
“It’s not just me,” he said. “It’s not just him. It’s this beautiful connection of a father and a son.”
At the Moore Theatre, that connection was unmistakable.
Jim Croce never had the opportunity to stand onstage and perform with his adult son. But for one night in Seattle, separated by more than half a century and connected by a collection of timeless songs, it somehow felt like both Croces were in the room.
And time, if only for a couple of hours, really did seem to stop.
