Steve at Telluride #7: The G3 Summit
3 Girls and Their Buddy
Okay, this was huge. Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, and Shawn Colvin take the stage together. I don’t know which of these women I was most excited about seeing tonight. Emmylou is the most accomplished. Patty has the best songs. Shawn is the best singer. With all three at once, we get a sirens supernova. And they threw in Buddy Miller, playing and harmonizing along, as a lagniappe. This was magical. My only quibble is that this set wasn’t scheduled for later in the evening and given two hours—allowing this lineup only an hour and fifteen minutes is like taking a six-pack on a float trip: You’re grateful for what you have, but you’re left wishing for twice as much.
Plenty of exquisite moments here, as the four took turns singing songs–sometimes their own songs, sometimes covers. The show opened with Emmy and Buddy dueting on “Love Hurts,” always a treat. Shawn made the nicest selections tonight, Tom Waits’s “Hold On” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” Still, I felt like the set belonged to Patty. The last song tonight was her feloniously-beautiful “Mary,” and when she started strumming and singing that opening couplet, the accumulation of an hour’s worth of gorgeous voices and melodies formed a crystalline beam of light that shot skyward from the stage and pierced the firmament above, sweeping across the heavens, caroming off the mountains, and returning directly to my seat as a speeding firebolt, which passed through the top of my head and rent my heart into slivers, flinging me heavily to earth where I lay and convulsed in pitiable helplessness, losing control of my bodily fluids and weeping pathetically. It was that pretty.
Getting cold now–heading back to the tent to change into warm clothes. Two more shows still left tonight…