Raina Rose, Rebecca Loebe, Smokey & The Mirror – Three Nights Live

Two support players, three venues, four songwriters, and sixteen songs performed flawlessly  

Released by Virginia-based Goose Creek Music, who (currently) specialize in releasing in-concert recordings, Three Nights Live captures sixteen songs performed by a coterie of Austin- and Fayetteville-based singer-songwriters as they made a three-gig sweep through Oklahoma and Texas during mid-November 2013. The venues visited — Greg Johnson’s The Blue Door in Oklahoma City, The Cactus Café on the University of Texas campus in Austin, and dHouston watering hole McGonigel’s Mucky Duck. The musicians in question are solo songwriters Raina Rose (vocals, acoustic guitar) and Rebecca Loebe (vocals, acoustic guitar) — Loebe also produced the disc — plus Fayetteville duo Smokey & The Mirror, composed of Bernice Hembree (vocals, bass) and Bryan Hembree (vocals, electric & acoustic guitar, cajon). The Hembrees previously performed with accomplished luthier Bayard Blain as 3 Penny Acre. Also sitting in for this show were Hembree sideman Daniel Walker (keyboards, accordion, cajon, vocals) and ‘Becca’s long-time collaborator/record producer Will Robertson (bass, electric guitar, vocals).

The sixteen Live songs alluded to in the opening paragraph merge originals with covers, with the latter bookending the disc and also furnishing a subtle midstream interlude. The album opens with each of the principle contributors chipping in on Jackson Browne’s 40-year-old classic “These Days.” Next up, reaching back to her 2009 Blackwater EP, Raina Rose contributes “Act Of God.” Oregon bred, Rose possesses a potent voice that joyously soars and swoops on her tale of a break for freedom after two lives are torn asunder one Sunday. Loebe follows with the subtly worded and titled love-lost ode “Lie,” originally a 2013 download-only single that featured her Austin band, The New Ordeals. Retaining the subjective status quo, Bryan follows with his gently reflective “Goodnight Lorena.”

Rose’s second offering, an invitation to love, “Swing Wide the Gates” appeared on her 2013 albumCaldera. “Marguerita” from Loebe’s Mystery Prize (2010) segues with (two-minutes of the cover) “California Stars.” Her energetic former was inspired by a NPR item about deportees, while the Woody Guthrie/Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett co-write, from the first Mermaid Avenue collection, possesses an appropriate symbiosis. The aforementioned ‘midstream interlude’ finds the quartet presenting a muscular take of Guy Clark’s “Dublin Blues,” followed by a gentle reading of Townes Van Zandt’s “Loretta.” Moving on, Loebe offers a pair of restless voyager travelogues, “California” from Mystery Prize and “The Chicago Kid” from Circus Heart (2012).

The rhythmically strident “Somewhere in the Middle,” a Hembree co-write, and Bryan’s “Rag And Bone” appeared on the Smokey & The Mirror 2013 EP of the same name. Rose journeys down love’s rocky road on her final offering “Bluebonnets,” which closed When May Came (2010). The Hembrees’ pop-inflected “St. Alban’s Day,” a tribute to visual and aural memories, dates from their 3 Penny Acre days. The quartet end Three Nights Live with “Tracks Of My Tears” a #2 Billboard R&B hit for The Miracles in 1965, penned by band members Smokey Robinson, Warren Moore and Marvin Taplin. This foursome unite for a truly soulful interpretation. 

Assuming Three Nights Live to be a typical example of Goose Creek’s output, they deliver “best seat in the house” pristine, crystal clear in-concert recordings. Released concurrently, drawn from the concerts, were discs headlined by Smoky & The Mirror and Rebecca Loebe (the latter reviewed separately on ND).

http://www.goosecreekmusic.com/

Brought to you from the desk of the Folk Villager.