Sean Harkness
Just Me
Don’t Tell Mama, NYC, July 23, 2025
Reviewed by Alix Cohen
Photo by Stephen Hanks
Having noticed “a couple of blank squares” on his calendar, guitarist Sean Harkness shared his inner troubadour in an evening of instrumentals, songs, and stories at Don’t Tell Mama. The musician was one with his instrument. Music visibly passed through him, rhythmically animated. He was warm, candid, gracious, and surprised at his luck.
Todd Rundgren’s “Hello, It’s Me” was rueful. “Maybe I shouldn’t think of you as mine.” Between pats, fingers twirled and skipped on the strings; vocal was sincere. Harkness has been performing since he was 11. He opened with songs he recalled from then.
“Fire on the Mountain” (Marshall Tucker Band) arrived like hoof beats on an endlessly dusty terrain. “And there’s fire on the mountain, lightning in the air/ Gold in them hills and it’s waiting for me there.” His flat, right hand stroked the guitar face, then strummed and picked.
His own composition, “Bright Tomorrows,” evoked strolling down a country road. We heard birdsong, saw the disappearing tail of a critter. Worries were left in the truck. His chest loosened; breathing slowed. How long, the artist wondered, since I’ve seen this much sky?
Also his “Summer Solstice” was comprised of scallops of notes, now dipping, now curving, then rising. His left hand caressed his guitar neck, while the right plucked. I imagined fireflies. “Puesta del sol,” he told us, was the closest he ever got to making a beloved teacher cry. Pure of heart, unembellished but for a flutter, the beautiful tune was rife with nostalgia.
We heard about the influence of percussionist Jackson Haynes, the camaraderie of busking in Amsterdam (with “a bottler”: a pretty girl to collect change), the joy of ready improvisation.
From that era, Harkness fondly excavated two Joe Jackson tunes, “Different for Girls” and “Breaking Us in Two.” The tandem performance created a sinewy scene-in-one. “Gimme all you got/But not love” he sang. Strum undulated.
“If you’d told me that someday I’d like this song” introduced “How Deep is Your Love?” (Bee Gees) which emerged neither camp, nor candy-coated, but reflective; a bemused smile emerged. “We belong to you and me” he sang, eyebrows rising. Lennon/McCartney’s “A Hard Day’s Night” didn’t fare as well.
“All the Things You Are” (Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II) was, for the artist, a lesson in attention to lyrics. Hushed and musing, it became a jazz-informed bossa nova. Harkness has a real feel for the genre. It was lovely.
A Pete Seeger story led to the performer’s instrumental of “We Shall Overcome.” The song bore witness; the performance was moving.
Sean returns to Don’t Tell Mama July 27 at 4 pm.
