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Blue Highways Festival
Vredenburg, Utrecht (The Netherlands)
26th April, 2003
By Marianne Ebertowski
 The fourth edition
of Blue Highways, Europe's "ultimate Americana Fest,"
was memorable to say the least. There was deep disappointment
and concern about the news that Billy Joe Shaver had to cancel
(again) only 48 hours before due to pneumonia. There were also
a few frowns over the Domino Kings not showing up-- according
to the organizers the band considered the world situation too
unsafe to fly from Missouri to Holland. Fortunately, Chip Taylor
and Carrie Rodriguez were more courageous and arrived unharmed
and just in time to be taken to the heart by a grateful European
audience.
Cancellations aside, Blue Highways was the musical treat it
was set up to be. The show was opened by ex-punkrockers Porter
Hall, TN. Gary Roadarmel and Molly Conley did a great job
warming up the audience with their whiskey-drenched, tear-stained
songs about angels, drunkards and loneliness. For those who
like country music rough at the edges, these two are the real
deal. As an acoustic duo sharing lead vocals equally, they were
intense and moving. Joined by Florence Dore's band, they kidnapped
the audience for a ride to honkytonk heaven where we wished to
stay for the rest of the day.
Just when I was thinking that the only thing Porter Hall's
performance needed for perfection was a steel guitar, Florence Dore took the stage and rudely interrupted
my very pleasant honkytonk dreams. As already on her album Perfect
City, she failed to charm me with her contrived middle (class)
of the road songs. That gave me time to see the opening act
on the small stage: Sarah Lee Guthrie, Arlo's youngest daughter,
and her husband Johnny Irion.
Hearts already started to melt before the couple had played
the first note. It was endearing to see people that young in
a musical landscape that is largely dominated by "old crocodiles."
23-year-old Sarah Lee and 33-year-old Johnny immediately stole
all those melting hearts, including that of this crocodile-writer,
with their quiet and subtle mixture of folk, rock, country and
blues. Sarah's voice is seductive and versatile like a jazz-vocalist.
Her singing is elegant and incredibly accurate. Johnny plays
a mean slide guitar, sings uncannily high tenor to Sara Lee's
lead, and he is a great communicator. The ovation after their
first song made them look at each other in surprise, and the
big smiles on their faces were there to stay for the rest of
the show. What these two play is perhaps "American Cosmic
Music" of the 21st century - but that is as far as my Emmylou
and Gram comparison will go. Sure, there is this magic about
the two of them which has often been described about Parsons
and Harris, and sure, they both are gorgious and charismatic,
but Irions and Guthrie are simply beyond comparison as were Emmylou
and Gram. And, in contrast to the otherwise divine Emmylou, Sarah
Lee can enunciate: you can clearly understand every single word
she sings. The young duo treated us to a mixture of their own
material, a song based on very "risqué" lyrics
by Woody ("No Church Tonight"), and the traditional
"Thirty-Inch Coal" where Johnny hollered the words
Pete Seeger-style to make the audience sing along. When Guthrie
and Irion left after their short 30 minute set, they were sent
off with a thunderous applause and smiles all around.
On the big stage it was time for Gurf Morlix. Gurf has done a great job as
a producer for singer-songwriters like Slaid Cleaves, Ray Wylie
Hubbard, Mary Gauthier, and Lucinda Williams, and I already had
the chance to admire him as a guitar player for Slaid Cleaves.
Blue Highways gave him the rare opportunity to front his own
band, at least for half an hour. He played songs from his two
solo albums, surprised the audience with a cover of Gauthier's
"Christmas In Paradise," and gave all his musicians
a fair chance to excell. With a line-up including Rick Richards
, Scrappy Jud Newcomb, George Reiff, and young guitarist Jeff
Plankenhorn, nothing much could go wrong. When Gurf started the
first chords of the early Dylan song "With God On Our Side,"
he brought the house down. No need to make comments about certain
feelings about certain politicians coming from certain states.
