Though Bonoff’s songs provided still fertile emotional soil, one of the evening’s most moving songs was not her own, but Jackson Browne’s “Something Fine.” It illustrated the two songwriter’s deep connection and allowed Bonoff to deliver the best vocal of the evening. Gerber’s solo acoustic showcase featured a highly-original, intricate reading of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which she accurately predicted would become an “instrumental singalong” before the end.

With “Baja Oklahoma,” Gerber let the country side of her inspiration ring, with slippery fills that echoed pedal steel guitar. Guitarist Nina Gerber-Bonoff’s constant accompanist-raised the impact of every song a notch higher, adding pastoral accompaniment to the evening’s opener, a triumphant reading of “Home.” The accents she added to “I Can’t Hold On” varied from chords to single phrase accents which upped the emotional ante.

(The exception, “Daddy’s Little Girl” was a little too plain in its thanks to her father and read more like a spoken tribute than a song.) At the heart of the best moments, of course, were the songs, which almost never let her down. “Lose Again” was particularly poignant, as she faded on the high notes, which only intensified the emotion.

Her intonation was spot-on, though, during favorites such as “I Can’t Hold On,” where she delivered the song with less force in order to retain control of the pitch. After decades of singing most of them, she was able to channel most of them with considerable connection.īonoff’s voice has thinned a little, the richest overtones at the bottom of her timbre a little shallower than when the earliest were recorded. Last night, she confirmed that the songs never let her down with a set full of warmly familiar tunes whose lyrics were delivered as though she were talking with old friends. When Linda Ronstadt recorded the song as a duet with Aaron Neville, though, it was a smash hit and won at the 1991 Grammy Awards. She released it herself on 1989’s “New World” album but the label soon went out of business. During an intimate show in Natalie’s Coal Fired Pizza and Live Music last night Bonoff recounted, for example, the sad history of “All My Life,” a song she wrote for a film but was never used. Over her 50+ year career, Karla Bonoff has had better luck with her songs than with her own recordings.

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