SummerTyne Americana Festival at the Sage Gateshead: All you need to know; A hots of acts are heading to the Sage Gateshead for this year's SummerTyne Americana Festival this weekend.
Byline: Alan Nichol
For this weekend's 10th SummerTyne Americana festival, Sage Gateshead has invited two of the genre's leading ladies to help celebrate the anniversary.
However, the supporting cast has quality throughout and demonstrates the breadth and appeal of roots music.
Certainly, the country-leaning headliners -- Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash & John Leventhal and the UK's own harmony-duo, The Shires -- will undoubtedly tap into the huge following for all things country but there are diamonds to be found elsewhere on the three-day roster for those who enjoy folk, blues, soul and gospel music and much in between.
The free DFDS-sponsored Jumpin' Hot Club outdoor stage, which gets underway at lunchtime on Friday, is always an attractive feature with an audience which seems to expand with each year. The free stage will host up to 20 acts, from near and far, over the three days.
Friday's Hall 1 main attraction is the 13-times Grammy-winner Emmylou Harris with her long-time friend/collaborator, Rodney Crowell (who has a couple of Grammy awards himself).
She was born in Birmingham, Alabama, into a military family -- her father was in the US Marine Corps -- but, as is the way with such families, she moved home any number of times as she was growing up.
Her first album, Gliding Bird (1969), was a folk-inclined offering and it was to be another six-years before she made her major-label debut (for Reprise) with Pieces Of The Sky.
Harris has around 40 albums to her name -- almost twice as many singles -- and has remained highly influential and in demand for virtually her whole career.
She has recorded with some of the biggest names in roots-music (and beyond) with Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Mark Knopfler and Elvis Costello in that celebrated club.
However, one name, albeit from her very early career, has remained a defining one in her long career. The former Byrds country-rock innovator, Gram Parsons.
Whilst Parsons died in 1973, the pair made a couple of landmark recordings -- Grievous Angel and GP -- which still resonate to this day. The connection with Parsons was made via his old Byrds/Flying Burrito Brothers bandmate, Chris Hillman, who toyed with asking Harris to join the Burritos before recommending her to Parsons.
A little later Emmylou assembled her Hot Band which included James Burton, Glen Hardin and Ron Tutt (and Rodney Crowell).
Other top-class instrumentalists like Ricky Skaggs, Albert Lee and Jerry Douglas worked with...
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