O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : McEntire’s Vocal Magic

There wasn’t much Reba McEntire needed to do to make Friday night’s Irvine Meadows performance one of the best country shows of the year. Opener Vince Gill’s powerful set had already pretty well cinched that. But McEntire went on to send the evening spiraling ever higher with an 80-minute workout of her remarkable voice.

It was McEntire’s first local appearance since the tragic deaths of her manager, Jim Hammon, and seven of her band members in a plane crash March 16, after a show in San Diego. She and two of her musicians weren’t on the business jet that crashed into a mountainside that night, killing all aboard.

Weeks after the accident, McEntire announced that she was going to continue with her touring, that she felt it was the best way to carry on the memories of her departed friends. At some shows since she has dedicated Patsy Cline’s “Sweet Dreams” to them. It was one of the songs they had performed in concert hours before the crash, lent added poignancy by the fact that Cline, too, had perished in an air accident.

Friday, though, McEntire and her new band took “the show must go on” as a maxim, never even once referring to the tragedy. While that doubtless must be more bearable than again calling up the pain in front of thousands--and certainly is preferable to institutionalizing that pain in a neat nightly package--ignoring it also seemed to add another layer of artifice to a show which already is typically at odds with her artistry.

In short: Striking commanding Diana Ross-grade poses atop a majestic stairway while back lit by a splay of laser beams isn’t always the best way to assert the common humanity, grit and shared travails that make up the heart-to-heart of country music. Then throughout the show she mugged incessantly for the big-screen video cameras. And McEntire’s recent crossover material is generally about as country as a Daihatsu.

The big “however,” though, is that her voice can illuminate even the dimmest song and make one forget the Vegas-like trappings. In any style of music her voice would be an expressive wonder, and she made full use of its resources Friday.

McEntire may have the busiest mouth in the business, reshaping her vocal chamber with nearly every syllable to make each word she sings a beautifully sculpted statement. That effort paid off in her brilliant recasting of the Everly Brothers’ “Cathy’s Clown,” a ruminative, autumnal treatment which fully wrested the tune away from the otherwise unforgettable harmonies of the Everlys’ version.

Her vocals were no less glowing on “Rumor Has It,” “Walk On,” “Somebody Should Leave,” the bitter ballad “Fallin’ Out of Love” and the chilling moment of truth expressed in her show-closing “You Lie.” She also did a fair turn as a torch singer on “Sunday Kind of Love,” and effectively resurrected Bobbie Gentry’s 1969 “Fancy” in her encore.

There was thankfully only one medley in the show, and even that was fairly elastic, giving short shrift to some songs while letting worthier ones such as “I Know How He Feels” run longer. “Climb That Mountain High,” which McEntire co-wrote with Don Schlitz, seemed to cry out for a Marty Robbins campfire-song arrangement rather than the corporate-rock sound that robbed her vocal of its feeling Friday.

It was also hard to comprehend what, with the millions of other songs in the world, drew her to cover the 1973 Vicki Lawrence adultery/murder ditty “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” The only other disappointment in her usually thrilling 22-song show was that she and Gill, who have performed on each other’s records, didn’t do anything together.

Don’t be too surprised if Gill soon winds up topping the pop chart (as Garth Brooks presently is). In his sterling but too-brief 10-song set, his plaintive high tenor voice drew both frequent female screams and a standing ovation.

On record Gill’s efforts sometimes fall prey to the “my-hair’s-too-nice-to-touch” sterility of the Nashville studio scene, but even then his voice typically wins through. On stage he’s unstoppable, with that suasive voice, a hot band, a burning guitar prowess and a knack for harmony vocals that reveals the years he spent singing them on other people’s records.

Both Gill’s tenor voice and songs remind a bit of his old boss Rodney Crowell, though his songs aren’t yet as personal and palpable as Crowell’s best efforts. Though without the precise inflections and shadings of McEntire’s voice, Gill’s direct entreaties are nearly as gripping on the ballads “Pocket Full of Gold” and “Never Knew Lonely.” He has a penchant for sad songs but also put a glow into “Look at Us,” a tune about enduring, fulfilling love.

It would have been nice to hear McEntire join Gill (as she does on disc) for his “Oklahoma Swing,” but he and his band fared well enough on their own, trading off a round of dizzying solos, highlighted by pedal steel guitarist John Hughey, a 20-year Conway Twitty vet who offered some of the wildest chordal soloing this side of Speedy West.

Then there was Gill’s time-stopping version of his instant classic “When I Call Your Name.” As heart-rending as it is coming out of a jukebox, live it had an immediacy and dimension that made it easily twice as affecting, particularly when he and his band mates--including the excellent fiddle player Andrea Zonn--kicked in on the high Appalachian harmonies of the bridge.

Third-billed Aaron Tippen has a couple of serviceable songs in the ballad “I Wonder How Far It Is Over You” and his hit “You’ve Got to Stand for Something,” a suitable anthem for both high school anti-apathy rallies and desert blitzkriegs. But most of his selections, like “Ain’t That a Hell of a Note,” were uninspired writing exercises and novelty songs, aided neither by his abrasively twanged voice nor by his Gallagher-minus-the-watermelons performance style.