When Emmylou Harris made her UK debut at London’s New Victoria Theatre in November 1975, she was barely a year into a solo career precipitated by tragic circumstance. In September 1973, her mentor and singing partner Gram Parsons fatally overdosed in a desert motel room, before the release of Grievous Angel, their second album together.
At a time when she and Parsons should have been taking their music to even greater heights, she found herself a guardian of Gram’s legacy – even as she made the new musical life for herself she has lived now for over 50 years, during which she has often seemed to represent everything that’s best about American music (large swathes of it, anyway). It would be trite, perhaps, to talk about Country Royalty, but if she’d been delivered to the stage of the Royal Albert Hall in a gilded chariot after sailing up the Thames in a replica of Cleopatra’s Barge, it would not have seemed excessive.
She is at the Albert Hall as part of her European Farewell Tour, Emmylou – 80 next year – retiring from the stage with these goodbyes. The set, as you’d probably expect from a farewell show, is wide-ranging; reminiscent, actually, of the sets from the 1986-1997 Spyboy tour. Eight of tonight’s songs also appeared on the live Spyboy album that followed, including the spine-chilling, acapella gospel of “Bring My Children Home”.
Her voice remains remarkable, if a little frail at times. But it is sensational on “Making Believe”, and she later brings a lot of wallop to a bar band version of Delbert McClinton’s “Two More Bottles Of Wine”. Another highlight is a version of a song originally recorded for Pieces Of The Sky, her solo debut, the album she was promoting all those years ago at the New Victoria with the legendary Hot Band.
She opens, however, with “Love Hurts”, one of her most celebrated duets with Parsons, sung with tour opener Jim Lauderdale – who looks, with his white mane and well-kept teeth, like a Tennessee televangelist in a Nudie suit. They are joined after a couple of verses by Harris’s impeccable band, The Red Dirt Boys: guitarist Will Kimbrough, Phil Madeira on keyboards, bassist Chris Donohue, drummer Bryan Owings, and the breathtaking Eamon McLoughlin – last seen playing with Rodney Crowell at the Kilkenny Roots Festival – on fiddle and mandolin.
There is still much applause when she starts the beautifully forsaken “Here I Am”, which she wrote for 2003’s Stumble Into Grace. Her reputation as an interpretive singer is, of course, peerless. But she is also an underestimated songwriter; never prolific, perhaps, but whenever her name appears in brackets after a song, it’s going to be worth listening to.
She doesn’t play either “The Road” or “Michaelangelo”, songs of almost apocalyptic woe, awash with allusions to Gram Parsons. But “Tulsa Queen” is sultry and evocative, “Red Dirt Girl” a thing of trembling beauty, and “Prayer In Open D”, from 1993’s Cowgirl’s Prayer, is desperately bereft.
Elsewhere, there’s Gillian Welch’s “Orphan Girl”, from the career redefining Wrecking Ball, stunningly done; bluegrass nods to Bill Monroe on “Get Up John”, that she recorded with The Nash Ramblers; and Ralph Stanley’s “Green Pastures”. There’s a rousing take on Johnny Cash’s “Help Him, Jesus” from the 1980 Paul Kennerley-written concept album, The Legend Of Jesse James. And she virtually glides through Nanci Griffiths’s “Gulf Coast Highway”.
An inevitably beautiful “Pancho And Lefty” is introduced with a lovely anecdote about first meeting Townes Van Zandt in Greenwich Village in the late ’60s, when she was playing three sets a night at Gerde’s Folk City. It’s followed by an equally poised “If I Needed You”, another Townes gem. A version of Steve Earle’s “Goodbye” nearly brings the house down.
Parsons is evoked again on the Flying Burrito Brothers’ “Wheels”, noble and grandly realised. She goes further back into his career, to The International Submarine Band, for “Luxury Liner”, taken at an incredible lick, driven by Brian Owings’ drums and lashings of McLoughlin’s fiddle. The show’s most heart-stopping moment follows: a transcendent version of “Boulder To Birmingham”, her requiem for Gram, written soon after his death and also the highlight of her 1975 New Victoria concert. After this, Neil Young’s “Long May You Run” is a valedictory closer.
The closing-time heartache of Buck Owens’ “Together Again”, part of her repertoire since Elite Hotel, is the single encore. For all the grand theatres and fancy concert halls Harris has played over the last 50 years, there is a part of her music whose home will always be a honkytonk somewhere off Route 66, a roadhouse, cantina or saloon. Out there with the truckers and the kickers, and all the cowboy angels. Unforgettable, all of it.
SETLIST
1 Love Hurts
2 Here I Am
3 Orphan Girl
4 Making Believe
5 Green Pastures
6 Get Up John
7 Gulf Coast Highway
8 One Of These Days
9 Pancho And Lefty
10 If I Needed You
11 Red Dirt Girl
12 Two More Bottles Of Wine
13 Help Him, Jesus
14 Born To Run
15 Calling My Children Home
16 Prayer In Open D
17 Goodbye
18 Tulsa Queen
19 All The Roadrunning
20 Wheels
21 Luxury Liner
22 Long May You Run
ENCORE
23 Together Again
When Emmylou Harris made her UK debut at London’s New Victoria Theatre in November 1975, she was barely a year into a solo career precipitated by tragic circumstance. In September 1973, her mentor and singing partner Gram Parsons fatally overdosed in a desert motel room, before the release of Grievous Angel, their second album together.
