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EDMONTON - A folk music concert held outside the cozy confines of the folk fest is a good test of just how popular this stuff is in Edmonton. What kind of a folk town are we, really?
The answer from a not-quite-sold-out show from Emmylou Harris on a night not quite in the dead of winter at the Winspear Centre last night was: Fair to middlin', pretty good, not bad, could be worse. Couldn't have picked a better artist for the test.
Here we have the reigning queen of folk -- exactly the sort of wonderfully laid-back performer who Christopher Guest set out to parody in A Mighty Wind -- and she can draw only 1,300 fans in a major market. Could any fellow folk fest headliner do as well on his or her own? Name one.
Thirteen hundred Emmylou Harris fans isn't too shabby. I'm just guessing here, but the people who turned up last night have all likely attended the Edmonton Folk Music Festival at least once -- I recognized a few regulars, minus straw hats and backpacks -- and they all gave Emmylou the reverence she deserves as a first-rate folk superstar, keeping in mind one doesn't usually see the words "folk" and "superstar" this close together all the time.
The star returned the love with a beautiful and varied show, rich with the kind of "mellow" a person in a bad mood might describe as "boring." That person is not a folk fan, of course.
Harris laid out the low-key charm and her devastating voice on an eclectic selection of old-timey goodness. You could close your eyes and imagine you were at the Grand Ole Opry in the '50s, find yourself mesmerized in a lovely serenade of strummers and pickers and a vocal vibrato you just don't hear much of anymore.
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Emmylou kept it real, put her gifts entirely to the service of the song -- in short, not a showoff -- and didn't waste a single note.
There were cry-in-yer-beer ballads and twangy two-steps, sad songs about childhood like Orphan Girl and Red Dirt Girl -- the latter the result of "lying a little bit" because she had a happy childhood, which as she pointed out, is "disastrous" to a writer -- and even a raucous version (by folk standards) of Delbert McClinton's Two More Bottles of Wine.
"I rocked so hard my earring fell out," she said afterwards.
Not bad for this not being an actual rock show by any stretch of the imagination.
There was love found, love lost, life and death -- pretty much the gamut of folk subject matter -- and most of it sounded like traditional country music. I've never been able to figure out why country folk artists can't crack the huge country pop business. The songs are better. It seems like a matter of production more than anything.
Last night, Harris demonstrated more real country credibility in one lock of trademark white hair than the entirety of Taylor Swift. In a perfect world, it would be Emmylou up there accepting all the accolades for country greatness. Then we'd be spared the hideous countenance of Wynonna Judd shooting her mouth off that Swift is too young to win the CMAA Entertainer of the Year award. But it is not a perfect world. Taylor Swift is 19 years old, makes millions and sells out stadiums, while the 62-year-old Emmylou Harris draws 1,300 folk fans in Edmonton.
Lucky folk fans.
You don't see a headliner sitting in with the opening band very often, this being a breach of show biz protocol, but that was exactly what happened last night -- Emmylou Harris singing back-up vocals for Buddy Miller. Buddy is also Emmylou's guitarist, so it's not like he cares about having his smoke stolen, but still, it was quite the thing to see.
Miller, another folk fest fave, represents the rougher, hairier, Steve Earleian side of the folk canon. In places his music was so swampy that you could declare it a protected wetland.
His easy humour went over well with the crowd, although the laughter got a bit nervous when he talked about the heart attack he once suffered while performing. And his tunes went over even better, especially with his back-up singer. Bonus points for most uses of the word "Memphis" in a single song.