Tuesday, December 5, 2000
Stars mine a stellar benefit show
Emmylou Harris & co. raise landmine awareness with beautiful songs, heartfelt performances
By PAUL CANTIN -- Senior Reporter, JAM! Showbiz
(Feat. Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, John Prine, Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Bruce Cockburn) Massey Hall, Toronto Monday, December 4, 2000
TORONTO -- There's an irony in the fact that something as vicious and horrific as the world's landmine problem produced something as transcendentally beautiful as the music heard at Massey Hall Monday night.
Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, John Prine, Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Bruce Cockburn joined forces in Toronto for the third in a series of five planned concerts to benefit the Vietnam Veterans Of America Foundation's Campaign For A Landmine Free World. And, in one sense, if not for the 70 million landmines still in the ground around the world and the 26,000 civilians maimed or killed by landmines annually, these artists might not have been inspired to join together to raise awareness and money.
And while we're blessed to have had this opportunity to see six masterful performers together on a bare stage, trading acoustic renderings of their songs in an intimate, off-the-cuff manner, the greater blessing would obviously be that there were no landmines to protest and no victims to benefit.
The 20-song performance was conducted in-the-round, with each performer taking turns in the spotlight, with Harris -- the ringmaster and a key organizer for this tour --starting things off. The kick of seeing a group of performers of this calibre assembled onstage is to watch the effect their music has on each other, and during Harris' "The Pearl," Carpenter and Griffith were moved to spontaneously kick in on the song's "hallelujah" chorus, while Cockburn improvised nimble guitar fills.
"Hour Of Gold," which Harris dedicated to her parents, and an aching "Michaelangelo" both found the ageless singer in superlative vocal form, and she even managed to step in during Earle's spot to take a verse of his song "Goodbye."
Hometown boy Cockburn staggered out of the gate when he badly muffed the lyrics to "Tokyo," but provided the evening's most graphic account of the underlying issue with a straightforward treatment of "The Mines Of Mozambique," and then celebrated the hope that arises amid squalor with a fleet-fingered rearrangement of "World Of Wonders."
While camaraderie was generally evident onstage, Mary Chapin Carpenter seemed content to play the wallflower and zipped through her solo spots with barely a comment to the audience. Although she's still probably best known for her hit cover of Lucinda WIlliams' "Passionate Kisses," Carpenter proved herself to be an uncommonly gifted confessional songwriter, capable of expressing the most intimate thoughts in plain-spoken, heart-breaking fashion, and delivered in a fragile voice that barely reached above a whisper.
If Carpenter was reluctant to chat up the crowd, Nanci Griffith peppered her mini-set with plenty of anecdotes. "Travelling Through This Part Of You," written after Griffith made her own trip to Vietnam to witness the ravages of mines, was dedicated to her ex-husband, a Vietnam veteran, while "Gulf Coast Highway" was lovingly delivered as a duet with pianist James Hooker and Pete Seeger's "If I Had A Hammer" was served up as a rousing singalong.
John Prine was clearly the sentimental favorite and repeatedly earned the longest, loudest ovations of the night. Returning to performing after a bout with neck cancer, Prine was charmingly dishevelled (he looked like he had a silver haystack perched on his head) but in solid form as he gave an aching reading of "Angel From Montgomery" (with Harris providing unearthly vocal accompaniment), a hilarious "It's A Big Old Goofy World" and a rousing "Paradise," before leading the crowd in a campfire rendition of "Illegal Smile."
Steve Earle jokingly referred to himself as "the token loud guy," and provided laughs with his cockeyed historical narrative "You Know The Rest," but also conjured a poignant, pointed moment with a banjo rendition of "The Truth" (a song he contributed to a benefit album for questionably-convicted young men known as the West Memphis Three) and closed off the evening with "Christmas In Washington," with the entire cast joining him in the song's chorus, an appeal for a return of the great social activist folksinger, Woody Guthrie.
Given the political conviction and compassion on display this night, though, Woody is still very much alive, in spirit.
Harris and Bobby Muller, the founder of the Vietnam Veterans Of America Foundation, both told the audience that this year's Concerts For A Landmine Free World series made a special point of visiting Ottawa and Toronto to celebrate Canada's role in getting 122 countries to sign the international anti-landmine treaty. More information on the campaign can be found at www.vvaf.org.
Review by Toronto Sun