At a time when she and Parsons should have been taking their music to even greater heights, she found herself a guardian of Gram’s legacy – even as she made the new musical life for herself she has lived now for over 50 years, during which she has often seemed to represent everything that’s best about American music (large swathes of it, anyway). It would be trite, perhaps, to talk about Country Royalty, but if she’d been delivered to the stage of the Royal Albert Hall in a gilded chariot after sailing up the Thames in a replica of Cleopatra’s Barge, it would not have seemed excessive.
She is at the Albert Hall as part of her European Farewell Tour, Emmylou – 80 next year – retiring from the stage with these goodbyes. The set, as you’d probably expect from a farewell show, is wide-ranging; reminiscent, actually, of the sets from the 1986-1997 Spyboy tour. Eight of tonight’s songs also appeared on the live Spyboy album that followed, including the spine-chilling, acapella gospel of “Bring My Children Home”.
Her voice remains remarkable, if a little frail at times. But it is sensational on “Making Believe”, and she later brings a lot of wallop to a bar band version of Delbert McClinton’s “Two More Bottles Of Wine”. Another highlight is a version of a song originally recorded for Pieces Of The Sky, her solo debut, the album she was promoting all those years ago at the New Victoria with the legendary Hot Band.
She opens, however, with “Love Hurts”, one of her most celebrated duets with Parsons, sung with tour opener Jim Lauderdale – who looks, with his white mane and well-kept teeth, like a Tennessee televangelist in a Nudie suit. They are joined after a couple of verses by Harris’s impeccable band, The Red Dirt Boys: guitarist Will Kimbrough, Phil Madeira on keyboards, bassist Chris Donohue, drummer Bryan Owings, and the breathtaking Eamon McLoughlin – last seen playing with Rodney Crowell at the Kilkenny Roots Festival – on fiddle and mandolin.
There is still much applause when she starts the beautifully forsaken “Here I Am”, which she wrote for 2003’s Stumble Into Grace. Her reputation as an interpretive singer is, of course, peerless. But she is also an underestimated songwriter; never prolific, perhaps, but whenever her name appears in brackets after a song, it’s going to be worth listening to.
She doesn’t play either “The Road” or “Michaelangelo”, songs of almost apocalyptic woe, awash with allusions to Gram Parsons. But “Tulsa Queen” is sultry and evocative, “Red Dirt Girl” a thing of trembling beauty, and “Prayer In Open D”, from 1993’s Cowgirl’s Prayer, is desperately bereft.
Elsewhere, there’s Gillian Welch’s “Orphan Girl”, from the career redefining Wrecking Ball, stunningly done; bluegrass nods to Bill Monroe on “Get Up John”, that she recorded with The Nash Ramblers; and Ralph Stanley’s “Green Pastures”. There’s a rousing take on Johnny Cash’s “Help Him, Jesus” from the 1980 Paul Kennerley-written concept album, The Legend Of Jesse James. And she virtually glides through Nanci Griffiths’s “Gulf Coast Highway”.
An inevitably beautiful “Pancho And Lefty” is introduced with a lovely anecdote about first meeting Townes Van Zandt in Greenwich Village in the late ’60s, when she was playing three sets a night at Gerde’s Folk City. It’s followed by an equally poised “If I Needed You”, another Townes gem. A version of Steve Earle’s “Goodbye” nearly brings the house down.
Parsons is evoked again on the Flying Burrito Brothers’ “Wheels”, noble and grandly realised. She goes further back into his career, to The International Submarine Band, for “Luxury Liner”, taken at an incredible lick, driven by Brian Owings’ drums and lashings of McLoughlin’s fiddle. The show’s most heart-stopping moment follows: a transcendent version of “Boulder To Birmingham”, her requiem for Gram, written soon after his death and also the highlight of her 1975 New Victoria concert. After this, Neil Young’s “Long May You Run” is a valedictory closer.
The closing-time heartache of Buck Owens’ “Together Again”, part of her repertoire since Elite Hotel, is the single encore. For all the grand theatres and fancy concert halls Harris has played over the last 50 years, there is a part of her music whose home will always be a honkytonk somewhere off Route 66, a roadhouse, cantina or saloon. Out there with the truckers and the kickers, and all the cowboy angels. Unforgettable, all of it.
SETLIST
1 Love Hurts
2 Here I Am
3 Orphan Girl
4 Making Believe
5 Green Pastures
6 Get Up John
7 Gulf Coast Highway
8 One Of These Days
9 Pancho And Lefty
10 If I Needed You
11 Red Dirt Girl
12 Two More Bottles Of Wine
13 Help Him, Jesus
14 Born To Run
15 Calling My Children Home
16 Prayer In Open D
17 Goodbye
18 Tulsa Queen
19 All The Roadrunning
20 Wheels
21 Luxury Liner
22 Long May You Run
ENCORE
23 Together Again