When Jim Brickman walks out on stage, he doesn’t face an audience. He is ready to visit with friends.

“People feel like they know me,” Brickman said by phone. “And it’s conversational, so some of the approach is like the conversation we’re having right now. We’re talking, but there are thousands of people there.”

People do know Brickman. He’s been writing songs for himself and top stars like Martina McBride, Lady A, Johnny Mathis, and Seals and Croft; for Broadway, and for commercials, as well as playing the piano and entertaining with his warm, romantic adult contemporary pop music, for more than a quarter of a century.

He’s also earned 21 No. 1 albums, 32 Top 20 radio hits, and two Grammy nominations.

Since his first album in 1995, he’s sold — so far — 8 million albums worldwide.

He’ll be visiting with his friends in Toledo at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday for A Very Merry Christmas with “daddy-daughter duo” Mat and Savanna Shaw at the Valentine Theatre. For tickets, $29 to $69, go to valentinetheatre.com. 

“It’s not ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town,’” Brickman said of the show. “I figure people can see that anywhere.”

What this show is, he said, is a nod to those old Christmas shows with Dean Martin or Andy Williams, where guests drop in, banter, and sing.

“It’s a gathering,” he said. “I do my stuff, and then there are special guests, and it looks beautiful, and all of that to me it’s nostalgic.”

The Shaws are a musical duo who shot to fame during the locked-down days of the coronavirus pandemic because of their music videos. Since 2020, they’ve released four albums.

The New York Times music critic Jon Caramanica said the father and daughter duo “became a quarantine-era YouTube success story for their acoustic duets of religious-esque songs that were pinpoint precise ...”

“Honestly, just Mat and Savanna alone is worth coming,” Brickman said of his guests. “The other day when we played the show, there were so many Mat and Savanna fans I thought, Oh my God, I’m an accompanist to Mat and Savanna.”

When you have special guests, Brickman said, it’s important that there’s a chemistry among the people on stage. His guests, he stressed, are not opening acts.

“When you have guests, you want to have a reason for being, a purpose, not just this person is popular, put them in the show. There has to be a relationship,” he said.

And with the Shaws, he has one.

“I’ve written a lot of songs for them, so there’s been a lot of collaboration beforehand, so it’s a natural fit,” he said. “So the onstage banter and commentary with all of us, it’s very authentic; there’s nothing about it that makes it feel like you’re reading a script because it’s all impromptu.”

That’s usually how Brickman rolls, even when he goes solo.

It’s not unusual for performers to feel nervous when going on stage, and Brickman acknowledges that as a performer, he should feel that way too.

“I was extremely shy, I am extremely shy,” he said. “But when I get up there’s an ease; it seems completely like I’m supposed to be there. I don’t get nervous about it, I’ve been doing it for 25 years, but [even] at the very beginning I didn’t.”

He said even at that very beginning, he didn’t study or rehearse extensively.

“I just went out and talked and laughed and told funny stories but not jokes,” Brickman said.

That worked. Now, he said, people who know his music and know his concerts expect that ease, that familiarity.

“That became what people expect, a lot of laughter, a lot of emotional connection, a lot of beauty and hopefulness and idealism,” he said.

Brickman, a native of Cleveland, said he always knew that he wanted a career in music, but he didn’t know what it was going to be exactly. That could have been why he exasperated his piano teacher as teen, because the teacher’s instruction didn’t allow him the freedom to play around on the instrument.

He wasn’t a virtuoso. He was a songwriter. And he knew it.

Brickman began his career in advertising, writing jingles, and was pretty successful at it. Some clients included McDonald’s, Pontiac, Kellogg’s, Puppy Chow, and KeyBank, and he even composed music for the children’s television show Sesame Street.

Still, something else was out there. So he packed up and moved to Los Angeles without an agenda but with a goal.

“When you’re in Cleveland, there’s not a lot of entertainment-industry opportunities,” he said.

He knew what he didn’t want to do — be in a band — but he didn’t know what he wanted to do. As he paced about his house casting about for ideas he passed by his piano, which he said he hadn’t played for a couple of weeks.

“I just walked by it in my house and thought, God, what’s wrong with this picture? This is what I do,” he recalled.

So he recorded some of his music in a rented studio.

“When I listened back to some of it, I thought, maybe there’s a place for this kind of music, very melodic, instrumental, not jazz or ambient, but relaxing and romantic,” Brickman said.

So he took the tapes on the road to some radio stations across the nation, so he could pitch to record executives, assuring them his music would be played. “So, it’s the Elvis-Loretta Lynn approach, you know, drive around the country with your baloney-sandwiches pitch and look for radio towers,” he recalled with a laugh.

At the time his music was hard to define. Windham Hill signed him, hesitantly at first, he said, because his music, though romantic, melodic, and relaxing, was not New Age. But after his record made a splash, they were behind him all the way. 

Brickman said he’s been singing his songs for some time now. His shows are not piano recitals, and when audiences call out for him to play a favorite song and there’s no singer on stage with him, he is honor bound to perform it, words and all.

“I think my shows are good, but there’s something about this [upcoming] one that is, and I think especially for Toledo audiences because I’ve been there so often,” Brickman said. “I’ve played there at least 20 times, and so you always want to bring something new.”

He thinks his show is that new version of a Christmas show that Toledoans have never seen before. But he wants you to see for yourself. 

First Published December 11, 2022, 2:30 p.m.