Colvin & Earle bring songs and stories to the Majestic

It’s strange to think about this in these reality-TV-dominated days, but I first encountered Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle via music videos on VH1. It was the late ’80s, and the still-young channel was going through a phase where it played adult-album-alternative artists in between all the Belinda Carlisle and Don Henley and Phil Collins clips. So Colvin’s breakthrough single Steady On and Earle’s Someday got some exposure they weren’t even getting on many radio stations.

Perhaps it’s appropriate, then, than Colvin & Earle’s concert Friday night at the Majestic Theatre came off a little like VH1 Storytellers. There was much talk, some of it about the struggle to complete a certain song, but some of it going deeper, like Earle’s story about how seeing Bruce Springsteen (whose birthday happened to be Friday) during the Born in the U.S.A. tour unlocked a creative block Earle was having before making his 1986 debut Guitar Town. And some of it was more amusing asides, like Colvin saying she was inspired to cover the Nashville Teens’ Tobacco Road after hearing it on Sirius XM’s “’60s on 6” channel, which she listens to frequently.

But there was also much music, most of it performed in vocal duet as Colvin and Earle shared the stage for the entirety of the nearly two-hour, loose, acoustic show. The show started heavy on covers — The Everly Brothers’ Wake Up Little Susie, We Five’s You Were on My Mind, the aforementioned Tobacco Road, whose songwriter, John D. Loudermilk, died this week, Earle giving a brief “John D. Loudermilk R.I.P.” tribute after the song. But it eventually settled into a mix of Colvin and Earle originals, some written in tandem, some from their own albums.

When the two sang together, their vocals meshed nicely, especially on a You’re Right (I’m Wrong), a brooding dysfunctional love song they co-wrote for their Colvin & Earle album released this year. But the songs done in direct duet began to sound a little too much alike. Things were elevated when only one of the duo sang (as on Colvin’s big hit Sunny Came Home, during which Earle provided musical accompaniment on the mandolin-like bouzouki), or when one took a verse solo and then the other stepped in, as on Earle’s Copperhead Road, which was a crowd-pleasing closer.

The duo performed without a band, and all the storytelling and guitar-tuning added to the show’s appealing informality (although an audience member or two might have thought that Earle’s liberal use of the f-word was a little too informal). Between the duo’s affection and admiration for each other, the relatively small size of the Majestic crowd, and the familiarity of many songs, it felt a bit like a couple of talented singers whipping out their guitars and playing for a group of friends at a party. Which is kind of what it was.

This story was originally published September 24, 2016 at 12:40 AM with the headline "Colvin & Earle bring songs and stories to the Majestic."