I would love Emmylou Harris if only for her work on GP near the beginning of her career, and her work on I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning much later, and while her solo career is certainly Country Music Hall Of Fame worthy, it is those two parenthesis that hold my interest. “Boulder To Birmingham” is a great song but after that it is very catch as catch can. Sometimes you are rewarded and sometimes you are nodding off. It is all that good taste stuff. “Blue Kentucky Girl” is so beautiful but it lacks, I guess the word is, spunk. I’ve seen her live on two occasions and thought she was a bore both times.
So why go and see Emmylou Harris on March 27th at the Beacon Theater? Because her February release is a collaboration with Rodney Crowell and the former Mr. Roseanne Cash is never close to a bore. I saw him at the China Club back in the day (the great writer Jeff Nesin, introduced me to him after the show) and the man was a dynamo, a nonstop country rock breakthrough. Plus he produced Roseanne’s masterpiece Somewhere In The Stars, plus he sang “She Loves The Jerk” and I bet he pushes Emmylou to leave her good taste pondering at home.
But if it goes the other way round, and Rodney gets lugubriously mellow, guess what? Richard Thompson, one of the greatest live acts around, will blow em both off stage. No really, the man is not simply the English Fairport Convention folkie. He is a great electric guitar player , one of the best in fact ,and a personably self-deprecating wit, and really unbeatable on stage. And I would not want Thompson opening for me on a bet so I am sure that even if Crowell decided to phone it in, he wouldn't’t be able to.
Between the three, it should make for an enormous show and the only thing I might do is put Emmylou first.