Pop Music Review : No Puns? No Gimmicks? What Country Is This?

Just who does Emmylou Harris think she’s fooling claiming to be a country singer?

Does she sing cloying tunes in which the hooks are all based on puns or cliches? Does she take every opportunity to flaunt her country-ness, like Travis “I drive a pickup truck, I really do!” Tritt? Does she take pains to deliver the same numbing medley-o’-hits-with-canned-patter show after show?

No, no and no. Instead, Harris seems to think she can keep coasting by on talent and integrity. Country radio has finally gotten wise to Harris: Her music is nowhere to be found on the airwaves or on the charts. But the audience at the late show Tuesday at the Crazy Horse Steak House still treated Harris and her Nash Ramblers band as if they were the very heart of country music.

As usual, Harris’ voice conveyed every nuance of ache or joy the songs potentially held. Harris doesn’t write much, though the splendid, revealing “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” she performed from her autobiographical 1985 “The Ballad of Sally Rose” suggested she certainly should. Most often she sings the words of others, and a song couldn’t ask for a better friend.

Harris rarely plays what one might expect, drawing neither from her hits nor her most recent work overmuch. Instead, Tuesday’s show was predictable only in its unpredictability, as she explored some of the byways of her career.

There’s always some disappointment in not hearing some of the tunes she inhabits so definitively--such as Rodney Crowell’s “I Don’t Have to Crawl” or her rendition of Eddy Arnold’s “You Don’t Know Me” from last year’s “Cowgirl’s Prayer” album--but that’s more than compensated by the lesser-known gems brought to light.

Tuesday’s show opened with a propulsive version of “Mystery Train,” in which Dobro player Al Perkins’ sliding guitar lines stretched out like a railroad track for Harris’ driving vocal.

She followed with Steve Earle’s “Guitar Town” and Delbert McClinton’s “Two More Bottles of Wine,” the latter song, she pointed out, promoting a curative she hasn’t had much direct experience with. She and the band, Harris noted, had spent their wild Fourth of July watching the Dodgers lose.

Four years ago Harris put her acclaimed, long-running Hot Band (alumni include Ricky Skaggs, Crowell, Vince Gill, James Burton and Albert Lee) out to pasture. She’d been having throat problems that she’d attributed in part to having to sing over an electric band, and opted to go acoustic.

The band she assembled in its place is a marvel, featuring Perkins (who doubles on banjo), former New Grass Revival mainstay Sam Bush on mandolin and fiddle, drummer Larry Atamanuik, bassist Mark Winchester and 25-year-old Jon Randall Stewart on guitar and high vocal harmonies (Harris’ bands are still a springboard for talent: Stewart’s debut solo album for RCA comes out in August).

One might have thought that Harris, by going acoustic, would be limiting the range of her material. Rather, on such numbers as Crowell’s “I Ain’t Living Long Like This,” the band showed it could rock furiously, while on softer numbers such as “Pancho and Lefty,” “Beneath Still Waters” and the “gospel waltz” “Green Pastures,” the group left an uncluttered landscape for Harris’ vocals to soar over.

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As much evident pleasure as Harris puts into her singing, she seemed happiest Tuesday when she sat partially obscured on the drum riser watching her band members stretch out on the instrumental “Lee Highway,” in which they passed off solos that flew fast, inventive and funny.

Every chance allowed, Harris and the band cut up as if they were out for recess. But then they were able to turn around and do a chilling rendition of David Olney’s “Jerusalem Tomorrow.” Harris’ typically brook-pure voice took on a serpentine tone as she recited the tale of a huckster faith healer who runs into the real thing.

Her heart-rending vocal ache was back in place for Lucinda Williams’ “Crescent City,” a song that never defines the singer’s sad situation but, instead, outlines it through yearning for the forgiving, good times of New Orleans.

On songs such as that and her hair-raising version of Buck Owens’ “Together Again” (quite possibly the saddest-sounding happy song ever composed), Harris’ voice expresses the intensity of human emotion, finding that solitary place where feelings lie unadorned. And you know that can’t be country.

* Emmylou Harris & the Nash Ramblers return on Monday to the Crazy Horse Steak House, 1580 Brookhollow Drive, Santa Ana. Limited seating remains for both the 7 and 10 p.m. shows. $33.50. (714) 549-1512.