Bern notice: Man of many talents returns to close out CSPS season

By Diana Nollen

Singer, songwriter, tennis pro, artist, novelist, award-winning sports columnist, champion egg eater, new dad.

“Sounds like a ridiculous person's life,” the multitalented, many-faceted Dan Bern exclaims. “Through the years, things just keep getting added in. I don't do all of those things a typical day. Sometimes. When I have time to paint, it's really great.”

The Mount Vernon native is coming back to his home turf for a pair of concerts Sunday (5/23/10) to close down CSPS in Cedar Rapids. The historic building at 1103 Third St. SE will soon be getting a $6.4 million makeover.

Bern was a natural choice for the final concert before saws start singing and hammers bang out a new beat.

“We love him,” says F. John Herbert of Cedar Rapids, executive director of Legion Arts, housed at CSPS. “Of course, he has a lot of fans here. He has deep roots in this community. That he's connected to the national and international music industry makes him very appropriate to be our closing act.”

Bern, known for his in-your-face musical commentary on society, politics, religion and life in general, also will display a softer side. He'll perform a family concert Sunday afternoon, drawing from his first collection of children's songs, titled “Two Feet Tall.” Some are silly, some are sweet and others will strike a chord with anyone who has tried to quiet a screaming infant.

All were inspired by his daughter Lulu, now 10 months old.

“After we'd go for a walk, I'm come back with a song or two or three. Lo and behold, I had a disc full of them,” he says. Thirty-eight, to be exact.

Sunday evening, he'll be the Bern his audiences have come to know and love.

The prolific songwriter, who estimates he's written 2,000 to 3,000 songs, also has another new CD for the grown-up set, “Live in Los Angeles.” That's where he's living a more settled life these days, with little Lulu and her mother, and writing for movie soundtracks. His work was included in “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” this summer's comedy, “Get Him to the Greek,” as well as “Family Week,” a play in New York directed by Jonathan Demme, who won an Oscar for “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Bern comes to his talent by nature and nurture. He's the son of the late classical pianist Julian Bern, who taught at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, and Marianne Bern, a musician and poet who now lives in Cedar Rapids. His sister, Jennifer Bern-Vogel, also is a singer. She started her career with opera and is now a cantor in Los Angeles.

“She just moved to L.A., so we're in the same town for the first time since Mount Vernon,” Bern says.

His musical path was forged early on.

“We all have ideas where we're pretty young, that we're going to do this or that,” he says. “From the time I was in my mid-teens, first picked up a guitar and started writing songs, I felt like this was my thing. My whole family was classical musicians. That didn't quite feel like my thing. It took a while to find my line.”

He studied piano very briefly. “I had about eight months of piano lessons - up until that moment as one does when you're a little angry and bang on the piano. My dad ran in and removed me from his Steinway - and that was the extent of that. If we'd had an old beat-up upright in the back of the house, I might have taken to it.”

Bern prefers to keep some aspects of his life vague, including his age and his particular genre of music. He's generally deemed a folk singer, but his music seems to transcend that mode.

“I'm not offended by that term,” he says. “It's where I started out. From time to time, I sort of feel closer to that or further away from that. All trends can be a little limiting. I try to be as vague as possible. I'm leery of labeling myself, so everybody else is free to lay what they want on what I do.

“Guitar is my main instrument. I write songs and I sing 'em. Beyond that? It's always been more about the songs, and finding the right match for the subject and emotion, and just letting it rip.”

He's on what he calls his “third tour of duty” in Los Angeles and has lived in New Mexico and on the road pursuing his musical career.

 “I wish I could tell you it was a clear ladder to success,” he says of his journey. “It's been a million haphazard days, one song at a time, one gig at a time. ... If I have any advice to give anybody, rather than wait for somebody to tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘You get to do this,' just go out and do this. ... Recording is easier than it's ever been, and it's easier to get it out there, with MySpace, Facebook and all that.”

As for all his other interests? He gave tennis lessons to Wilt Chamberlain in Los Angeles in the 1980s or '90s; paints in acrylics and oils and does the artwork for his album covers; wrote the book “Quitting Science”; wrote sports columns in New Mexico; and ate 17 eggs in 10 minutes to win a 2008 Truth or Consequences Fiesta contest in New Mexico. Totally appropriate for the man who 10 years earlier titled an album “Fifty Eggs.”

FAST TAKEInformation: www.legionarts.org/music/Bern.htm and www.danbern.com

What: Dan Bern concerts

Where: CSPS, 1103 Third St. SE, Cedar Rapids

Family concert: 3 p.m. Sunday, May 23, 2010, with songs from his new children's album, “Two Feet Tall”; $9 adults, $5 kids in advance at www.midwestix.com or $12 all ages at the door

Adult concert: 7 p.m. Sunday, May 23, 2010; $17 in advance at www.midwestix.com or $21 at the door