The two icons are playing a handful of co-headline dates
Emmylou Harris and Gram Nash performed a country-and-folk double-header on Thursday night (July 31st) in Vienna, VA at Wolf Trap. (Three of my last four articles have been here, but I swear I’ve not pitched a tent on this beautiful National Park’s lush grounds.)
Country Music Hall of Famer Harris kicked the night off with her iconic warbling voice. Early on, she offered “Orphan Girl” and honored the late Nanci Griffith with a cover of “This Old Town.”
There were also the fiddle-fire down-home numbers, including a song—which your ace reporter couldn’t hear the name of—that Harris said started as an instrumental with Marty Stuart, which then added lyrics.
Harris’ band featured a bassist playing an upright, and her keyboardist spent a significant portion of the setlist playing accordion. The upbeat opening number had a zydeco flavor precisely because of the ‘squeeze box.’
Harris took a few minutes to talk about her upbringing, which revolved around her father’s military career and landed the family in the DC area while she was still young. Her family still lives in the area today.
That’s why “Bang the Drum Slowly,” Harris’s biographical tome about her father’s time as a POW, hit hardest at Wolf Trap: her brother and her son were front and center at the concert.
But the showstopper was another biographical song about a historical tragedy. “My Name is Emmett Till,” about the Mississippi teen’s horrific 1955 lynching, left the crowd rapt. You could hear a pin drop as the young boy seemed to speak through Harris’s words.
Whether slow and pensive or offering a ‘Bama barnstormer, Harris’s voice handled each with an airy lightness that betrayed her range. Hers is a career that has straddled folk, traditional country, country-rock and Americana. It’s quite an arsenal. No wonder she plays the body of her guitar is so iconically large.
“I didn’t fall on my voice,” Graham Nash joked as he explained his leg brace and use of a cane at the top of his half of the show. The two-time Rock Hall inductee explained that he broke his right kneecap in a fall at home and had surgery to repair it three weeks ago.
That out of the way, Nash kicked things off with the Crosby, Stills, and Nash tune, “Wasted on the Way.” After a short origin story, he played another CSN song, “Marrakesh Express.”
The folk-rock hero’s live sound was punctuated with an authentic upright piano, complete with rotating “Leslie” speaker. It was played by one of his band members in conjunction with an effects keyboard.
Nash’s crisp tenor was in fine form, bright and powerful as ever. And that’s intentional; “I’m going to sing them with the same passion I had when I wrote them.” One of the most passionate, “I Used To Be a King,” which he wrote for Joni Mitchell, after the two prolific songwriters broke up.
Nash’s four-piece band provided a full sound, never overpowering or upstaging the lyrical poetry that has sustained the legend for some 63-plus years. “I want to be here playing music for you all,” he said definitively.
Between Harris and Nash, this rare evening was transportive to that time when—whether it was about life, politics, love, or just a beautiful day—the music said all there was to say. No more and no less.
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