Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen sauntered up onto the stage of Hugh’s Room in Toronto Wednesday night, two working guys armed with a mandolin and a guitar, and gave us an enthralling short history of country-rock music.
From the instant the duo kicked off Bury Me Under the Weepin’ Willow — a folk song imported from Scotland or Ireland probably two centuries ago and transformed into mountain music in the States by the high-lonesome harmonies the duo expertly replicated— those of us fortunate enough to be in attendance were off on a joyous journey.
Hillman is a seminal figure in music who always manages to get overlooked when they take the roll call of founding fathers.
An original member of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, co-founder of Manassas with Stephen Stills, part of the Souther Hillman Furay (SHF) band, creator of numerous strong solo albums (Slippin’ Away and Clear Sailin’ are two I own and love), Hillman has worked with Pedersen for many years in a duo and as part of The Desert Rose Band.
There was a set list of 49 songs that Hillman plunked down on his stool. I would have said at the beginning that it was impossible for H-P, if I may be saucy enough to use their initials, to satisfy all those in the crowd even if they could have played that many tunes. That would mean satisfying the ones who wanted to hear all The Byrds’ greatest hits, the Gram Parsons-Burrito freaks (count me in) , and the newer fans who wanted to hear straighter country music.
By the end, because their mastery of their craft is so stunning and the interplay of their harmonies so entrancing, Hillman and Pedersen could have played the Back Street Boys greatest hits and we would all have cheered madly .
They gave us pre-Byrds songs such as Gene Clark’s Tried So Hard, early Byrds (Time Between from Younger Than Yesterday), Mr. Tambourine Man (in the version Hillman first heard as a demo by Bob Dylan and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott), Turn, Turn, Turn and Eight Miles High.
They gave us the definitive Burritos’ cut Sin City with Hillman’s voice aching Gram-style in all the right places. There were the Louvin Brothers (If I Could Only Win Your Heart which Pedersen had a big hit with singing backup to Emmylou Harris), Wilburn Brothers (Somebody’s Back in Town)‚ Munroe Brothers (The Old Crossroads), It Doesn’t Matter from Manassas, some country-pop in Danny O’Keefe’s Goodtime Charlie’s Got The Blues, and some Bakersfield soul music courtesy of Buck Owens (Together Again and The Streets of Bakersfield.)
They even paid homage to our own Ian Tyson, whose Great Speckled Bird album ranks right alongside The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo in the breakthrough country-rock sweepstakes.
It is a brave man who tries to elicit a Toronto audience to sing along in a lit room to anything other than Let’s Go Blue Jays, but Hillman conducted an impromptu hootenany on the chorus of Dylan’s You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere from Sweetheart. To the surprise of everyone, it generated a raucous Hallelujah chorus of “Ooo...eee, ride me highs.”
Then the self-described “sissies from California” complained about our weather and were gone, having provided ample evidence that folk and country and bluegrass and gospel and country-rock are in the end, meaningless labels. As Duke Ellington said once a long time ago, there are only two kinds of music: good and bad.
One label that could possibly describe Hillman and Pedersen is “roots musicians.” As ambiguous a term as that is, it at least gets across the idea that they know the traditions, they understand where they came from and they respect and honour their forebears.
And, oh yeah, they play and sing like hell.