This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen Steve Earle or Allison Moorer (I once saw Steve and the Dukes open for Willie Nelson back in the 90’s and I saw Allison at Merlefest a couple years back, which included a surprise Steve appearance.  I’ve already mentioned seeing Steve in San Fran last October, which was also pretty damn cool).  But last night’s show at the Paramount Theater was by far the best show from Steve and Allison I’ve seen.

Allison opened the show and it should be noted that she has one of the purest singing voices of anyone around.  I’d put here in that rarified air of Patsy Cline and Neko Case when it comes to sheer vocal beauty and power.  Standing on a stage with a just a microphone and a guitar, Allison shimmered.  She played a couple songs from her new album Mockingbird which I thought were two of her set’s highlights. 

The album itself is a tribute of sorts to some of Allison’s favorite female singer-songwriters and her versions of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” and Jessi Colter’s “I’m Looking for Blue Eyes” definitely hit the mark.  But the highlight of highlight’s was by far her set-closing take on Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come”.  The crowd was behind her the whole time and I think she felt it as she blew the audience a kiss before walking off stage and making way for the night’s headliner…the one and only Steve Earle.

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Ok, I have to write about this.  But first let’s get something clear.  Steve Earle is one of my musical heroes.  This is a point that needs to be made now, because you’ll need this information later.  The string of random and planned events that just took place is slightly blowing my mind.  Here’s the story:

I had a scheduled interview today at 2pm with a singer-songwriter from Lowell, Massachusetts.  His name is Bob Martin.  A couple of weeks I received two of Bob’s CD’s in the mail from an acquaintance in the music world that happens to know that I write reviews for an Americana music site called AmericanaRoots.com.  The idea is this:  Who knows, maybe there’s a review in there right?  After listening to one of Bob’s CDs entitled The Midwest Farm Disaster, is there ever a review on the way!  It’s a brilliant album from the early 70’s that is being re-issued and I feel lucky at this point to now know of it’s existence.  I write my acquaintance a brief e-mail stating that I’m going to start working on a review of Bob’s album for the  AmericanaRoots website.  The response I get back is kind of mind-blowing in-and-of-itself.  It turns out that Bob is in Charlottesville and a meeting is arranged.  This is my aforementioned 2pm meeting.

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