Emmylou Harris review: Fond farewell to American country star at final gig at 3Arena, Dublin
A recent image of Emmylou Harris, who performed at 3Arena in Dublin on Sunday night. (Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images)
★★★★☆
If Emmylou Harris isn’t the queen of country than she’s at least very highly placed in the line of succession. No surprise to see a full 3Arena in Dublin, especially as this tour has been billed as Ms Harris’s final European jaunt. The 78-year-old and her spectacular band offered a lesson in how to say a proper goodbye.
Harris’s career has been built on a more soulful kind of country than the rock and pop orientated fare currently filling Irish stadia, although it was her work with Gram Parsons in the early 1970s that turned a lot of rockers onto twang n’ tears in the first place.
As well as Parson’s marvellous and a shuffling run at his complete with James Burton-style guitar from new boy Kevin Key, we get two further beautiful tributes to Gram, the country rock pioneer who died far too young. was expected, although no less welcome for that, but was a surprise. Sung with only her own acoustic guitar for accompaniment, this Harris-penned 2011 tribute to the man who “put me on that pathway” was very special indeed.
You could call that the highlight but really it all qualified. That voice hasn’t lost a step with the passing years. From the very first note of the opening it pierces your heart like an arrow, then holds you for the duration like a mother cradling a baby as it soars with the precise control of that unique breaking tremolo. Ethereal is the word novelist Jan Carson insisted afterwards that I use, and it’s an appropriate one.
On top of that, or rather behind it, her band were jaw-droppingly good, especially Eamon McLoughlin’s virtuosic mandolin-playing and the sensitive drumming of Bryan Owings. He managed to recreate the sound of her two classic Americana albums, and (buy them both), with bass drum, cymbal and shaker alone.
The song selection was also faultless – Gillian Welch’s from her collaboration with Mark Knopfler, a heartbreaking cover of Steve Earle’s which made this reviewer want to run off to Mexico, and her own gorgeous
“Thanks for listening all the years,” says Emmylou during one of her many warm introductions, which included nods to old friend Nanci Griffith, memories of Tony Joe White being cool, and her band having their gear stolen in New York.
“Well, you really got me this time,” she sang to Gram in Emmylou Harris gets you every time. A moving farewell.
