True stories of an old man singing his life

THE world has been in love with the songs of Kris Kristofferson for more than 40 years.

Kris Kristofferson in Perth. Kris Kristofferson Photo Bohdan Warchomij Picture: Warchomij Bohdan

THE world has been in love with the songs of Kris Kristofferson for more than 40 years. For just as long the songwriter has been trying to make himself part of the deal, a third wheel trying to get in on the action, with a voice only a mother could love and a face it seemed that every mother loved.

Well, at 77 the voice hasn't got any better, but somehow being in the presence of the man who wrote classics such as Me and Bobby McGee, Help Me Make It Through the Night, Loving Her was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again), The Silver Tongued Devil and I and a slew more, is a more than worthwhile way to spend a night. In a 90-minute set Kristofferson, with occasional help from daughter Kelly on banjo, ripped through 30 songs that reached from his 1970 debut to last year’s Feeling Mortal. Such is its ongoing currency, he did nearly all of the first album, and picked his way through the rest of his back pages.

On Sunday, the first night of an extensive 20-stop Australian tour, there were bum notes galore, but seeing the still handsome Kristofferson had the good grace to ignore them, audience members acted as if they thought they should too. It's maybe too grand a notion to compare Kristofferson, with just a guitar in hand showing the age in his voice and the agelessness of his songs, to his good friend Johnny Cash’s American Recordings from the last decade of his life, but it’s a starting point.

To hear his voice, cracked and straining at every turn, struggling to follow a timeless melody such as For the Good Times, reminds us all that time is passing and we are no longer what and who we once were. Kristofferson also took the opportunity to reconsider some things he had written all those years ago. In Help Me Make it Through the Night, when he sang “I don't care what’s right or wrong,” he added, “yes I do”. He delivered the aside like a punchline to a joke all of us past a certain age would get, but the thought lingered long after the concert had finished.

Often through the show, Kristofferson had said that particular songs were true stories and in this instant it was plain here was an old man simply singing his life. It was an honour to have been there witnessing it.

Plays Adelaide tonight, then various dates across Australia until April 27.