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Lee Fisher witnesses a masterful and miraculous performance from one of the best country stars around on her farewell tour
Image: Emmylou Harris by Adam Kennedy
Jim Lauderdale is a seasoned singer-songwriter with a deep back catalogue, a resonant voice and a sparkling pink jacket, and he went down pretty well with the Empire’s packed audience. It was a bit slick for me, and his guitar playing was perhaps a bit too rudimentary to hold your attention for forty minutes. He was also, to be honest, a bit cornball – the platitudes and gratitudes got a bit much. But he had a handful of decent songs and he didn’t keep us too long, so it was fine.
Full disclosure: I guess I came to see Emmylou Harris in part because it was her farewell overseas tour and I wanted to tick her off the list while I could. I expected veteran charm, some classic songs, good ole country professionalism. Nearly two hours later, as I wiped fat, salty tears from my stupid face, I realised how much I’d underestimated her. Harris runs through the last 50-some years of country music like the name of a crappy seaside town through a stick of rock. She’s collaborated with Dylan, Neil Young, Dolly, Townes van Zandt, Gillian Welch and dozens of others, and of course her career and reputation is inextricably linked with that of Gram Parsons. She is, my friends, one of the best to ever do it, and from the moment she appeared on stage everything served to remind us of the fact.
As she kicked off with Love Hurts, sung in duet with Lauderdale, there was an almost audible gasp as everyone realised this was going to be special. Two songs later we got Gillian Welch’s Orphan Girl, one of the finest country songs of the last thirty years, and that’s how it went for the whole show – one classic song after another. Her band The Red Dirt Boys had a tough gig – a backing band in this sort of set-up has to be unobtrusive, not overpower the star, but still play brilliantly and take the odd solo without grandstanding. They got it just right, exactly midway between background and showy. And Emmylou is absolutely remarkable – while she might have to work a little harder for a few of the high notes, her voice is still a miraculous instrument, and she is funny, gracious, interesting and chatty, full of great anecdotes and asides, never cornball or self-aggrandising.
A gorgeous take on Townes’ evergreen all-timer Pancho & Lefty broke me, and my neighbour, and probably half the room, and from then on the whole thing was pure, gorgeous heartbreak. The set finished with her tribute to Gram, Boulder To Birmingham – an absolutely crushing song about his loss (“I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham, If I thought I could see your face”) and then a stunning take on his Return Of The Grievous Angel. Cue a long and heartfelt standing ovation, an encore of Buck Owen’s perennial Together Again, another ovation and then Emmylou was gone from English concert halls for ever. Music is magic. Emmylou is a queen.
