MUSIC REVIEW : Cooder-Lindley Family: A Warm Get-Together

Even those who haven’t heard of Ry Cooder and David Lindley have most likely heard them, either through their extensive session work or, notably, their playing on Cooder’s numerous film scores.

Hearing the pair in concert at the Coach House Sunday, one had to wonder: Why spend millions making a movie when you can put these guys and a brace of stringed instruments onstage and get as much drama, depth, action, color and adventure as any screen could hold?

Billed as Cooder-Lindley Family, the lineup also featured Cooder’s son Joachim on drums and Lindley’s daughter Rosanne on vocals, and for all the cinematic sweep of the music, the 2 1/2-hour show also had the warmth and intimacy of a living room get-together.

Granted, it’s a strange living room, with the elder musicians applying bouzoukis to a Madagascan instrumental and a harp tune by Irish composer Turlough O’Carolan, and using bouzouki and electric guitar to render a Hawaiian slack-key version of the Depression-themed standard “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?”

In a section devoted to their soundtracks, they ranged through the dusty dignity of the “Long Riders” tunes--including a few awry-but-alright fiddle notes from Lindley--and the massively atmospheric hovering slide guitar sonorities Cooder originated for “Paris, Texas,” underpinned by Lindley’s sawing with a fiddle bow on a 12-string electric.

The ominous mood they created carried over into Woody Guthrie’s “Vigilante Man.”