“Songs for Old Lovers is a true concept album which pays tribute to some of the earliest concept albums of American Pop Music and the great American songwriting tradition… Randy’s original compositions here are responses to American popular songs from the 1930s and 40s… Mike usually works with Randy in a bluegrass/country/folk/blues idiom. But, as evidenced here, these guys can do anything!
—from the liner notes by Montague Z. Young

These are Randy’s responses, retorts, replies, and ripostes to classic American songs such as "Glad to Be Unhappy" by Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart, "Let’s Fall in Love" by Ted Koehler & Harold Arlen, "Easy to Love" by Cole Porter, and "I Can’t Give You Anything But Love" by Dorothy Fields & Jimmy McHugh. There are nods to the songwriting styles of the day throughout, both harmonically and lyrically; Randy employs piano, bass, drums, woodwinds, and brass to emulate and pay homage to these masterpieces of the American Songwriting Tradition.

Liner Notes by Montague Z. Young (based on interviews with RK and observations of the Songs for Old Lovers recording sessions):

The title of this album, Songs for Old Lovers, correlates with Frank Sinatra’s first album for Capitol Records, 1954’s Songs For Young Lovers. The cover artwork emulates the iconic cover of Sinatra’s 1955 collaboration with arranger/conductor Nelson Riddle, In the Wee Small Hours (Randy looking even more dejected than Frank, thereby adding a touch of parody to the moodiness of the image). And Randy’s etching on the back panel is based on the back cover of 1958’s Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely. Even these liner notes, if I’ve done my job correctly, will conjure the album essays of Pet Welding and even Stan Cornyn. Yes, Songs for Old Lovers is a true concept album which pays tribute to some of the earliest concept albums of American Pop Music and the great American songwriting tradition.

Randy’s original compositions here are responses to American popular songs from the 1930s and 40s and, in one or two cases, the 20s, songs recorded by the likes of Sinatra himself, Peggy Lee, Marilyn Monroe, Chet Baker, Judy Garland, and Nat King Cole. Some of the songs are answers to questions posed by the original, some are variations on themes presented therein, others are retorts, replies, even ripostes. There are also nods to the songwriting styles of the day throughout, both harmonically and lyrically. Mike West, who has been producing Randy’s records for the past five years or so, evinces this homage through his elegant arrangements. Mike usually works with Randy in a bluegrass/country/folk/blues idiom. But, as evidenced here, these guys can do anything! A familiarity with the material Randy references on this record could enhance the listener’s experience but it is not a prerequisite; Songs for Old Lovers stands on its own as a collection of eloquent, subtle, forlorn, poetic, and sometimes wry ballads and saloon songs.

Four of the songs here, including "Sad to Be Happy," were inspired by selections from the aforementioned In the Wee Small Hours. Randy has known the son of the man (whose last name is Mann) who wrote the music to that eponymous track since he was a lad. "Sad to Be Happy" is a reaction to "Glad to Be Unhappy," the Rodgers & Hart tune from their 1936 musical On Your Toes. Nick Weiser provides a fitting introduction to the song and to the entire record with his incomparable piano playing. Randy’s singing here is elegiac yet nonhistrionic, even as he hits that rare (for him) low A on the last syllable of the song. Can a tenor be mellifluous? If so, Randy is just that here! There was a bit of disagreement amongst the band members, by the way, as to whether that opening chord is an F6/9 or a Bbmi6/F. What do you think?

Randy listens to Sirius-XM Radio’s 40s station on his cross-country tours (occasionally switching over to Kids Place Live where his not-JUST-for-kids songs enjoy plenty of airplay!). It was on the XM 40s station that Randy first heard Peggy Lee sing her 1946 #16 hit "I Don’t Know Enough About You," which she wrote with Dave Barbour. If you are acquainted with Randy’s back catalogue, you’ve probably noticed that his narrators are usually open books, sometimes to a fault. Said narrators take an almost perverse pleasure arming the women they’re courting with information to use against them. Maybe that’s how "You Know Too Much About Me" was born, as a realization of the danger inherent in this practice (or pathology). Despite the fact that Randy’s alter ego here envisions himself as the subject of a biological, anatomical, chemical, and historical dissection, it is the most lighthearted number on the album; just listen to the sportiveness in Randy’s voice. The song features Nate Craft on the trombone. He makes melodicizing on a microtonal instrument over an augmented chord with a flat nine in it sound easy!

