Geoffrey Leigh Tozer spends a lot of time living in a world of his own making, but when he lets an audience in, magic happens.

Tozer’s world is Swanktown, and Tozer is the mayor.  Much like the Twilight Zone, it’s a place where anything can happen, and whatever happens becomes the backstory for the wealth of original songs he performs in the course of an evening at the piano.

Though the songs vary from jazz to country-western to blues to less definable categories, they rarely follow a specific musical pattern.  Like a Noël Coward composition — whose lyrics may have one line with twenty words or more, followed by a line with just six words — the patterns in Tozer’s songs weave in and out of predictability.  And, even when they do fall into somewhat of a set pattern, it would be hard for another singer to duplicate Tozer’s delivery — spitting the words out in rapid succession or drawing them out slowly — now rapping, now rhapsodizing, all of it totally unpredictable and totally mesmerizing to listen to.

While each song supposedly stems from some encounter among the citizens of Swanktown, each is about real feelings and real emotions, often communicated in the simplest words or the most uplifting musical riffs.  Tozer’s grab-bag of goodies from his vivid musical imagination included several songs that had the crowd cheering.

Among them:  “Got to Find My Heart,” a mellow lament about the aftermath of a romance on the rocks (“Since you left me/You wrecked me for anybody else”), sung with a bit of a country-and-western wail — supposedly occasioned when Dr. Peculiar, Swanktown’s resident heart surgeon, was dumped by his girl, Caramel Candy;  “The Sunlight in Those Eyes,” a reverie about falling in love — inspired by an encounter between Cosmo D’Gigolo and a wood nymph he meets in the forest; “Drinking Water from Your Hands,” a gentle, sweet ballad — dedicated to Mika the Akita, who sleeps under the piano; and “When the Sadness Come,” reflecting the thoughts of a lonely young girl remembering a love lost.

Perhaps Tozer’s most well-received song was “Neon Lobster,” a bluesy ditty about life lessons learned from the crustacean on the sign at Sam’s Seafood Bar & Grille — “who’s rather chatty for a shellfish” — who comes down off his perch to speak words of truth to Swanktown’s mayor during a dream.

Tozer spins out his terrific songs while playing the piano exuberantly and with total swank before he jumps up to weave another amazing tale to set up another wonderful song, then moves back to the piano and so on throughout the evening.

Tozer has been developing his tales of Swanktown for years — for the past two years they’ve been part of the “Swanktown” program on SiriusXM radio , encompassing stories and musical interludes.  A possible TV version is in the offing.

Elliot Zwiebach
Cabaret Scenes
August 22, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org