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Emmylou Harris

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Venue:

Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

Date: 11/05/2026

Emmylou Harris released her first album in 1969. Long deleted, ‘Gliding Bird’ made little impression when it was released and it wasn’t until 1972 that she surfaced again, duetting memorably on Gram Parsons’s first solo album ‘GP’ and subsequently on his posthumously released ‘Grievous Angel’ in 1974. Her next solo album, ‘Pieces of the Sky’ was released in 1975, was a commercial success, and was the first of a string of magnificent albums she released in the 70s. She came to the attention of many of us in the UK with a couple of Old Grey Whistle Test performances, and she toured here with the Hot Band, that incredible ensemble featuring the likes of Glen D. Hardin. James Burton and then Albert Lee, and a young Rodney Crowell. She was like no female country singer we’d ever seen – in jeans rather than rhinestone covered dresses, wielding a large acoustic guitar, beautiful, undeniably. But beyond that, her voice, her selection of material, and her band were all captivating.

She kept working through the 80s and 90s but with less commercial success, her music moving sometimes uneasily between bluegrass and country and more MOR material. But her collaboration with Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton, ‘Trio’, was a deserved success. In 1995 she worked with produced Daniel Lanois on ‘Wrecking Ball’, an album that some traditionalists in the country music world hated, but which stands for many of us as one of the best things she’s ever done. It led to an artistic renaissance with a series of albums which had some of her best self-written songs, and collaborations with Mark Knopfler, Linda Ronstadt and Rodney Crowell.

And now here we are. Over 50 years since her rise to prominence. Her last album was released in 2015, and she’s said there will be no more. She’s 79 and doesn’t want to keep doing long haul flights, so she says this year’s dates are her last ever in Europe. And there are 1700 of us packed into Liverpool Philharmonic Hall to see her perform one more time and to thank her for 50 years of wonderful music.

She walks on stage alone and invites support artist Jim Lauderdale to join her onstage for her first song. Awkwardly, no one seems to have told him to be ready, and he doesn’t appear. Unfazed, she comments that she’ll just keep strumming until he shows up, which after a few seconds he does, and they launch into ‘Love Hurts’. It’s not an auspicious start, and the concert takes a while to catch fire. She and her five-piece band seem a little rusty – this is the first concert on this European leg, and their last concerts were over a month ago. But also, at least for me, there is the need to acclimatise to the fact that Harris’s voice isn’t the peerlessly crystalline instrument it used to be. Of course it isn’t. She’s 79 and she’s straining to hit the high notes, the pitch wavering at times. And in the early songs she’s clearly easing into it. So great songs like ‘Pancho and Lefty’, ‘Orphan Girl’, and ‘One of these Days’ don’t quite land as strongly as I would expect. But a couple of moments change the dynamic.

Firstly, she references The Beatles and talks about how important they are to her. Pretty much every American artist who plays Liverpool does this. But she has credentials, with two of the greatest Beatles covers on record, and she performs one of them, ‘For No One’, tonight. It is magnificent. Then after an excellent ‘Red Dirt Girl’, she and three of the band perform an acapella number. Half way through, she forgets the words and things momentarily come to a halt. She gathers herself, takes a cue from fellow band members, and gets going again, bringing the song to a successful conclusion. It gets the biggest and warmest applause of the night. Hey, most of us are pretty old too. We get it. And we’re grateful that she’s here, giving everything for us. (It’s worth saying this is her only lapse with lyrics all night; pretty good given that unlike many of her peers these days, she is singing without any lyric sheets on screen or music stands).

From there it’s superb all the way. The longer the concert goes on the stronger her voice becomes. She is disarming about her age, complaining about arthritis in her left wrist, fumbling with her earpiece, getting tangled up in her guitar strap. She talks warmly about Mark Knopfler, and her ex-husbands Brian Ahern and Wirral-born Paul Kennerley, There’s a brilliant performance of two segued Kennerley songs – ‘Help Me Jesus,’ recorded by Johnny Cash, and a barnstorming performance of his ‘Born to Run’ which she recorded in the early 80s.

And of course, she references Gram Parsons. Her performances of two songs about Gram, ‘The Road’, which she performs solo with just her acoustic guitar as accompaniment, and ‘Boulder to Birmingham’ are deeply moving. In the latter especially she rolls back the years, and we are all there again in 1975, with that magnificent heart-breaking voice in full command. I am sure I wasn’t the only one listening with a tear in my eye as I thought of the magnificent career she has had over half a century and how this and so many of her other songs have meant so much to me over that time.

