Southern Soul singer Edwin McCain returns to Newton

NEWTON — Southern soul singer Edwin McCain returns for an intimate performance on Saturday, Feb. 21 at 8 p.m.

For more than 20 years McCain has performed creating pop hits "I’ll Be" and "I Could Not Ask For More."

“I’ve been lucky enough to experience a pretty broad range of stardom, and the lack thereof, throughout my journey as a musician,” he said. “I’ve been on television shows and won awards, but I’ve also lived in the back of a truck, and I’ve even worked the Drive-Thru at Krispy Kreme singing wedding songs.”

Those songs have turned into wedding anthems and soundtracks to countless wedding proposals. Over a million Dr. Phil viewers voted "I’ll Be" as the best wedding song ever written, the New York Times dubbed him the “great American romantic."

“They’re kind of emotional road maps,” Edwin explains, “and each one, especially if you’re connected to it in some real way, can change and grow and lead you in new directions of thought.”

“But the highlight of what I do is playing for and connecting with the people that come out to see me live. The fans — and I hate to call them fans — the friends of music that survive the advertising campaign long enough to understand what music is truly about, and have incorporated my music into their lives to the point where it is are part of their memories and emotions — those are the ones I do it all for.”

“It’s not about chart positions or record sales or anything like that,” insists the man with 11 albums, a wall of platinum and gold albums, and reams of Top 10, 20 and 40 hits, “it just has to do with people coming together and sharing a moment, that'ʹs it. And that’s all I ever wanted to do. I just love that moment in the small club and bar where every single person in there has a moment where it’s silent and they get it and it’s beautiful, that moment where the music that’s coming off the stage is much more than the players and much more than the audience and something happens and you’re sitting there and your hair stands up. That’s it, man. I love it.”

Tickets for Edwin McCain are $37 for premium seating, $32 for orchestra and $27 for balcony. Purchase tickets by visiting www.thenewtontheatre.com or contact the Box Office at 973-383-3700.

The historic Newton Theatre, located at 234 Spring Street in Newton.