Last night (3/7), I had the great pleasure of seeing "
Lyle Lovett":http://www.losthighwayrecords.com/lylelovett, "
John Hiatt":http://www.johnhiatt.com, "
Joe Ely":http://www.joeely.com and "
Guy Clark":http://www.guyclark.com in concert together - just the four singer-songwriters and their guitars, all acoustic-like, with no band. They're calling this their "Songwriters' Tour," although Clark has been known to call it a "guitar pull" at times.John HIatt is very high on my list of favorite artists, and I enjoy Lyle Lovett's stuff a lot too. I must admit that I was less familiar with Joe Ely's and Guy Clark's material, but I sure liked what I heard last night. Ordinarily I would be disappointed to hear an artist like John Hiatt without a band, and I did have some misgivings about this format on my way to the show. Any doubts were quickly dispelled once the music started.I won't kid myself and try to present this as a new insight, but it still bears repeating that one sure way to test the strength of a song is to strip it down to its barest framework and see if it holds up. That's what happened last night - these guys performed their songs on acoustic guitars, unadorned except when another of the four would toss in a harmony vocal, a sweetly-voiced guitar solo, or at other times a heartfelt harmonica fill. And the songs were up to this treatment. We heard rollicking uptempo songs, achingly sad love ballads, quirky comical ditties and introspective, meditative songs. Virtually every single one of them had an impact on the audience; coupled with the friendly and sometimes offbeat banter that was interspersed between songs, it made for a truly enjoyable evening.In the course of the concert, I settled in and just kind of basked in the knowledge that I was witnessing a demonstration of top-drawer songwriting and performance, and that the practitioners were consummate experts in the field. It was like deciding to get your house remodeled, and initially worrying about what kind of marginally skilled, uninspired contractors you might get stuck with....only to be pleasantly surprised when the guys who show up the first morning are seasoned, skilled pros who do their work with confidence and ease, and end up with stunning results. In much the same way, last night the pros showed up and pulled out song after song that had the proven power to move people through melody, lyric and delivery. And in the hands of these bona fide masters, there wasn't a false note all night.At the end of the evening, no guitars had been smashed onstage, no lyrics had been sung through bullhorns, yet every song had had a calculated impact. That's what I call real, gimmick-free, musical artistry.
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