Todd Rundgren mans the front line for new Burt Bacharach tribute tour (2025)

Todd Rundgren had every reason to ask “God Give Me the Strength,” or perhaps to say a little prayer, when he signed on to be part of this year’s “What the World Needs Now -- The Burt Bacharach Songbook in Concert.”

That repertoire is, of course, one of the most celebrated in all of pop music. With frequent lyricist Hal David and on his own, Bacharach -- who passed away passed away Feb. 8, 2023 at the age of 94 -- amassed 73 Top 40 hits and won six Grammy Awards, three Academy Awards and an Emmy. He even wrote theme songs for ABC’s “Monday Night Football” and the network’s “ABC Movie of the Week” series. Bacharach’s music has been recorded by more than 1,000 performers, Dionne Warwick being the most prolific, and (with David) he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and received the 2012 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

It’s a huge catalog, so it’s really ripe for putting together tours that have different sets of special guest artist who will bring something special to the table," says Rob Shirakbari, Bacharach and Warwick’s music director since the mid-80s and curator of the “What the World Needs Now” tour, which stops at the Akron Civic Theatre on April 1. “The Voice” finalist Wendy Moten, regular Rundgren bassist Kasim Sulton and up-and-comer Tori Holub are also featured, and the troupe is performing more than three dozen Bacharach favorites -- with Shirakbari says, a combination of reverence and interpretation.

“That’s the exciting thing with the show,” Shirakbari explains. “hen you bring an artist with their own personality and a lot of character that give the material a new life. We’re spreading it out with a little bit of wings to find those moments and places to breath new freshness into it.”

That’s certainly the case with Rundgren, Shirakbari adds. “First of all, he’s brilliant; he’s one of a handful of geniuses in the world of music,” he says. “And being a fantastic songwriter himself he understands the catalog, and I think he felt like, ‘I can bring something to it.‘”

And if Rundgren doesn’t come to mind as a first call to sing Burt Bacharach songs, he assures us it’s not really a great stretch...

You’ve been on tribute tours for the Beatles, David Bowie, now Burt Bacharach. You seem to like your B’s.

Rundgren: (laughs) Yeah, the three B’s. We used to think it was Bach, Beethoven and Brahms or whatever...

So how’d you get hooked up with this one?

Rundgren: It’s the same producer as the “Celebrating David Bowie” tour, so there was a connection there. My name wasn’t completely pulled out of a hat. I actually had sworn I wasn’t gonna do any more of these kinds of tours. I’m all Beatle-ed out, and I figured with the time I have left I should focus on my own music. But Burt Bacharach was a big, early influence on me even before I started writing songs. You could say it’s seminal, and I couldn’t resist the material and how much it means to me. But also I thought if I didn’t do it I would be envious of the people who did; “Gee, I love that song. I wish I could’ve sung it,” that type of thing.

What was Bacharach’s influence on you?

Rundgren: Well, in the midst of the British Invasion there was this song by Dionne Warwick called “Walk on By,” and it was a big hit. I just heard something in it that seemed different from everything else in terms of the songcraft and the musical detailing and that sort of thing, the way it would go from minor to major (chords) and that sort of stuff. It was a bit new to me. And I bought the Dionne Warwick album and I listened to it to death along with my Beatles albums and my Yardbirds albums. So in the same way that listening to the Yardbirds and listening to the Beatles became a seminal influence when I started playing guitar professionally, or performing or writing, so was Burt Bacharach. Even before I started writing, I was listening so intently to the music he was writing.

Where do we hear that in your material, then?

Rundgren: It just kind of came out naturally -- even in the very first song I wrote, “Hello, It’s Me.” It’s not the usual kind of pop song. It’s actually a song with no chorus; it’s all verses, three verses and a bridge, so a bit unusual in that regard. The voicings and things like that are plainly influenced by the more sophisticated modalities that Burt Bacharach tended to gravitate towards.

Did you ever meet him?

Rundgren: (laughs) I was playing in his neighborhood in southern California at a place called the Belle Up Tavern (Nov. 14, 2018) and I was doing my Unpredictable Evening show, where I tell the band what the first song or two is and after that it could be anything...Burt came to the gig specifically to hear “Hello, It’s Me” and I didn’t know he was there and I didn’t do “Hello, It’s Me,” and so he left disappointed in that regard. I hope he wasn’t’ completely disappointed in the whole show; it’s usually fun. But I imagine if I had done “Hello, It’s Me” I might have had the opportunity to meet him. But that’ll never happen now.

What would you have said to him?

Rundgren: Oh, I don’t know. I really hate being a fan boy of people, so probably just...nothing, nonsense, “How’s the family?,” that kind of stuff. Launching immediately into shop talk, it’s just too much to go down a rabbit hole like that. It just would’ve been a friendly conversation, probably.

Did you have a wish list of Bacharach songs you wanted to perform for the tour?

Rundgren: It’s a combination of songs I wanted to do and songs they wanted me to do. I would not have picked “God Give Me the Strength,” but they wanted me to do that, and as daunting as it is, I’m taking my best attempt at it. My list tended to gravitate towards the more R&B ones, even the ones before Dionne Warwick. He did some of my favorite R&B songs, so I tend to gravitate towards those, having grown up in Philadelphia, and leave the more croony other stuff to other people.

And no guitar playing on this tour, right?

Rundgren: I’m just singing. I can do a bit of flailing around and a little bit of picking when I sing, but only in particular songs of mine that I’ve played for years. I stopped playing the piano live because the better a singer I got, the worse of a piano player I became. And when you’ve got these songs, you can’t just cast them off; they need to be sold. So I need to focus completely on what is the meaning of this song and how do you convey it.

Have you gleaned any perspective or insights into Bacharach from immersing yourself in the material, or from Rob the music director?

Rundgren: Some, yeah. (Shirakbari) isn’t telling any tales outside of school, as far as I know. I haven’t gotten any weird things (Bacharach) did. But, of course, we aren’t Burt. I’m not Burt and nobody on stage is Burt, so the audience expectations are gonna be different. If you went to a Burt Bacharach show you know that he doesn’t sing, but he was gonna sing anyway. And he’ll tell stories and that sort of thing. We don’t have that to fall back on, so we have to prove ourselves worthy of the material. There are no excuses.

Any new music coming from you in the near future?

Rundgren: I hope so. I’m touring on and off all year but I expect to get some recording done during the breaks coming up; I had a pretty good break since I came off the road at the end of last year through January, but I was very distracted with a different project -- Global Nation, which was called Patronet before but it went moribund when Covid hit. I’ve relaunched it under a new name; we haven’t done the big launch yet but it’s possible to download the app and get used to it--- globalnation.tv, check it out. And now that that’s moving into another phase I can focus a little more on my own (music) now, so we’ll see what comes of that.

“What the World Needs Now -- The Burt Bacharach Songbook in Concert featuring Todd Rundgren and “The Voice’s” Wendy Moten, plays at 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 1 at the Akron Civic Theatre, 55 W. Bowery St. 330-253-2488 or akroncivic.com.