September | 2021 | redeyegin

many times in my life i will get an interest in a particular musician or genre and go down a rabbit hole for a while. i can’t remember exactly when i went down the bluegrass rabbit hole, but it was certainly in the early nineties, and one of the albums that likely triggered my interest was the 1992 grammy winning ‘at the ryman’ by emmylou harris and the nash ramblers. the concert’s and album’s high acclaim are given near-universal credit for the renewed interest in reviving the dilapidated ryman auditorium as an active venue after nearly 20 years of dormancy. soon after, the building was completely renovated and has since become a world-class concert hall.

although the band was not technically built as a bluegrass band (their grammy was for best country album), they incorporated a lot of bluegrass elements to many of the songs. emmylou harris had been touring with her ‘hot band’ lineup for a few years before this, and she wanted to go in a different direction. the ramblers were all acoustic, and featured a number of well known musicians, most notably sam bush on violin and mandolin, roy huskey jr. on bass, and al perkins on dobro and guitar. the vocal blendings were stunning. i could go on and on. it is a near perfect presentation and i never grow tired of it.

so i was pleasantly surprised as i was driving back from chicago a couple of weeks back and heard that they had a new release coming out. i was listening to the ‘buddy and jim show’ on the outlaw country sirius station, and they had most of the surviving members of the band being interviewed about circumstances around the recording. (by the way, if you are an americana genre fan, buddy miller and jim lauderdale are great hosts and you will learn so much). this show happened about a year earlier than the ryman show and has almost entirely different material. all the members had not remembered it being recorded and had forgotten about the show. an archivist from rhino records discovered the tapes about a year ago and brought it to emmylou’s attention. as she says in the liner notes, they didn’t have to fix anything. the recording (and the playing) were so good they left it as is.

it is a great companion piece to ‘at the ryman’. if you know that one, this is a no brainer. if you don’t, and you like emmylou, get both.

dig the hair!

as a huge baseball fan, wrigley field has always been on my bucket list of places to go. so even though it wasn’t for a baseball game, i thought i would go there this past weekend to catch a dead and company show. it was also a good chance to meet up with an old college buddy of mine. john had been living in chicago ever since we graduated in the mid eighties. so between the fact that we hadn’t seen each other in about a decade, and the fact that i knew he would be a good source to figure out some pre show activities, it seemed like it could have the makings of a great weekend.

i drove over saturday morning and got to his place early afternoon. we caught up on a few things and then headed down towards the vicinity of wrigley field and had some cocktails and an early dinner. it was a beautiful saturday afternoon and we got down to wrigleyville in plenty of time to start heading to the show.

it had rained the previous evening, so much so that friday night’s concert was suspended in the first set. but tonight it was perfect, and so it was just a matter of getting in the building and getting situated. my friend kevin had secured two pit tickets for us, but we decided to explore more of the floor seating and then settle in later. more on that in a bit.

we had been debating the merits of the song ‘althea’ in the bar before the show, and sure enough they opened with that. it’s funny how things happen like that at a dead show. overall it was a very good first set, including two of my favorites: ‘jack straw’ and ‘brown eyed women’. it ended unusually with ‘one more saturday night’, which normally is a second set closer or encore. when i texted that to a group of friends back home, one said that means you will have a great second set.

and it was. if you are a fan of the classic pairing of songs the dead generated in the seventies, then you would likely be very happy with the song selections. first up was ‘china cat sunflower’ going into ‘i know you rider’ (‘china/rider’), and then ‘estimated prophet’ going into ‘eyes of the world’ (‘estimated/eyes’). a drums/space interlude was capped by a late period garcia tune named ‘days between’, and then they finished the set with the classic trilogy of ‘help on the way/slipknot/franklin’s tower’. those are all favorites of mine and i am not sure i could have scripted it much better.

we never did make it into the pit. covid protocols required everyone to show proof of vaccinations, which we had. you had to show that to get into the building (you got a wristband for that), and then show proof again to get on the floor (another wristband for that) and then show proof again to get into the pit (even though i already had two wristbands to that effect). the security line to get in was very long, and it looked very crowded in there. it just wasn’t worth it.

but overall it was a great show, a great night, and great friends. well worth the trip. great to see you, john. let’s do this more often.