She followed it with a joyous ‘You Never Can Tell’, and then after a heartfelt expression of her gratitude to us, her audience, for our support over the years, an encore of ‘Together Again’. And then, a final bow to an audience on its feet, expressing and feeling our love and gratitude back, and nearly two hours after taking the stage, she was gone. Gone, but leaving us with a memorable night to treasure.

The audience:

As Mrs BB noted, ‘a lot of men of a certain age’. I have to say she went very much in long-suffering but indulgent partner mode, supporting her life partner as he enjoyed another of ‘your country gals’. But at the end she was instantly on her feet too and completely won over.

It made me think..

It was a very moving night. I have been to a number of concerts over the years where an older artist really is a shadow of what they were, but the audience is happy just to be in the presence of someone whose music they have loved, and to thank the artist concerned. That was certainly going on here, except that despite some vocal frailties this was still a genuinely great performance by an artist playing with as much thought and commitment as ever. Emmylou Harris has been a class act throughout her career and she still is.

8

Comments

  1. I went to the Birmingham show last night, as did Albert Lee, but we didn’t meet. I concur wholeheartedly with all you say, especially around her voice, warming up over the course of a 90 minute show with bo autocues. The set varied a little, which is always refreshing, if meaning we got neither For No-one or Together Again. Did you get Wheels and Luxury Liner? The tribute to her erstwhile friend and neighbour, Nanci Griffith, was also a highlight, with a moving Gulf Coast Highway.
    The Red Dirt Boys, her band, were excellent, none of whom, bar Will Kimborough was I familiar. Eamon McLoughlin, on fiddle and mandolin was especially good.
    Jim Lauderdale, as support, was shite.

    • Agree with you about the band – Eamonn McLoughlin was the standout for me too. And I agree about Lauderdale as well! Looking at her set lists elsewhere she does seem to vary it from gig to gig. We did get Wheels and Luxury Liner but not Gulf Coast Highway

  3. I saw her around the time of Red Dirt Girl, with the incomparable Buddy Miller on guitar and Brian Blade on drums. Fantastic concert. I did find her studio output, and voice, started to get a bit one note after Wrecking Ball.

  8. Saw her in 2015 with Rodney Crowell – he was great; I thought she might want to think about giving it away then.

    Year or two later with Lyle and his Big Band – night and day difference

  9. We saw her at the Bristol Beacon on Friday night, almost exactly 50 years after we saw her in 1976 at the Bristol Hippodrome with the first Hot Band. That was her first tour, and this was her last, and in 1976 it was my first date with the current Mrs. T, we have now married for 48 years, so this was ever particularly important for us!

    It was fine – Boulder to Birmingham literally brought me to tears as I so love the song, but with such a huge back catalogue there were inevitably some songs that didn’t resonate because of unfamiliarity, although all were obviously performed with impeccable vocals and eminently enjoyable. We got Wheels and Luxury Liner, and I always loved the Jesse James album, so that was a nice surprise. The band..? Well, they are no Hot Band that is for sure. The sound was bassy and the instrumentation overpowering at times, but a special mention for the fiddle and mandolin player who was terrific. They just felt like a perfectly competent pick up band to me. However, all that being said, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.

    Jim Lauderdale was one dimensional and fairly tedious. Seemed a nice enough bloke though.

  12. Tonight at the Albert Hall, it was very much a gig of two parts.
    The first 40 minutes (which sadly included my favourite, Pancho and Lefty), just seemed flat. Six musicians on a stage, all playing their parts very professionally, but there didn’t seem to be any spark; any real connection between them all. The band was very much in third gear. I couldn’t say the performances were bad in any way.
    Then they started Red Dirt Girl, and suddenly we had ignition. The band came together and we were flying. Similarly to Nigel above, her rendition of Boulder To Birmingham brought a tear to my eye. It was probably the best performance of it I have heard her sing.
    All in all the final hour and a bit was brilliant. If only it had been like that from the start.

  13. I had a whale of a time with the singer from my band. Thought Jim Lauderdale was ok, but more nudie suit than content, though his voice seemed to genuinely wobble when he talked about how happy he was to be playing the RAH. When he and Emmylou kicked off her set with a fine rendition of Love Hurts, I knew we were in for a memorable show. I thought Emmylou’s voice was a bit low in the mix, and the more up-tempo stuff suffered from the hall’s poor acoustics, but the material was a good spread of her career and the band were great, sympathetic, not overplaying and showing the flash when needed. I’ll be investigating guitarist Will Kimborough – a fine guitarist and an unexpectedly great voice. Delighted I got to see Emmylou and enjoyed her stories and general patter, no matter how many times it’s been deployed – it was new to me. Not so delighted to be sat (squashed) next to a corpulent woman who hummed all the way through, though.

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