Review: Bryan Adams at The F.M. Kirby Center, Wilkes-Barre, PA

Just as it’s somewhat depressing when the musical heroes of our youth seem to lose their fire and luster with the passing of years, it’s equally heartening when one of those heroes appears to be handling the ravages of time with grace. In the case of Bryan Adams, the guy seems to have not so much turned back the clock as stopped it somewhere around 1985, as he proved in a rousing performance Tuesday night in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

With the exception of a slicked back hair style replacing the shaggy look of old, there was really nothing in his looks that would separate the version of Adams that rocked the stage Tuesday night from the one running wild through the “Summer Of ‘69” video from three decades ago. But the real proof of Adams’ seeming imperviousness to time was in his vocals, which were as robust and potent as ever.

The Canadian rocker’s theater tour is titled Bare Bones, which reflects the fact that Adams played an acoustic guitar accompanied by only pianist Gary Breit. With this approach, those vocals were front and center all night long. He deftly veered from tender intimacy to reckless abandon, so that the women in the crowd alternately swooned to the ballads and screamed to the ravers while the men, knowing they could never hope to have those kinds of moves, rocked along with him anyway because they couldn’t possibly begrudge such a genial guy this talent.

And man, oh, man, does Adams have a lot of hits to showcase. Most of the ’80s classics were in the set list (“Run To You”, “This Time”, “Cuts Like A Knife”, “Somebody”, “Heaven”, and on and on), along with the bulk of his soundtrack work from the last few decades ((“Everything I Do) I Do It For You”, “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?”, “You’ve Been A Friend To Me”) and a few songs that might not have the stature of the big hits but were every bit as engaging on this night (“Here I Am”, “When You Love Someone.”)

Throughout the evening, Adams charmed with effortless stage patter that 35 years of playing for audiences large and small has honed. When he played songs that were original recorded with bold-faced names like Barbra Streisand (“I Finally Found Someone”) or Sting and Rod Stewart (“All For Love”), he gestured offstage in mock expectation of their arrival only to admit that they weren’t coming, earning big laughs from the crowd. And his interplay back and forth with some especially boisterous female members of the crowd showed a quick albeit good-natured wit.

What came to the fore over and over on this night was just how well-crafted and sturdy the songs in Adams’ catalog are and how emotionally connected to the material he remains. That latter trait might seem obvious, but it’s truthfully becoming a lost art form. When Adams sang along to the minor chords, you could hear all the obstacles and the urgency and struggle needed to overcome them, while the major chords brought the triumph and gratitude at reaching those heights.

Those are the kind of subtle qualities which help an audience connect and relate to an artist, and the Wilkes-Barre crowd certainly responded to Bryan Adams with ovation after ovation. The final song was fittingly “Straight From The Heart.” After all, from where else could music so eternally youthful possibly come?