Tour’s Sweet Sounds, Pointed Politics

You know that a concert is on a roll when even the “commercials” are engaging.

Early in the Concert for a Landmine Free World on Friday at El Camino College’s Marsee Auditorium, Emmylou Harris made a brief but touching plea for audience members to buy some of the colorful scarves on sale in the lobby. They were made by Cambodian women who lost limbs in land mine explosions.

Later, Bobby Muller, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, gave an equally passionate overview of the international campaign to ban land mines and remove the millions still buried in Cambodia and other countries.

The comments fit so well into the fabric of the nearly three-hour program because the humanitarianism was shared by Harris and the evening’s other performers: Steve Earle, Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Guy Clark and Terry Allen.

It’s a virtue that is all too rare in today’s pop scene.

“Come back Woody Guthrie,” Earle sang in “Christmas in Washington,” a disheartened look at politics-as-usual and the neglect of the underclass in America.

But many of the lines in the song could be thrown back at the music community in a year when mainstream pop has been cluttered by possibly unparalleled fluff. In that imaginary version, the reference about the need for more songwriter-activists like Guthrie--and for more socially conscious events like the Landmine tour--would be especially stinging.

Organized by Harris, the acoustic tour, which ended Sunday in Santa Barbara, consisted of just five stops in California, but Harris is hoping to expand it next year. Among artists who appeared on other stops: Willie Nelson, John Prine, Kris Kristofferson and Gillian Welch.

Rather than each singer doing a separate set, the six on Friday sat side by side for the entire program, taking turns at the microphone on their own works and sometimes singing background on the other artists’ numbers.

The styles of the songwriters vary substantially, but they found common threads in their music. Allen, known for his biting wit, delivered a humorous take on the adage that God works in mysterious ways, while Carpenter, whose style is more comforting, sang about some of the mysterious ways in which love works. Clark, whose best numbers have an especially poetic edge, chipped in with tales of human resilience--first, a playful account of a man who is convinced he can fly, and then an exquisite portrait of a woman’s brave declaration of independence.

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One especially moving sequence touched on the music and inspiration of the late Townes Van Zandt, the Texas songwriter whose restless, uncompromising spirit made him a hero to scores of writers. Griffith started by singing a Van Zandt song, then Earle followed with “Ft. Worth Blues,” a melancholy song he wrote about Van Zandt.

After intermission, Harris, who is blessed with one of the most angelic voices in all of pop, continued the segment by singing Van Zandt’s most celebrated song, “Pancho & Lefty,” a mystical tale about life’s uncertain path. It was a lovely moment, but Earle--who’ll be in concert Wednesday with his band at the Sun Theatre in Anaheim--lifted the program to an even higher emotional point when he closed the show with the activist-minded “Christmas in Washington.”

If Guthrie were still with us, you know there would have been a seventh chair on stage.