Singer-songwriter Bonoff returns for post-pandemic Tucson show

California singer-songwriter Karla Bonoff spent her COVID-19 downtime doing something she never imagined in her 50-year career.

She recorded a holiday album.

It started out as one song, recorded in isolation with her friend and producer.

“It was just a silly idea, just for something to do to keep us busy,” she recalled. “It started to be so much fun that we kept going and doing more and more and finally we had a CD’s worth of stuff.”

She was late releasing the album; most holiday records come out by August.

“Silent Night” came out in November.

“Shockingly it was picked by the New York Times as one of their top 20 Christmas albums,” she said. “I was amazed.”

“COVID was a blessing in a sense because I would never have done something like that,” said Bonoff, who said she will probably not break out any of those “Silent Night” songs when she plays her first post-pandemic Tucson show on Friday, May 13. “I would never have had the time.”

Her show at the Berger Performing Arts Center will be her first since Valentine’s Day 2020 — a few weeks before the pandemic shut everything down. It is one of a dozen shows she will do through the month with guitarist and longtime collaborator Nina Gerber.

She and Gerber have been performing together since 2010, but their musical partnership goes back to around 2005 when Gerber invited Bonoff and her then collaborator Kenny Edwards to perform at a festival honoring the late California singer-songwriter Kate Wolf.

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Gerber had played with Wolf for years before the singer’s death in 1986 and was involved in the annual Bay Area festival honoring Wolf.

It was at one of those festivals that Bonoff and Gerber met. Gerber arranged for Bonoff and Edwards, who was part of Linda Ronstadt’s Stone Poneys in the 1960s, to perform.

“Nina was sitting at this monitor pretty much all the time and somebody said, ‘Wow, she must really like your music. She doesn’t listen to anybody,’” Bonoff recalled.

She and Edwards invited Gerber to join them for a gig a few days later and on that stage, the trio found magic.

Gerber, Edwards and Bonoff performed together until Edwards death in 2010.

“When Kenny passed, we decided to keep doing it, just the two of us,” said Bonoff, 70. “Kenny was so special. There was no replacing him.”

Friday’s show at the Berger, 1200 W. Speedway, on the campus of the Arizona Schools for the Deaf and Blind campus, starts at 7:30 p.m. Tucson duo Riso opens the show, which is presented by In Concert.

Tickets are $28-$30 through inconcerttucson.com.

Although we won’t get to hear Bonoff perform anything off “Silent Night,” she said she and Livingston Taylor — James Taylor’s brother — will do a handful of holiday shows later this year.