When he steps out on the stage of the Paramount on July 30, with just a guitar and a harmonica, Kris Kristofferson will be 76 years old. He’ll be singing songs that draw a picture of a man who has looked with a boxer’s stare and a poet’s soul right into the face of life and made his peace with every inch of it. His voice will sound like it always has, a ragged boot heel scraping pavement. But the spirit of those songs, the spirit of the man, will be up there reaching for the rafters, looking for a way out into the wide open American sky where it belongs. And as for that tombstone the world was preparing for him early on, he now says he wants it to be carved with words from fellow poet, fellow pilgrim, Leonard Cohen:
“Like a bird on a wire. Like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free”.