Two decades ago, Emmylou Harris and a cast of Americana luminaries embarked on an acoustic tour to focus attention on the danger and damage caused by landmines around the world. The tour has been repeated several times since, with a rotating cast devoted to humanitarian causes donating their time and talent.
This month, a number of those same cast members were on the road again, raising awareness about an issue much closer to home: Migrant families who have been separated by the Trump administration at the Texas-New Mexico border.
The Lantern Tour, as the series of five concerts in six days was known, made its second stop in Washington, D.C. at the Warner Theatre last Thursday. (The tour ended Sunday in New York after stops in New Jersey and Boston.) A meet-and-greet fundraiser for the New York-based Women’s Refugee Commission, which organized the tour, was held the previous evening at The Mansion on O Street. Harris, Steve Earle, Mexican singer-songwriter Lila Downs, and dobro master Jerry Douglas mingled with the guests, and commission staff spoke briefly at the event.
I took photos at the fundraiser, but tour management did not allow anyone except The Washington Post to shoot the concert. I did, however, manage to score tickets to the sold-out show, where Jackson Browne and Shawn Colvin joined Harris, Earle, Downs, and Douglas on stage.
Like the Landmine concerts, The Lantern Tour shows featured the musicians sitting in a row with their instruments, taking turns playing songs. Douglas, who called himself the “music director by default” at the meet and greet, provided superb accompaniment throughout.
For the most part, the two-hour show stuck to themes related to immigrant struggles — families, exile, loneliness, mourning and spirituality — as the performers stayed away from their best-known songs.
More than anyone, Browne stuck to the script, performing the ballads “Sierra Blanca Massacre” and “The Dreamer.” Downs, who was born and raised in Mexico, received some of the evening’s strongest applause after her beautiful rendition of the traditional folk song “La Llorona (The Weeping Woman)” in Spanish as well as a cover of Gillian Welch’s “Dear Someone.” Colvin contributed “Ricochet in Time” and a cover of CeeLo Green’s “Crazy.”
Earle briefly sidetracked the proceedings to pay tribute to Tony Joe White, who had died that day at age 75, with the song, “You’re the Best Lover I Ever Had.” Harris, who said she’s writing a memoir “like everyone is these days,” performed “The Road” as a tribute to Gram Parsons, who had discovered her in D.C. in 1971.
In the end, it was Earle who gave the show a needed jolt of energy. An unabashed rabble-rouser, he performed versions of “City of Immigrants” and the updated spiritual “Tell Moses” — a duet with Colvin — that had the audience singing and swaying along. I’ve now seen him almost 20 times since 1997 and have yet to be disappointed.
The concert closed with “The Pilgrim,” Earle’s tribute to Roy Huskey Jr. that also has been recorded by Harris. Like the best songs, this one has come to mean more than its original intent; Harris referenced the “over 65 million displaced persons around the world” when she performed it on “Late Night with Stephen Colbert” last fall.
And with the lines, “I’m just a pilgrim on this road, boys/’til I see you, fare thee well,” the tour went to its next stop, its light shining brightly.
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