The cautious plea "Let’s Not Fall in Love" (maybe it’s more of a self-satirical threnody) was written to contrast the reckless "Let’s Fall in Love," by Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen. "Let’s Fall in Love" was the title song from the 1933 film, sung by Art Jarrett and Ann Sothern. An instrumental version by Carmen Cavallaro appeared in the 1956 film The Eddy Duchin Story, the song having hit #1 in 1934 sung by Duchin himself. Koehler’s lyrics ask, “Why shouldn’t we fall in love?” Well, there are answers a-plenty here: Love is flat-out dangerous, demanding, distracting, cruel, and even goes door-to-door looking to accost and waylay gullible victims. Professor Maxey captures the suffering resistance to and vicissitudes of love perfectly with a constantly climbing and sinking clarinet line (flirting tantalizingly with Wagner’s famous Tristan chord in the process, which itself seems to form some part of every narrator’s leitmotif on this record!).

In Cole Porter’s "Easy to Love" (from Anything Goes – 1934) his narrator states his wish to “idolize,” “waken with,” even “sit down to eggs and bacon with” the object of his desire. As convincingly as a great trial lawyer in his closing arguments he states that he and his love would be “so grand at the game, so carefree together.” He even conjures a family with several children but, still, there is scant capitulation from the one who would be “so easy to love.” Well, in Kaplan’s "Hard to Love" the narrator is a bit more realistic. He’s not gonna make a complete fool of himself by avowing the object of his desire “easy.” No, she’s difficult and he knows it. She’s “not in the moment, all (she’s) in is control.” We’re led to believe that she is “a bit” manipulative. The narrator tells her, “You were good at the game when the game was beginning. I took my chances, you took your winnings.” Kaplan’s narrator is, perhaps, more bitter than Porter’s but he is under no illusions. He’s not getting what he wants, nor will he ever. Jimmy Stewart sang "Easy to Love" in the film Born to Dance (1936), by the way. He said it was such a good song that even he couldn’t ruin it. Again, Randy sings that low A. This time on “love” and not “happy.” Tone painting or just the opposite? I can’t decide.

"I’ll Be Around," written in 1942 by Alec Wilder, is another one from In the Wee Small Hours. The narrator of that song is more than a little bit pathetic and creepy. He’s going to be around… no matter what. He’ll be waiting, stalking, skulking. Weren’t there restraining orders back then?! Randy’s "I Won’t Be Around" narrator is intent on leaving but never seems to carry through on his threats of departure. The sixth chords which pop up throughout the song (sometimes along with a change in time signature) are as unexpected and seemingly out-of-place as the narrator himself, adding immeasurably to the evanescent mood. The song, which paints the narrator as a de-crowned king whose queen has deposed him, had a prelude that was eventually deemed a bit too precious for inclusion. It went like this: "Some kings hear talk of regicide / And still they will not run or hide / They’re hanged and yet they hang around / They want to haunt the castle grounds / But me, I’ll quit her marble halls / Her closely guarded fortress walls."

There was no argument amongst the band when it came to the intimately crooned "Light Dreamer." This is the strangest song of the collection, both harmonically and structurally. It’s filled with sneaky modulations and bizarre chord changes and could only have been written on a guitar as evidenced by the opening riff. Meanwhile, it must be nice to dream of someone and not be awaken in the middle of the best part. Sinatra seems to know the feeling, as is apparent by his performance of "Deep in a Dream," written in 1938 by Eddie DeLange & Jimmy Van Heusen, on In the Wee Small Hours. In Randy’s version, the dreamer is awakened by guilt, dread, wind, and metaphorical coinage. Randy is also referencing the 1944 song "Dream" by Johnny Mercer which is the last number on Sinatra’s 1960 LP Nice ‘N’ Easy, another collaboration with Nelson Riddle. "Dream" was the theme song of Mercer’s radio show, The Johnny Mercer Music Shop, and was originally recorded by The Pied Pipers. It was later used in the 1955 Fred Astaire film Daddy Long Legs. In Mercer’s song, “things aren’t always as bad as they seem.” I don’t know if we can say the same for the narrator of "Light Dreamer." What I can say about "Light Dreamer," though, is that Nate Craft and Chris Leopold create some dissonant dreamscape magic with their horns between verses.

"You Can Give Me Anything But Love" pays obvious homage to the very popular "I Can’t Give You Anything But Love" by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh (some folks claim that the song is by Fats Waller and Andy Razaf), especially with that augmented chord on “baby,” “honey,” and “darling.” Marilyn and Judy each sang the song at some point in their careers. It also appeared as part of the score of Ain’t Misbehavin’—the musical about the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s—but "I Can’t Give You Anything But Love" first appeared in the musical revue Blackbirds of 1928. Randy manages to sound both accusatory and wistful here. Brian Schey (on the majestic upright bass throughout the album) gave Randy that alternate chord in the last verse (on the word “anything”) “as a gift.”

