Michael Ingersoll admitted that he didn’t fully appreciate Glen Campbell until very recently.
“I got introduced to him as late as five years ago,” said the nationally touring recording artist. “We were in the car listening to the radio and ‘Gentle on my Mind’ came on. We started taking a deep dive into his music.”
That’s what inspired Ingersoll’s new show, “Southern Nights: Michael Ingersoll Sings Glen Campbell,” which he will perform on April 3 at Metropolis Performing Arts Center in Arlington Heights and April 5 at Freedom Hall in Park Forest as part of his Artists Lounge Live series.
“I had been trying to figure out for years whether I was going to develop a concert for myself in this company that my wife and I own,” Ingersoll said. He is the executive producer and his wife, Angela Ingersoll, is artistic director of Artists Lounge Live which produces solo concerts for talented performers focusing on the music of one iconic performer as well as details about that person’s life.
“I always want the best person for the job and in some other ideas I had, I could think of somebody who could do it better than me,” Ingersoll laughingly admitted.
During that deep dive, Ingersoll learned a lot about Glen Campbell’s music that he really liked.
“It was pop music but it was kind of eclectic,” Ingersoll said. “It was highly orchestrated. It was moving. The lyrics had these gorgeous images in them. It really kind of hugged me. I’m not from a big city. I’m from Southern Ohio so this music hit a little more closely to home for me.”
The project was put on hold during the pandemic as Ingersoll worked to keep his company going by focusing on the shows that were already completed.
Three or four months ago, at the urging of Metropolis, where the show had been booked and had sold briskly before it had to be canceled due to the pandemic, the Ingersolls continued working on the show.
To learn about Campbell’s life, Ingersoll read his autobiography, “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
Through that autobiography and writings about him by his peers Ingersoll learned some things about Campbell that surprised him.
“He worked with everybody,” Ingersoll revealed. “He worked with Elvis. He worked with Sinatra. He was a Beach Boy for a year as a virtuosic guitar player.”
It also surprised Ingersoll to learn that Campbell had grown up as a sharecropper in Arkansas and that he went to two churches every Sunday, starting with his own church.
“He would stand outside the Baptist church down the road and just listen to the music outside,” Ingersoll said. “That’s when he started to get hooked on music that wasn’t just white. He distinctly remembers the huge feelings of joy that came from that gospel music.”
Ingersoll added that it was good to know that he was one of the early superstars who wanted to collaborate with Black artists.
Angela Ingersoll wrote the script based on the research that the two of them did.
In choosing which songs to perform from Campbell’s huge catalog, Michael Ingersoll followed the pattern that he uses with all the Artists Lounge Live shows that he and his wife create.
“I want the audience to know 80% of the songs we do,” Ingersoll explained. “Part of the joy of concerts like this is people hearing the songs that they know the words to and will sing along to. We always start with the biggest hits.”
For this show, that will include “Gentle on my Mind,” “Rhinestone Cowboy,” “By the Time I get to Phoenix,” “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife,” “True Grit,” and “Try a Little Kindness.”
They will also include some lesser-known songs, “if it’s got a good story to it,” Ingersoll said.
He will be backed by two guitarists that double on banjo and mandolin. “There’s going to be some authentic rockabilly-bluegrass texture,” Ingersoll said. There will also be two keyboardists in the seven-person band.
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The show will be performed in the fall at Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire.
‘Southern Nights: Michael Ingersoll Sings Glen Campbell’
When: 3 p.m. April 3
Where: Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 W. Campbell St., Arlington Heights
Tickets: $45; stage tables $50
Information: 847-577-2121; metropolisarts.com
When: 11 a.m. April 5
Where: Freedom Hall, 410 Lakewood Blvd., Park Forest
Tickets: $30
Information: 708-747-0580, freedomhall.org
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.