"Somone To Lay Down Beside Me," "All My Life," "Isn't It Always Love," "Goodbye, My Friend," and "Lose Again," "Falling Star," "If He's Ever Near," and "Home."

Love, passion, loss, longing, home. All at the heart of what this human life is composed of are sources of inspiration for the ballads of Karla Bonoff. Karla has been writing and singing her songs for 40 years  She will be playing some of them for us when she returns to the Opera House at Boothbay Harbor on Friday, June 12. Accompanying Karla will be the virtuoso guitarist and friend Nina Gerber, whom she's been playing with for more than 20 years. And this, my friends, is a concert you do not want to miss. 

I had an opportunity to speak with Karla about her 40-year career. Yep, her early years go back to the legendary Troubador Club in West Hollywood where Karla heard Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne pre-label contract or just after the first album releases. 

 "It was just such a magical time, and watching people do those Monday nights, and then you know, record company people would swarm them, and they'd get record deals. I mean, I watched Seals and Crofts do a Monday night like that and right after all these record company people swarmed around them and they got signed. I think just watching those moments, you know, was pretty amazing. And just the proximity to other people; I mean, how we all met each other, and it was a tiny club, like 100 people. Wow, you know, there was this little balcony there and people would come off the stage and walk up ... I don't know, it was just a great opportunity for a lot of people to network with each other."

I was curious about Karla’s writing process and for her, a possible new song always starts with the music because it inspires her emotionally to "pull up feelings." (Yeah, it does.) She needs to have that good melody or chord progression to inspire her before she even feels like moving on to the lyrics.

"You know some songs just seem to kind of come out of this deep subconscious sort of dreamlike place, you don't even really know is happening until the words start coming out. And then other ones are more conscious, where you know something specific is happening, and then you feel like getting it out on paper. But for me, most of the time it's been more that sort of magical music, kind of pulling out feelings sort of from, you know, not right out of your consciousness, but out of somewhere kind of more gut level.”

Like me, Karla first heard Linda Ronstadt & the Stone Poneys on her transistor radio; she in her bedroom and me on the beach. "It just had a whole different sound we'd never heard before," Karla said. "I think it's harder and harder, for me anyway, to hear things that sound brand new, you know. IT was the singer-songwriter time. I think our generation was lucky."

And we in the audience on the 12th will be lucky, too.  Songs we can expect to hear at the Opera House include three fan favorites: "Someone to Lay Down Beside Me,"  "Home" and the old folk tune, "The Water Is Wide."  From there it's whatever Karla is moved to play, and no matter what those songs turn out to be we'll be happy. 

"I look out there in the audience, and I go, 'Wow, it's a lot of gray hair.' When did that happen? You know, I realized those people are there because they've carried you sort of through their whole lives, since they were in college, or whatever. And I mean, and I'm so grateful for that. I mean, it's such a cool thing."  

Karla and Nina’s concert is nigh and you'll want to be there. If you’re local, walk or drive over to 86 Townsend Ave. here in Boothbay Harbor and pick up some tickets or call the Opera House box office – 633-5159 and get yourselves some discounted tickets. They are also available at  https://boothbayoperahouse.com. Doors will open at 7 p.m.