On Thursday, Campbell came to the Irvine Auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania on one of the first dates of what's being billed as his "Goodbye Tour." Backed by a family band that included daughter Ashley on banjo and keyboards, and sons Nicklaus on drums and Shannon on guitar, Campbell played a good-natured 75-minute set that included all the AM radio hits, from Allen Toussaint's "Southern Nights" to Chris Gantry's "Dreams of the Everyday Housewife" to Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman."
The mood on Ghost is sober and serious-minded, similar in tone to the American Recordings albums Rick Rubin produced for Johnny Cash in the decade before his death in 2003. But Campbell was in an entirely different, more happy-go-lucky frame of mind at Irvine, the recently refurbished 1,200-capacity hall, where he played to a less-than-capacity but enthusiastic crowd of his chronological contemporaries.
"I'm not Minnie Pearl, but I'm just proud to be here," he said on taking the stage to John Hartford's "Gentle on My Mind." With that, he immediately displayed the undiminished guitar-picking skills that made the Delight, Ark., native a standout among the '60s group of Los Angeles studio players known as the Wrecking Crew.
Campbell, who stands 6 feet tall but cut a larger-than-life figure as he moved about the stage in black shirt and jeans and blue blazer, had other ready stage patter, too. "I'm happy to be here," he said, before singing a satisfying hooky version of Tom Petty's "Walls," a song he covered on 2008's Meet Glen Campbell. "But at this age in life, you're happy to be anywhere." That carefree quip was coupled with an uncomfortable chill, however, when he turned to his longtime sideman T.J. Kuenster and asked: "How old am I?"
