An Evening With Larry Norman
Beaverton Church of the Nazarene
Beaverton, OR
October 18th 2003
(05.11.03) Setlist and review by Myron Berg
When Larry was introduced, I think most were initially struck by
three things, how thin we was, how slowly he was walking and that his
hair was just shoulder length. Larry sat for the entire concert and
seemed weak for the most part but seemed to get a few bursts of
energy. I'd say there was about 3-400 at the show.
Here is the set list and a few memories of the concert. I've made up
short titles for Larry's speaking segments.
1. The Outlaw
2. Talk-If Jesus Came Today
3. UFO
4. God Part III (Larry forget the lyrics on this one and asked for
help so I shouted out "EVOLUTION". The those in the audience
unfamiliar with the song, their reaction to the verse seemed to
indicate they thought he made it up on the spot!)
5. Talk-Early Musical Influences
6. Great American Novel
7. Talk-Don't Mention God In The Media
8. Six Sixty Six
9. Larry surveyed the audience to see where everyone traveled from.
Over half the audience was from out of town. That was abit surprising
as the concert was free to those in the local area.
10. Song For A Small Circle Of Friends
Love offering and intermission
During the second set family and friends came up at various points to
form an unplugged type of band
11. I Wish We'd All Been Ready
12. Talk-Childhood Music (at this point we welcolmed his sister Nancy
up to join him)
13. Quit Kicking My Dog Around (this may have been the highlight of
the concert, there voices harmonized so well, as they took turns
singing lead and their banter and interaction was priceless)
14. Talk-Racism
15. Follow The Drinking Gourd (the one song I'd never heard before,
Larry and Nancy had sung this in their youth while in a folk group,
Jason Carter walked onto the stage part way through the song playing
a bongo)
16. Swing Low Sweet Chariot (Larry's brother Charly, joined on
acoustic guitar and a gentleman named Michael Manning sporting a
brimmed hat, handle bar moustache, suspenders and necktie played a
handsaw with a violin bow, Jason on a minimal drum kit)
17. Talk-Dancing Is A "Sin"
18. My Feet Are On The Rock (another younger man had joined on
acoustic guitar buy this time)
19. Rock That Doesn't Roll-(Charly's wife/Softcore lead
vocalist/Solid Rock office manager Kristin joined to sing backup)
20. Why Don't You Look Into Jesus
21. Talk- 9/11
22. Amazing Grace (Larry's song Michael joined the rest to sing
backup)
23. Silent Night (Kristin sang one verse in Norwegian!)
After the concert, Larry (actually I think it was his mom) drew from
a bucket of tickets people could purchase to raffle of his guitar. It
was won by Juregen who'd come from Germany!
The dinner got started pretty late. It was a lot of fun, Larry is a
natural at MC'ing. A bunch more stuff got raffled off, some people
were recognized for their wedding anniversaries. Larry told a great
story about the man playing the background keyboard music during the
dinner. He had inspired Larry to make the difficult task of getting
out of bed each day while recovering in a senior's home, by playing
piano there for the residents. Larry became friends with him and
invited him for this event. The evening closed with the "Larry-oke"
performances. A few attempted to sing along to soundtracks with Larry
helping out and then most of us went up and joined Larry in singing
some of his standards. I had to leave abit early so I'm not sure if
anything happened after that, but it was definately a memorable
evening.