Then Morlix handed the mike over to Beaver Nelson, whose hypernervous
jittery stage-act and bland post punk powerpop made me feel jumpy
and finally sent me to sleep. I woke up just in time for Mary
Gauthier's thirty minutes of glory. Mary turned out to be
enormously popular with the Utrecht audience, after all we "discovered"
the girl here two years ago at the same festival when almost
nobody knew how to spell her name, let alone how to pronounce
it. Gauthier, practically arriving on stage with her suitcase,
started with a couple of songs from last year's Morlix-produced
album Filth and Fire. Her performance was remarkably
relaxed considering the fact that she is not used to playing
with an "electric" band and there was no time for rehearsal
(which was probably the case for other artists as well). Her
final song "Dragqueen In Limousines" which has become
something of a singalong standard with European audiences, brought
back memories from two years ago. An impressive show, though,
personally, I prefer to see and hear Mary in an acoustic context:
it simply puts less strain on her voice.
The "Morlix-package" seemed a hard act to follow
and quite a few people left for a drink or perhaps for Laura
Cantrell, who was playing the small stage. But Chip
Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez, whisked away from their recording
studio in Austin on a 48 hours notice, did a fine job filling
the huge hall with their warm acoustic sounds. Chip can still
charm anyone's cowboy boots off and 24-year-old Carrie, no longer
a newcomer in the world of entertainment, proved her great potential
as a singer and fiddler. And her smile could even lighten up
the dark corners under the roof. Back in Austin, Taylor and
Rodriguez will pick up their recording session and some of the
songs on the new album will be Carrie's.
In the meantime born Nashvillean and long-time New York resident
Laura Cantrell, apparantly a bank manager in her other life,
had taken the small stage with her band. Laura seems to be better
known in the UK and Europe than back home and she impressed me
with her bluegrass- and folk-influenced debut album "Not
The Trembling Kind" in 2000. Even though her voice sometimes
sounds a bit flat (not unlike Nanci Griffith's), Cantrell's performance
was sparkling and a lot more interesting than on her recent album.
And, not to forget, she writes songs like "Queen Of The
Coast" which simply are among the very best.
I skipped the Handsome Family to catch a glimpse of Greg Trooper, whose acoustic performance
(with Chip Dolan on accrodion and keyboards) on last year's festival
I had almost entirely missed. This year it was rock'n'roll
time for Greg with Chip Dolan on HammondB3, Rick Richards on
drums and bass player Jack Saunders. It didn't really work for
me. I guess, I just like my singer-songwriters quiet and acoustic
and leave the noisy stuff to the Bruce Springsteens or the Buddy Millers.
Buddy, who was on next, is an old crocodile that rocks. He
has proven that with Emmylou Harris' Spyboy. He did it again.
Still, it would have been great to hear him with Julie, just
once. I hope the Millers will do us Europeans the honor one
day.
It was almost midnight and there were still great things to
come: Kathleen Edwards and Slobberbone. I do not belong to the
(in)crowd of critics who praised Edwards' debut-album Failer
to death and described her as "the next Lucinda Williams"
(as if one isn't enough), but I must confess that, live, the
girl rocks! Dressed in jeans and a checkered shirt, 24-year
old Edwards ("I know this is an Americana festival but you
can call me Canadian") led her band with firm hands and
generally knew how to impress the audience with her spontaneity
and a surprisingly fresh sounding interpretation of her songs.
Just what a tired audience was waiting for!
Half an hour past midnight Slobberbone tumbled on stage, literally.
Last time I saw Slobberbone they played a hamburger restaurant
for a handful of bewildered punters, literally stumbled on stage
and looked too drunk to stay on their feet. This time, things
were different. Wheras last year's final act, the in Europe
(un)fairly unknown fellow-Texan Jesse Dayton, had to play to
a half-empty dancefloor decorated with plastic beer glasses,
Slobberbone still had an almost full house. Brent Best and his
boys could not only stay on their feet without too much effort,
they even treated the audience to athletic Van Halen jumps.
Most of all they gave the audience what they came for: a great,
thundering and compact set of alt.country. No better way than
paraphrasing the title of their last album in order to describe
my feelings about Slobberbone this night "Everything I thought
was wrong was right today." A worthy finale to a festival
that had succeeded in delivering just the right mixture of known
and less known Americana artists, of old crocodiles and young
puppies. I left the venue with two wishes for the next edition:
the return of Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion and the appearance
of a healthy Billy Joe Shaver.
Contact Marianne Ebertowski at ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net
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