Seems like yesterday, but it was 39 1/2 years ago when I saddled up the ol’ Chevette and galloped into Philly to see Emmylou Harris at the Academy of Music, the first time I saw her in concert. The night featured two sets, with the first featuring older material and the second her then-current The Ballad of Sally Rose album in full, followed by a lengthy encore. Little did I know that, while I enjoyed the show from one of the front rows, my wife Diane—who I’d meet in four years—was somewhere in the balcony or that we would see Emmylou in the decades to come many times together.
Last night’s show at the Durham Performing Arts Center in Durham, NC, featured a sterling set of 22 songs that spanned about 110 minutes. She opened with “Here I Am” from her 2003 Stumbling Into Grace album; it’s a reflection on faith, love and the departed, at least as I hear it, and set the tone for the night. She referenced her parents and childhood several times, as well as her connection to North Carolina. (As a kid, her family lived on several military bases in the state and, much later, she attended UNC Greensboro for a few years.)
She returned to her “brunette years,” as she called them, with her rendition of the classic Kitty Wells hit “Making Believe”—one of many highlights on Diane’s favorite Emmylou album, Luxury Liner. Another highlight came almost midway through the night, when she mentioned the passing of Nanci Griffith; I assumed as she spoke that she was about to perform the song she recorded for the More Than a Whisper tribute album to Nanci, “Love Wore a Halo (Back Before the War),” but was wrong. Instead, she explained how the forthcoming song reminded her of her parents, and then, with Will Kimbrough sharing the vocals, took us to the “Gulf Coast Highway.” (She recorded it with Willie Nelson for her 1990 Duets collection.) That was followed by Billie Joe Shaver’s “Old Five and Dimers Like Me,” which also featured Kimbrough. (The latter was one of eight songs that overlapped with the Emmylou Harris show we saw in 2019.) “Wheels” rolled along, while “Luxury Liner” had Diane dancing in her seat.
Emmy then referenced 9/11, as yesterday was the 23rd anniversary of the terrorist attack, and how many of us remember where we were when we learned of the tragedy unfolding in New York. She paid tribute to the heroic firefighters who rushed into the Twin Towers with a beautiful, mostly a cappella “Bright Morning Stars”; she was joined at the microphone by Kimbrough and others in her band, while Chris Donohue provided understated support on stand-up bass.
Her rendition of Steve Earle’s “Goodbye” (another Wrecking Ball song) was as mesmerizing as the song is heartbreaking. Later, Wrecking Ball’s “Goin’ Back to Harlan” welled harmonies like a wave. Just immense, that song. She followed it with “Bang the Drum Slowly,” which she and Guy Clark wrote for her father after he passed in 1993. Her dad, she said, was a Marine who served in WWII and later spent 16 months as a POW during the Korean War. “The Pearl” ended the concert on a solid note, followed by a one-song encore: “Boulder to Birmingham.”
All in all, it was a great night.
(Though we had good seats, as evidenced by the above photo and lack of videos, we were too far away for our iPhone cameras to capture anything more than a white glow on stage.)
The setlist: Here I Am; Orphan Girl; Love and Happiness; Making Believe; Red Dirt Girl; Green Pastures; Get Up John; Gulf Coast Highway; Old Fiver and Dimers Like Me; Wheels; Luxury Liner; Bright Morning Stars; Goodbye; One of These Days; Pancho & Lefty; All the Roadrunning; Michelangelo; Goin’ Back to Harlan; Bang the Drum Slowly; Shores of White Sand; The Pearl; Boulder to Birmingham
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