Paul Simon plays "America" live in concert during an Outside Lands Pop-Up Show at the Fox Theatre in Oakland, California on Friday, August 9, 2019. He is joined onstage by yMusic. The song was originally released on the fourth Simon & Garfunkel album, Bookends (1968). It was written by Paul Simon and inspired by a 1964 road trip he had taken with his then-girlfriend, Kathy Chitty. Paul Simon played the final show of his "Farewell Tour" on September 22, 2018, but has come out of his retirement from touring to headline at the Outside Lands Festival this Sunday in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. He has announced that he will contribute all proceeds from Sunday's performance to Friends of the Urban Forest and the San Francisco Parks Alliance. After Outside Lands, Simon played two shows in Maui on August 13 and 14 at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center, again donating all of his net proceeds to local environmental groups.
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America lyrics:
Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together
I’ve got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies
And walked off to look for America
Kathy, I said, as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I’ve come to look for America
Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said, Be careful, his bow tie is really a camera
Toss me a cigarette, I think there’s one in my raincoat
We smoked the last one an hour ago
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field
Kathy, I’m lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping.
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America
Written by Paul Simon
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Paul Simon official bio:
During his distinguished career spanning six decades, musician and songwriter Paul Simon has produced timeless masterpieces, such as Bridge Over Troubled Water, Still Crazy After All These Years, and Graceland, all of which garnered GRAMMY Album of the Year.
Mr. Simon was awarded the inaugural Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, which recognizes the profound and positive effect of popular music on the world's culture. Mr. Simon is also a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, and, in 2006, was named one of Time magazine's "100 People Who Shape Our World."
Of Mr. Simon’s many concert appearances, he is most fond of the two concerts in Central Park in New York (with his partner and childhood friend Art Garfunkel in 1981 and as a solo artist in 1991) and the series of shows he did at the invitation of Nelson Mandela in South Africa: the first American artist to perform in post-apartheid South Africa. In 1998, his performance on center field at Yankee Stadium celebrating the unveiling of Joe DiMaggio’s monument is a treasured memory for this lifelong Yankee’s fan.
Paul Simon's varied philanthropic work includes the co-founding of the Children's Health Fund, which donates and staffs 53 mobile medical units that bring health care to low-income children and their families around the United States, providing more than 3 million doctor/patient visits since its inception in 1987.
In a letter to fans announcing his Farewell Tour and retirement from touring last year, Mr. Simon said, "After this tour, I anticipate doing the occasional performance…and to donate those earnings to various philanthropic organizations, particularly those whose objective it is to save the planet, ecologically."
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yMusic official bio:
yMusic, "six contemporary classical polymaths who playfully overstep the boundaries of musical genres,” (The New Yorker) performs in concert halls, arenas and clubs around the world. Founded in New York City in 2008, yMusic believes in presenting excellent, emotionally communicative music, regardless of style or idiom. Their virtuosic execution and unique configuration (string trio, flute, clarinet, and trumpet) has attracted the attention of high profile collaborators—from Paul Simon to Bill T. Jones to Ben Folds—and inspired original works by some of today’s foremost composers, including Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli and Andrew Norman.
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