rhymes with Pearl

July 4, 2006 performance reviewed by Dave Conlin Read.

No, not Minnie Pearl of Nashville fame, but with the diminuitive dynamo from Texas, Janis Joplin. Fifty minutes or so into Lee Ann Rimes' July 4 Tanglewood performance, we began to wonder what it would be like if Ms. Rimes were working with Janis Joplin's material.

Being alien to the Country music world, as you'd (use to) expect any good Lenoxian to be, about all we knew about Lee Ann Rimes was that she sounded like Patsy Cline. So, even though we were charmed by her beauty and stagecraft right away and impressed by her singing, especially by her treatment of the Cline icon "Crazy," our unfamiliarity with the material (and annoyance at the stage show of smoke and video), left us susceptible to daydreaming, and memories of Janis Joplin came to the fore.

We'd seen her twice, including her last performance (Harvard Stadium, August 12, 1970), and couldn't help but imagine what a rush it'd be to hear Ms. Rimes and her crackerjack 6 piece band perform a setlist built around numbers such as "Piece of My Heart," "Down on Me," and "Cry Baby."

Soon enough our reverie was interrupted when it got quiet on stage and Ms. Rimes began talking to the audience about her Texas childhood and the variety of music she was introduced to by her mother, father, and aunt and then spoke in reverent tones about her respect for Janis Joplin.

Well, you could've knocked me over with a feather! What followed was a stunning, beguiling, searing - totally freakin awesome - rendition of "Summertime," the Gershwin show tune (from "Porgy and Bess") that Joplin turned into a show stopper. All that was missing was the Boa and the Southern Comfort!

Comparisons of artists are odious, but the musicians Rimes has access to are better than her predecessor's. May we suggest that an album of Lee Ann Rimes covering the hits of Janis Joplin would be a good idea?

She closed the set with a velvety version of Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" and wrapped up the concert with her huge Billboard country chart record-setting hit, "How Do I Live," and a couple runs along the edge of the stage, reaching further out to her adoring fans.

Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion opened with a seven song set that was warmly received. With this act, with her lineage, comparisons are unavoidable - and Ms. Guthrie's display of musicianship and stage presence easily showed her to be a worthy heir to Arlo and Woody.

The duo also is a married couple with a young child; if they're anywhere near as harmonious at home as on stage, that's a very lucky child. On stage, we'd prefer Ms. Guthrie did all the introductions and patter, because she's swell at it and because it's hard not to think Mr. Irion is trying too hard to avoid comparisons to his father-in-law.

Finally, a fashion note: Ms. Guthrie, daughter of an icon of hippiedom, wearing a long royal blue dress and a red rose in her hair, looked like Nashville royalty, while Ms. Rimes's short-short striped shift with frayed hem could've been found in the free box outside the co-op in Berkeley, Boulder, or Cambridge.

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