EMMYLOU HARRIS & THE ANGEL BAND – Bethesda 1974 (2CD)

Soundboard 8.7 – A show that factors in to what would become a stellar career over many decades. Pretty much on her own now (no longer paired with Gram Parsons R.I.P.) she started playing in the clubs in the DC area when a producer came to record this show for future reference as he crafted her breakout solo album. Did she know he was at the gig?  Who knows, but she obviously made an impact.

Emmylou Harris and the Angel Band
1974-05-08
Red Fox Inn
Bethesda, Maryland

Disc 1

01 -Hot Burrito #1
02 -Hickory Wind
03 -Shop Around
04 -Honky Tonk Blues
05 -Louise
06 -California Cottonfields
07 -High On The Hilltop
08 -Reconstructed
09 -When Will I Be Loved
10 -God Knows I Love You
11 -Before Believing
12 -Queen Of The Silver Dollar
13 -Someone I Used to Know
14 -Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down
15 -A Song for You
16 -High On The Hilltop
17 -Born Again
18 -Drifting Too Far From Shore

Disc 2

01 -Country Baptizin’
02 -That’s All It Took
03 -Together Again
04 -Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad
05 -Our Father
06 -Maybe Mexico
07 -Sold it All Away
08 -Instrumental (Jeff Wisor & J.B. Morrison)
09 -Satan’s Jewel Crown
10 -Born Again
11 -Country Baptizin’

Angel Band :
Bruce Archer – Guitar
Mark Cuff – Drums
Tom Guidera – Bass
Danny Pendleton – Steel Guitar
w/ John & Fayssoux Starling, J.B. Morrison & Jeff Wisor on tracks 7-11 (disc 2)

{After Gram Parsons’s death} Emmy moved back to D.C., where Tom Guidera had also become a country music convert. With pedal steel player Danny Pendleton and two other musicians, they put together the Angel Band and started gigging around the clubs, playing some of the songs she’d performed with Gram. Eddie Tickner made Harris his number one priority and he convinced Mary Martin, an A&R representative from Warner/Reprise Records (the label that had released Parsons’ solo work) to investigate an Angel Band show in a Washington nightclub.

Emmylou Harris became a Reprise Records recording artist in 1974; with her daughter Hallie in tow, the Angel Band relocated to Los Angeles to begin work on Harris’s first true solo album.

To produce, Martin paired Harris up with Nova Scotia native Brian Ahern, the mastermind behind Anne Murray’s spate of hits in the early 70’s. She brought the quiet Canadian to hear the Angel Band, and he recorded the performance on a hand-held cassette machine to study at home.

This sounds better than a hand-held cassette machine recording, purportedly a sound board, but it’s not by any means what we think of as soundboard quality by today’s standards.