The titles are the only link between "The Bottom of My Heart" and "The Bottom of Her Heart." (Who knew hackneyed titles could so inspire? To be fair, maybe it wasn’t hackneyed way back then.) The former was written in 1939 by Harry James, Andy Gibson, Billy Hayes, and Morty Berk. In the latter, Randy imagines the heart as a deep and dangerous cavern, an “inner core” akin to Dante’s Hell or the cellar of Bluebeard’s castle, in which fragments of airs and wordless melodies float aimlessly by. Randy wrote this on piano but enlisted Nick to play it here. It’s just Nick on those ivories and Randy on that larynx for most of the song. (Brian added a bowed bass part to the bridge.)

"Where or When," written in 1937 by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, was added to Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely when it came out on CD in 1987. Randy’s song "Never Nowhere" is a deadpan reply (in reverse) to the questions contained in the original song’s title. No one employs the major seven chord to such ironic effect quite like RK. Randy’s particular use of this dangerously mawkish chord hearkens back to his threnody “Boyfriend Song” which was a staple of his show with his band in the early 90s and which he later recorded solo for the fan favorite album Lake Champions. George Brahler’s flugelhorn floats forlornly above the changes here as the narrator, with a nod to Rodgers & Hammerstein, begs the object of his love to “wash him out of (her) hair,” ‘him’ being the perceived impediment to a lasting relationship. There’s no artificiality to this performance whatsoever. Just persuasiveness. Dramatically rendered.

"I’ll Never Be the Same," written in 1928 by Matty Malneck, Frank Signorelli, and Gus Kahn, is another selection from the great In the Wee Small Hours. "Certainly Della," a ballad from Randy’s 2001 record, Miraculous Dissolving Cures, contains the lines “I was scared of the earth lying under the sky / That's why I whispered about constellations changing.” I asked Randy to contrast that with his astronomical imagery in "I Will Always Be the Same." He told me that he used to be unnerved by the fact that in 10,000 years the stars that make up Orion’s Belt will no longer form a straight line. To him this seemed like a good excuse to avoid commitment of any kind. Even the stars, he reasoned, were fickle and inconstant. Well, judging from this song, it sounds like Randy found out that there are things more permanent than stars.

"The Ugly Neighbor," inspired somewhat abstrusely by "The Beautiful Strangers" (written by Rod McKuen in the 1960s specifically for the Frank Sinatra album A Man Alone), was originally set to open Songs for Old Lovers. However, Randy’s Bossa Nova-esque song is not really written or arranged in a 30s or 40s style (although Latin music, sometimes called “Tropical Style,” was definitely around back then) and so due to the anachronistic character of both "The Beautiful Strangers" and "The Ugly Neighbor" (and despite the expertly tactful drumming by Colin Mahoney) Randy includes the song here as a bonus track, a post-album extra, an afterthought… an afterglow?

The second bonus track, "I Won’t Be Around (Instrumental)," is a remix Mike created using only the horns, piano, and drums from "I Won’t Be Around." Where’s the singer? Not around. Conspicuously absent. Gone with the wind. I guess he finally carried through on his threat to leave, to vanish, to not be around. And now… ‘scuse me while I disappear.

—Montague Z. Young

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Reviews of SONGS FOR OLD LOVERS:

"Kaplan's dressed in an artfully tired classic 50s suit, handkerchief showing from jacket breast pocket, shirt and tie and a fedora that's carefully tilted, with a Marlboro moodily on the go. I'm thinking "que passa?" because after all I was way fortunate and so appreciative last year to get to know Randy's wonderful, calm way about words and syncopation via "Durango", his deceptively controlled Americana / Mexicana sparkling collaboration album with Brian Schey - check it out, it's a keeper that sticks, believe me - I'm a fan.

"Amongst that catch-me-if-you-can tequila madness twinkled early-hours-of-the-morning, star-lit glints of mono-chrome 1940s' American pop songwriting - I may have mentioned Hoagie Carmichael in my appreciation at that time. From that beginning, this collection comes as a carefully-built, in-the-image-of, and in-homage-to, the immortal blessed, blissed writing of Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Jimmy van Huesen and Johnny Mercer. A labour of love, this is admirable and puts a reach into Randy's songwriting, a stretch from his "Durango" high-mark and hence, I think it's an instinctive, perhaps brave move. Although recorded in the mid-West, this is Manhattan writ large and titled after Sinatra's 1954 "Songs for Young Lovers". The songs here all bear a relationship with classic 1920s-to1950s American old-school pop, correcting the all too easy, way off the mark thought, that music began with Bo, Buddy, Jerry Lee and Elvis.

