Cleopatra RecordsSince late 2015, most of Todd Rundgren‘s concerts have showcased career-spanning sets featuring his best-known songs and plenty of fan favorites. Now, the prolific singer/songwriter has released a new concert video and album called An Evening with Todd Rundgren — Live at Ridgefield that documents one of those shows, a December 2015 performance in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Rundgren explains to ABC Radio that because his previous tours generally have focused on whatever new project he was promoting at the time, the new release is “something of a noteworthy document…in that it’s rare for me to play a show that’s substantially made up of fan favorites.”
Live in Ridgefield includes renditions of Rundgren’s solo hits “I Saw the Light,” “Bang the Drum All Day” and “Hello It’s Me,” as well as “Open My Eyes,” a nugget from his early group Nazz. It also features a wide-ranging selection of his solo songs, a few gems from his 1970s and ’80s prog-rock band Utopia and a medley of soul covers from The Impressions, The Miracles and Marvin Gaye.
Todd says the soul medley is one of the things he’s looked forward to the most at his recent shows.
“I sometimes enjoy singing other people’s material more than I enjoy singing my own material,” he tells ABC Radio, “because…when you sing someone else’s material, you’re trying to inhabit their words and so it comes from a different place [than when you sing you own songs].”
As for arguably his most famous song, “Bang the Drum All Day,” Rundgren says that although he finds it “really inane,” he enjoys performing it because of the great reaction it gets from audiences.
Live in Ridgefield is available as a CD/DVD set, Blu-ray disc and vinyl LP.
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