Review: COLIN HAY'S MAN @ WORK VOLUME 2' INTERNATIONAL SOLO TOUR at Southern Theatre

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Colin Hay, the former front man for Men at Work, has been in the mountains of his music career and he’s been in the valleys. Performing in front of a mostly sold-out crowd at the Southern Theatre (21 E. Main Street in downtown Columbus) on Nov. 2, the singer appears to be comfortable in either setting.

The distinctive voice behind “Land Down Under,” “Who Can It Be Now?” and  “It’s A Mistake” was as almost as masterful at telling the stories behind the songs as he was at performing them. He often joked about what it was like to be on the top … and what it is like to be staring up at that peak and wondering how to get back there.

Hay recalled playing one of his solo efforts at a record office and a lawyer projected the album was going to sell "two million records in the first two weeks.

“Ihe record came in and went away with a whisper,” Hay said after finishing “Into the Cornfields’ from PEAKS AND VALLEYS (1992). “I was back at the same office a couple months later, and the same lawyer says to me, ‘Colin, every artist has peaks and valleys. Right now, you are in a (expletive) valley.’

“That was in 1991 so obviously, I had a long term plan. Along the way, I had to ask myself a serious question: if I never get back to those lofty peaks, is playing a Sunday night in Columbus, Ohio in …. whatever theatre we’re in … is that going to be good enough?”

After the appreciation from the crowd died down, Hay added with a mischievous grin, “ I realized it’s really not.”

Hay’s "Man @ Work Volume 2" International Solo Tour was a no frills affair. The singer’s lone props were a coatrack and a collection of four acoustic guitars. “It used to be that people would hand me a finely tuned instrument,” the singer said as he struggled to tune one of those guitars. “That was the first thing to go. Now those guys all work for Sting.”

What the show lacked in pyrotechnics, pretense, and lasers, it made up for in strong vocals, humor, and brutal honesty. If you closed your eyes, his four Men At Work offerings, “Who Can It Be Now?,” “It’s A Mistake,” “Overkill,” and “Land Down Under” sound as strong as they did in 1981 or 1983.

A measure of a great song is often what it sounds like away from the slick engineering and fancy arrangements. Hay presenting those songs on an acoustic guitar stripped away the radio-friendly hooks and created something starker and more powerful.

Before singing “Who Can It Be Now?,” Hay had the audience imitate the late Greg Ham’s signature saxophone hook.

 “Originally it was played on a guitar,” Hay said. “It sounds a bit spookier. It sounds a little bit like something you would hear in Forensic Files.” Hay dropped his voice into the style of a true crime show’s narrator and said, “He was such a quiet neighbor” while strumming the guitar ominously.

However, the Nov. 2 concert was not a nostalgic 1980s fest. Hay drew heavily from his solo albums, offering up less familiar songs that often surpassed the quality of much of the Men At Work catalog. One wonders why songs like “Looking For Jack,” “Next Year’s People,” “Waiting for My Real Life to Begin,” “Frozen Fields of Snow” and a handful of other songs that didn’t chart like the Men At Work stuff.

Hay seems to wonder that as well. Mid-show, he segued from the instrumental “Goodnight, Romeo,” an ode to his late father James, into “I Just Don’t Think I Will Ever Get Over You,” a poignant ballad featured in the movie GARDEN STATE.

“That was the closest thing I have had to a hit in the last 30 years,” Hay said. “It was on the soundtrack to GARDEN STATE which went platinum. The song originally appeared on an album many years before, which did not go platinum. I think it reached mahogany status.

“A friend of mine asked me, how much money do you make when you have a song on a soundtrack that goes platinum?  I told him if you have a song on a platinum soundtrack, don’t sell your house and buy one in the Bahamas. However, if you are thinking about renovating your kitchen, you might be all right.”

Where Hay connected with the Southern Theatre audience the most was with his story telling. The singer covered a wide variety of topics from religion and life after death experiences to playing in Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band to his struggles with sobriety and fame, but he most often talked about being confused with being in other 80s bands.

“I was in an elevator and this woman goes, ‘You look famous. Were you in a band?’” Hay said with a bemused grin. “I said, ‘Men at Work. You heard of us?’ She goes, ‘Yes, of course! Y-M-C-A!’”

While he may not be the king of the hill, Hay has found a way to connect with fellow travelers in the lowlands. Sometimes voices echo much louder in the valleys than they do from the top of the mountain.

Photo credit: Jim L.C. Buffer

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