As Fresh as Everlys

Apparently nobody told the Everly Brothers before they came onstage Saturday at the Coach House that they are the keepers of a body of revered early rock classics that set the standard by which all pop harmony singing is still measured.

Good thing.

Whether it was because they were coming off a six-month performing hiatus or because their weekend performances in Orange County were their first small-club dates in years, there wasn’t even a whiff of museum-piece mustiness in the air as the celebrated Kentucky siblings ripped through 75 minutes of frequently stunning vocalizing.

With a major assist from a five-man band that includes some of the finest sidemen in or out of Nashville, Don and Phil Everly--looking and sounding markedly younger than their ages (62 and 60, respectively) might suggest--put more kick into their material than an oldies show might be expected to have.

It was, to be sure, an oldies song lineup for the most part. While beginning the show intriguingly with “Bowling Green” and “Green River”--songs from 1967 and 1972 that tapped their Bluegrass State roots--the Everlys quickly slid into the hits that both secured their place in rock history and have dominated their concerts ever since.

That meant the only room for disappointment was to anyone who might have been hoping to hear anything more from their artistically rich but commercially fallow mid-to-late-’60s albums for Warner Bros., from their country-rock outings for RCA in the early ‘70s or the three excellent ‘80s albums for Mercury that went untouched Saturday. Maybe one of these days we’ll get “The Unheard Everlys” tour.

Nevertheless, they sang almost heroically, forcing the packed house--to its delight, evidently--to hear rather than simply remember those exquisitely familiar hits, from “Bye Bye Love” and “Cathy’s Clown” to “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Cryin’ in the Rain.”

Arrangements were often tweaked--as opposed to Dylanesque reconstruction--to keep the songs fresh. Don Everly’s knockout ballad “So Sad (to Watch Good Love Go Bad)” was modestly slowed down to give its heartache an extra measure of pain. A gliding, glistening backing made “All I Have to Do Is Dream” even more dreamlike than the original. And bassist Phil Cranham and drummer Tony Newman helped put more muscle into “When Will I Be Loved.”

Don’s heavily accented, straddle-stance acoustic-guitar strumming in the unrecognizable intro to “Susie” found the specter of “Tommy”-era Pete Townshend hovering above and smiling; the emphasis on that opening subtly suggested that maybe it’s the Everlys who deserve the credit for creating rock’s first power chords.

For anyone who assumed that biology plus decades of singing together make their flawless harmonizing instinctual, it had to be a revelation to see how often each brother’s gaze was fixed on the other to keep tabs on where he was heading. And it was another indication that even 42 years since they first hit the charts with “Bye Bye Love,” the Everlys are interested in making music in the moment.

Nine times out of 10, numbers spotlighting famous folks’ bands are simply set padding. Not so with the Everlys’ band, which includes guitarist Albert Lee, who’s been with the Everlys on and off for a decade and was a key member of Emmylou Harris’ mid-’70s band, nor with pedal steel guitar pioneer Buddy Emmons. An instrumental that let Emmons and Lee cut loose, followed by the guitar picker’s showcase “Restless,” which Lee also sang, gave the band a bit of its due.