Ex-Monkee Nesmith Still Doesn’t Miss a Beat Despite a 12-Year Absence

How do you catch up with old friends after a 12-year absence? Pioneering country-rocker-turned-video-visionary Michael Nesmith did it on Friday at the Strand via an easygoing rapport with the capacity crowd that made it seem as if he’d never been away.

Having spent most of the ‘80s behind a desk building his Pacific Arts Corp. into a film-video mini-empire, the ex-Monkee is off on an eight-city concert tour to promote Rhino Records’ new CD compilation drawn from six solo albums he made in the early ‘70s.

Save for a couple of his earliest songs, most have aged gracefully: his 1970 single “Joanne” emerged a sweetly melancholy memory; 1972’s “Harmony Constant” became an exquisite merging of country-music heart, inventive pop melody and literate lyric expressiveness, all tastefully interwoven by his guitar-bass-keyboards backing band.

Nesmith fast-forwarded to the present for one new song and reached half a lifetime back in a gently wizened reading of “Papa Gene’s Blues” off the Monkees’ debut album.

He even took a coolly elegant climb up the twisting melodic vine of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine.”

Pretty impressive for a guy who once spent four years under a green wool hat.