Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell
Album: The Traveling Kind
Label: Nonesuch
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.emmylouharris.com
http://www.rodneycrowell.com

Having taken almost forty years to get round to making an album together, old friends Harris and Crowell have wasted no time in following up their duo debut, Old Yellow Moon, with a second set of old school country, this time featuring largely all new material.

Both are, of course, country legends and have been doing this for decades, so as you'd expect there's a natural, fluid ease to the album (Crowell says that the recording, laid down in just six days, was "pretty much like falling off a log.") and their collaboration on songs that, produced by Joe Henry and backed by The Glory Band and guests Steuart Smith and Billy Payne, range from classic heartache ballad to up tempo country rocking.

The all new mid-tempo chugging title track opens the album, Crowell taking prominence on a celebration of endurance and of those musicians who survive what can be a long and hard road as he sings how "the first and last to leave their mark someday become the traveling kind." Emmylou then steps up to take lead on a soulful twangy new reading of Crowell's No Memories Hanging Round before the first of the uptempo cuts arrives with the choogling rock 'n' roll of Bring It On Home To Memphis, another Crowell rework (co-penned with Larry Klein some 23 years ago) with him sounding not unlike the Sun era Orbison with Harris providing the drawled spoken interlude.

You Can't Say We Didn't Try, a vintage pedal-steel streaked broken heart duet with Harris at her aching best, kicks off a clutch of new numbers, followed by the bluesy train time rhythm rockabilly The Weight Of The World featuring some tasty throaty guitar licks and then back to ballad territory for Higher Mountains, a delicate, ethereal intro ushering in another yearning Harris vocal on a song that sounds as though it could be an anthemic moment in some stage musical.

The pair get suitably gutsy on Lucinda Williams' punchy I Just Wanted To see You So Bad before shifting tempo and mood again for the steel-stained waltzing Just Pleasing You, another old Crowell number (co-written with Mary Karr and originally appearing on their Kin duets album and featuring Vince Gill) with Harris harmonising on the chorus, and then again for the banjo shuffling hillbilly Harris/Crowell co-write If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now.

The second of the album's covers comes with Harris's reflective treatment of Her Hair Was Red written and originally recorded by Mose Allison's daughter Amy and described by Elvis Costello as "a song for the ages." Listening to this version, accompanied by guitar and shimmering keys, he was clearly spot on. The album closes in mid-tempo, but good time, upbeat form with the last of the new material, Crowell and Harris joining writing forces with Will Jennings for the fiddle-backed, Cajun infused La Danse De La Joie. Old Yellow Moon won the pair a Grammy. Guess they're going to have to make room on their shelves for another.

Mike Davies