POP MUSIC REVIEW : Hope Springs Fraternal for Everlys

Two songs into the Everly Brothers’ early show Monday evening at the Orange County Fair, Don Everly said to the crowd, “You’ll notice that a lot of our song titles are women’s names. That’s no accident--Phil and I were married to about half of them. The wives are gone. Phil and I are still together.”

The humorous aside also highlighted the bond between the two, not that it was necessary. More than 40-odd years after brothers Don and Phil began singing together, their harmonies still express a fraternal closeness that is unsullied either by a rancorous 10-year split that commenced in 1973 or by the rigors of the road.

By the time most oldies acts wind up on the county fair circuit, they’re about as listless as the sows on exhibit. Often there are rote performances, tired stage patter and only the barest indication, if any, that an artistic spirit once inhabited the bodies moving mechanically onstage.

Though the material of the Everlys’ 18-song, 65-minute set was mostly three decades old, the brothers and their five-piece band tore it up like they’d just invented the stuff.

Part of that coltish spirit entailed taking many liberties with the material, and when you’re messing with perfection changes are rarely for the better. Musical arrangements were revamped. A couple of the vocal harmonies were lowered, a possible concession to the brothers’ age.

The chief change was the manner in which Don would play with the melody whenever he sang one of their songs’ trademark solo bridges. Those moments in Everly songs always conjured images of a bird briefly escaping the golden fetters of the pairs’ close harmony. That notion still holds, with Don now making those solo lines into little gems of individual expression. There scarcely was a solo line where Don didn’t alter the melody or reinvent the phrasing. While he never improved on what he got so right on record 30 years ago, to have him still trying to find new paths through a song sure helps to keep the music alive now.

The pair kicked their show off with “The Price of Love,” an obscurity in this country but a British hit for them in the mid-’60s, and the tune they used there to open their 1983 comeback show at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Two of the band members Monday, keyboardist Pete Wingfield and guitarist extraordinaire Albert Lee, were with the Everlys on that London show, and their playing showed a long empathy for the music. Pedal steel guitar legend Buddy Emmons, with his perpetual bowler hat in place, also is in the current band, making the Everlys’ backup quintet a hotter proposition than many fair headliners.

During “So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad),” Emmons’ shimmering steel playing gave Phil a musical shoulder to cry on with his aching solo lines. Guitarist Lee--probably best-known for his work with Emmylou Harris--kicked a wild rock rhythm into “Bird Dog” and the Little Richard cover “Lucille.” The brothers yielded the stage to Lee for him to perform his “Country Boy,” which he propelled with some fret burning solos.

But the central thing, as ever, to an Everlys’ performance was their harmony singing. They were raised in Kentucky by country-singing parents and influenced by the tight harmonies of Appalachian folk singers and country’s Louvin Brothers. Though they may back them with electric guitars or synthesizers now, those harmonies still are as pure and refreshing as a country stream.

The precise, but seemingly effortless, blend of voices worked its old magic on “Crying in the Rain,” “When Will I Be Loved,” “(Til) I Kissed You,” “Love Hurts,” “Bye Bye Love,” “All I Have To Do Is Dream,” “Cathy’s Clown” and other immortals. At one point Don kicked up some high-voltage guitar riffing, a la the Who’s “Pinball Wizard,” only to surprisingly veer into “Wake Up Little Susie.”

A sign language interpreter at the side of the stage had been busily translating the lyrics throughout the show for the hearing-impaired, but she finally seemed at a loss when the brothers launched into the ululant phrases of Gene Vincent’s “Be Bop a Lula” for their second of two encores.

The only disappointments were the somewhat wretched sound mix--the kind where the sound man realizes he can make the bass drum imitate cannon fire, with no regard for the voices people came to hear--and the dearth of recent material in the set.

Don still can write great songs when he sets his mind to it (there are some killers on the “E.B. ‘84” album) and such other folks as Paul McCartney and Mark Knopfler also have penned fine songs for him and Phil. As immediate as the Everlys can be doing 30-year-old songs, they should be seeing what they can do in the ‘90s.