“Oh shit, who the hell is this?” Mine wasn’t the most charitable reaction to the two young women standing center stage at a sold-out Bass Concert Hall on Friday night. We hadn’t expected an opener. Ray Lamontagne wasn’t even headlining. Happily, the Secret Sisters began the ensuing four-hour marathon summoning no less than the Everly Brothers.
Sharing an acoustic guitar, the Muscle Shoals (Alabama) siblings hushed the still-filling hall from their first harmonies. First with Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” then later in the brief 20-minute set on Willie Nelson’s “Blues Eyes Crying in the Rain,” Lydia and Laura Rogers cried pure Southern soul. Adding that they compose as well, the young twentysomethings debuted the two-week-old “River Jordan,” which unfolded verse after original verse like a church standard at the Grand Ole Opry.
Turns out the Secret Sisters have endorsement deals from Jack White (on his Third Man Records) and T Bone Burnett (executive producer of last month’s debut The Secret Sisters). They’re not quite long lost Carter Sisters just down from the mount in other words. They were good enough to open for Ray Lamontagne, however, who was himself warming up for the Band’s Dixie star, Levon Helm.
Once the estrogen ardor died down enough for he and his band the Pariah Dogs to be heard, Lamontagne uncorked his modern Joe Cocker/“You Are So Beautiful” rasp, a perfect New Hampshire woodsman’s call distressed by emotional bark peeling. The peerless songsmith concentrated the bulk of his 90-minute main set on his fourth and most recent LP, God Willin’ & the Creek Don’t Rise (RCA), beginning with radio staple and Big Apple standard to be, “New York City’s Killing Me.” Another new hat in hand, “Beg Steal or Borrow,” teamed with Gossip in the Grain sophomore appeal, “Let It Be Me.” Borrowing Levon Helm’s bandleader, ex-Bob Dylan sideman Larry Campbell, on fiddle, plus the headliner’s horn section, Lamontagne kept his slow-burning laments at peak brood. God Willin’ lead-off “Repo Man” matched the film of the same name in memorable punch. Encores included the title track to the main event’s 2004 debut, Trouble, and an appearance by local pedal steel guitarist Cindy Cashdollar on a rousing cover of Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried.”
Trying like the Confederate Army – and understandably haggard – was Levon Helm, who helped headline the 2009 Austin City Limits Music Festival. By then he mostly stopped singing in performance following a career comeback midway through the last decade after battling throat cancer beginning in the late-1990s. Leading two guitarists, bass, organ (Brian Mitchell gave a shout-out to his Austinite parents), a pair of singers (Teresa Williams and his daughter Amy Helm), and a five-man horn section, the onetime Band drummer/singer beat his rock & roll big band into his old group’s “The Shape I’m In,” then Leadbelly jaunt “The Bourgeois Blues.” Helm warned the slightly thinned house about his craw on another Band classic, “Oephilia,” for which he made the croaking Bob Dylan of 2010 sound like Placido Domingo. It hardly mattered. The voice of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Up on Cripple Creek” – neither of them played – probably would’ve had the same visceral impact if he’d signed the song rather than sung it. His crew’s swamp rock held Bass Concert Hall court in grand fashion.
As Ray Lamontagne guested the Secret Sisters, Helm and company welcomed their stage predecessor for the Band’s “Tears of Rage,” which never matched the vocal work of either Teresa Williams or Amy Helm. Better was Lamontagne, Larry Campbell, and the Secret Sisters trading verses on main set closer “The Weight” in the 70th minute. No single vocal presentation of the entire evening was as moving as Levon and Amy Helm singing to each other on finale “I Shall Be Released.”
This article appears in November 12 • 2010.
