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Favorite songs shine in new setting
 If seeing a favorite performer is always a treat, then traveling to Brevard Music Center provided the icing on the cake of another Emmylou Harris concert.
While I’d go most anywhere to listen to the 11-time Grammy winner, it sure was nice on a Tuesday evening to enjoy the scenic route.
Upon arriving at Brevard’s famed summer music venue, I found the setting just as attractive as the journey. BMC’s Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium has a roomy stage, great sound – and no walls, allowing concert-goers to relish the sweet air and soft sounds of a July twilight.
As a veteran Emmylou watcher (my friend Dona calls me a “Harris-head” because she regards me as fanatical as those similar-named fans of the late Jerry Garcia’s band), I’m always pleased to hear her familiar songs in a new place. Tuesday’s show provided the opportunity to hear those tunes in alternate musical settings as well.
Emmylou, now 58, is famous for attracting rising stars – from Rodney Crowell to Ricky Skaggs to Sam Bush – and she still has a knack for landing virtuosos. Adding a new twist to the Brevard gig was the fact that guitar-maestro Buddy Miller wasn’t just the band leader – he was the whole band. By paring her act down to a duo, Emmylou allows her own skill on the guitar to shine as well.
With just the two of them on stage, old favorites like “Hickory Wind” and more recent ones – including the Harris-penned “Red Dirt Girl” and “Michelangelo” – took on new personalities.
And that’s another thing that has been a Harris hallmark – the ability to reinvent herself in the framework of a familiar repertoire. When she introduced Townes van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty” Tuesday, she said it was one of the songs she planned to include in an upcoming retrospective due next week from Rhino.
“This one has to be there,” she said. “I’ve been singing it for 30 years.”
That’s not an exaggeration; she sang it during an April 1976 concert I attended at Atlanta’s Fox Theater, and she’s performed it at most of the other shows I’ve seen over the past three decades. “Pancho and Lefty” is one of the things I remember from that show because that was when she introduced Crowell, who sang the harmony part.
“Pancho and Lefty’s” first Emmylou rendition, captured on vinyl on her 1977 album “Luxury Liner,” featured her famed Hot Band that included members of Elvis Presley’s stage band. The second, with her Nash Ramblers led by mandolin-meister Bush, added a bluegrass flavor to the song. With the release of 1995’s “Wrecking Ball,” which heralded a turning point in Emmylou’s career, came her third band, the percussion-and-bass-based Spyboy, to add a New Orleans aura to the tune.
Tuesday’s version, though performed by two musicians rather than a band, was no less compelling.
The evolution of that song over three decades is a metaphor for Emmylou’s growth as an artist, a fact that’s also reflected in the title Brevard Music Center leaders chose for the concert series that included her Tuesday show: “Variations.”
Known more for classical music, BMC has given students the opportunity to better understand the professional world of music for more than 30 years. It offers an intensive seven-week summer program for talented young musicians gathered from around the country and world.
Each year BMC welcomes 400 students ranging in age from 14 to 30 to its 140-acre campus along with 65 distinguished faculty artists. In addition to rigorous private study, students collaborate with faculty and guest artists in more than 80 public performances that include symphony, opera and choral works. The center also invites world-renowned guest artist to teach and perform.
The “Variations” concerts, like Tuesday’s Emmylou Harris performance (this year’s other artist in that series was Skaggs, the bluegrass sensation featured on Emmylou’s acclaimed 1980 “Roses in the Snow”) bring entertainers from musical genres outside the center’s core curriculum to its Brevard stage.
With the right conditions – no rain, fog or slow cars ahead of you – the drive from Sylva past Lake Glenville to Cashiers and down U.S. 64 past Toxaway Falls to Brevard – is a treat in itself.
Brevard Music Center has more entertainment on tap this summer, including the Lousiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble on Friday, July 29, and the opera “Rigoletto” on Saturday, Aug. 6.
For more information on BMC and a complete performance schedule, visit online at www.brevardmusic.org, or call 1-888-384-8682.
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