A&E NEWS
By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff, 10/18/2000
Nearly 30 years ago, country music maverick Gram Parsons taught his young protege, Emmylou Harris, the classic country-rocker "Love Hurts." "I never looked back," said Harris last night before resurrecting the song for a sold-out house at the Berklee Performance Center. Over the course of 29 albums in a career that's spanned acoustic folk, country, bluegrass, and rock, Harris has kept looking forward, not merely defying the constraints of her genre but helping to redefine, again and again, its boundaries.
Her most recent release, "Red Dirt Girl," is no exception. At 53, Harris - known primarily as an interpreter of other people's songs - set out to write an album of original compositions. Building on the ethereal guitar haze that drenched the country tunes on her last album, 1995's "Wrecking Ball," "Red Dirt Girl" is a revelation - both of Harris's late-blooming gift for songwriting and the adventurous spirit that led her to the shifting, liquid textures that have, once again, redrawn the lines describing country music.
Harris emphasized the new album in concert with a trio of musicians that deserves a far loftier title than backup band. Spyboy - alt-country guitar hero Buddy Miller, bassist Tony Hall, and drummer Brady Blade - breathed strange life into the earthiest chords and melodies. Miller's guitar work was nothing short of extraordinary. Intricate filigree, gauzy sheets, and piercing runs were strung like ornaments around Harris's voice - still crystalline, though shot through with breathy spaces and framed with a crackling fringe.
The seasoning of her singing only underlined the arc of Harris's artistry. There's a dirge-like quality to some of the new songs - "The Pearl," "My Baby Needs A Shepherd," and "Hour of Gold," especially, with their weighty themes and lofty chord progressions. But Harris infused them with innate grace and musical wisdom, never letting poignant songcraft bleed into preaching.
In her own understated way, Harris traversed a spectrum of moods, from the languid, sensuous rocker "I Don't Want To Talk About It" to down-home "Red Dirt Girl" to the modern pop-rock of "One Big Love," written by former Bostonian Patty Griffin, who also opened the show with a solo acoustic set.
It's easy to see why Harris has taken Griffin, now based in Austin, Texas, under her wing. With some of the finest songs, and one of the most riveting voices in recent memory, Griffin bridges the poetry of folk, the urgency of rock, and the melodicism of pop. She previewed a pair of new songs from her upcoming third CD, "Silver Bell," but the set's highlight was a surprise duet with Harris on "Mary," which ended with the two women, separated by a generation but bound in spirit, whispering in perfect thirds