""Sad to be Happy" sets the down-beat theme where, sometimes, when you got the blues you truly believe you'll never, but never, get out of it. Spiritually and vocally its uneasy listening, framed in Nick Weiser's minor-key piano, a flawless, understated melancholic saudade, late-night heartbreak in the big, noisy, busy, lonely city. Larry Maxey's exquisite Middle Eastern flavoured clarinet, a laid-back arrangement, and Randy's resigned, drained vocal make "Let's Not Fall in Love" a been-there, still-got- the-scars, déjà vu acquiescent admission of failure that maybe echoes that Tom Waits "I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You" inevitability. "Hard to Love" concerns bitter but realistic acceptance of the rough end of the emotional pineapple where "I took my chances and you took your winnings" and, invoking the wee small hours of the morning twixt hope and despair, "I Won't Be Around" is doomed, romantic fatalism comforted in blue-note piano, funky brass and Brian Schey's cool upright double bass. "I Will Always Be the Same" understands, sadly, the static que sera unavoidability of certain things where "My world will remain more steadfast than the stars above", and in contrast, an instrumental remix re-shapes the same track into a sticky, percussive 2 am club groove. A song suite flows throughout and if my imagination tells me that Randy Newman hovers over "The Bottom of Her Heart" then that is high praise, not low criticism. Montague Z Young liner-notes the sh*t out of the specific old-song to new-song references, an informed insightful read. Overall, Randy has made a brave move and overall, it works damned well - keep going, buddy."
—Peter Innes / ALL GIGS

"Paradoxical Love Chants: I've been listening to Randy Kaplan’s Songs for Old Lovers in the car. I find that it definitely helps temper the usual disgust and hatred I feel for other drivers, most of whom are old - too old to be driving - but probably not lovers. Anyway, I really like it. About time someone took an ironic pin to the sacred bubble of love, while doing it in such a loving way. Very cool concept. The record could have been titled: Love Songs For Old Post-Modernists. The arrangements, instruments and, of course, Randy’s voice are all spot on. Hope he sells a million of them."
—Bruce William Leigh / Author

"Randy Kaplan is a performer of many personae. In addition to a number of bluegrass-tinged albums in the singer-songwriter mould, he has recently won a cult following with a couple of children's albums.. For his latest release, meanwhile, he heads off in a different direction again to produce a collection of original compositions in the style of the Great American Songbook. But whilst many of the songs here are melodically almost indistinguishable from some of the stuff churned out by Tin Pan Alley in the first half of the Twentieth Century, replete with touches of vaudeville and lounge-jazz, the philosophy on which the songwriting is based is an outright subversion of the form. Indeed, songs like 'Let's Not Fall In Love' and 'Hard To Love' are outright rejections of the values which such songs typically expressed."
—AMERICANA-UK

"Up to this point in time, Randy Kaplan is best known for his albums geared towards children and families (his past albums have been praised highly by several noteworthy publications and web sites). Now with the release of Songs For Old Lovers (his eleventh full-length release), he heads off in a different direction. This album is Kaplan's tribute to the music of the 1930s and 1940s... specifically artists like Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Chet Baker, and Nat King Cole. But whereas most albums that tread in this territory present cover tunes, Lovers consists entirely of original songs penned by Kaplan himself. Ten slick cuts here that adequately recall the sound and feel of the past... and the cover art is definitely Sinatra all the way."
—BABY SUE

"New songs, old style - smooth and a little different. Randy Kaplan is a relatively cult solo artist most known for his CD’s of songs for kids, and for some kooky and unexpected choices of covers... "Songs For Old Lovers" is a record of his own compositions, but with the songs written in response to classics from the pre-war period. With the title a reflection of the Sinatra album "Songs For Young Lovers", accompanied by a cover shot of Randy doing his best rat packer pose, the rest of the record continues this theme. By and large, each song relates directly to some of these classics – "Hard To Love", for instance, being an answer to Cole Porter's "Easy To Love", and "The Bottom Of Her Heart" a response to "The Bottom Of My Heart", a 1939 composition, as the extensive liner notes explain... Your appreciation of this record will probably depend on your familiarity with and appreciation of the music of this, pre-pop chart, era. Certainly followers of Sinatra and co. and of the pre-war jazz styles would do well to check this out – as it’s well-produced and composed, and recorded to sound as close to the songs of that era as possible."
—Eddie Thomas / SUBBA-CULTCHA