Turnbull and His ‘Grandma’s Shoes’: A Strange Fit

NEWPORT BEACH —  You can’t call the kind of concert theater that singer-songwriter Mark Turnbull is doing at the Newport Theatre Arts Center “Mark Turnbull Unplugged,” because Turnbull wasn’t plugged in to begin with.

An unreconstructed folkie and clear descendant of the Weavers school of literary music for the people, Turnbull is a curious combination.

He’s a writer of sometimes complex music who lacks the vocal chops to fully convey the music, and a thoroughly unpretentious performer who nevertheless drops such names as Descartes, Whitman, Magritte, Basho and Laotzu as if they were ballplayers. (He also mentions Yogi Berra.)

For a performer who once opened for the likes of Phil Ochs and Chet Baker, Turnbull is amazingly low-key and very much the local Orange County hero.

His music is so dated--a song like “Frame of Reference” is the kind Dave Frishberg did eons ago--it has retro charm that it wouldn’t have 10 years ago.

For his new act, awkwardly titled “Grandma’s Shoes: It’s a Strange and Wonderful Thing . . . ,” Turnbull tells us he’s following 17th century Japanese haiku writer Basho on what he called “the narrow road to the internal.”

The trip down that road takes a while, though; the first half is a program of alternately serious and jokey tunes that can’t be called exactly meditative. It jarringly concludes with two very operatic numbers from his musical-in-progress, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

These songs, “Passion” and “Trouble,” are promising indicators that Turnbull is tapping into richer forms than solo-guitar songwriting allows him.

At the same time, they’re so unlike the rest of the evening’s program that they feel like he’s showcasing, rather than revealing, himself.

The second half finally gets around to Turnbull’s stated purpose. Songs including “The Other Man’s Woman,” “Now Is the Hour” and “Beauty, Truth and Goodness” blend the personal with the philosophical, inward-looking but also placing a mirror up to nature.

Even better is the tragic narrative song “Buckeyed Jim,” about a man who gives up on life. It’s a small classic that shows why people still listen to folkies.

Turnbull tends to throw all of his craft into the songwriting. His six-string guitar is sometimes strangely out of tune, and his voice is often flat, thin and strained in its upper reaches.

He doesn’t let it deflate his show, however; his friendly, comforting, chummy manner with an audience lends his act a living-room atmosphere.

Like the flawed human factor he depicts in song after song, stumbling toward love and some kind of meaning to life, Turnbull’s shortcomings make him more human, approachable, one of us.

* What: Mark Turnbull’s solo show “Grandma’s Shoes: It’s a Strange and Wonderful Thing...”

* When: Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.

* Where: Newport Theatre Arts Center, 2501 Cliff Drive, Newport Beach.

* Whereabouts: Take the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway to Newport Boulevard, head south. Turn east on 17th Street, then south on Santa Ana Avenue. Turn east onto Cliff Drive.

* Wherewithal: $13.

* Where to call: (714) 631-0288.