Dustin Kidd, Review of All The Road Running by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris

[Editor’s Note: Today CGO features my friend, Dustin Kidd, as our guest writer. See his biographical material below.]

 
Album Review: All the Road Running by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris (Mercury Records)

 A little more than a year ago I found myself driving with a friend across the deserts and mountains of the Southwest, from LA to Colorado Springs, for a teaching workshop—of all things. My traveling companion was an old friend, but boy! – did we figure out new ways of getting on each other’s nerves. The sorest issue was the radio volume, which I liked to turn way up, so I could hear it over the wind. But my friend found the combination too loud and made me choose between the radio and the windows.   

I chose the windows. But I would have opted for AC and the CD player if I’d had this new album by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris called All the Road Running. In fact, the track “Right Now” would have suited us just right: “Miles between us, here we are, side by side in a stranded car right now.” 
S ome albums are made for the dance floor, others for the arena hall. This album was made for the road trip. But not just any road trip—only those that involve old friends, who’ve road tripped before, heading down new roads. Like the guys from Sideways. This album is full of car seat reminiscences about lost loves and long lives. It is haunted by deaths and by regret, as when the crooners ponder on the album’s title track, “If it’s all for nothing, all the road running’s been in vain.”

 

But this album is also full of life continued. Every hint of past tense is balanced by a reminder of the present. Lost loves are replaced with new ones. The old glory days of romance are still in progress.

Both of these singers have worked hard to establish their own names. Knopfler was a founding member of the British rock band Dire Straits, who are perhaps best known for their eighties hit “Money for Nothing.” But my favorite album is Making Movies, from 1980, with its soundtrack-friendly “Romeo and Juliet” (later covered by the Indigo Girls). He has been recording his own solo work for a decade now, including the acclaimed Sailing to Philadelphia (2000).

Harris was introduced to the world of country music by Gram Parsons, who featured her on his solo albums. She has released 23 albums of her own work and has been through a bit of a renaissance in recent years with such alt-country releases as Wrecking Ball (1995), Red Dirt Girl (2000), and Stumble into Grace (2003). She keeps busy as a featured artist in numerous duets, pairing up with the likes of Ryan Adams, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Beth Orton, and Steve Earle. And her contribution to the soundtrack for Brokeback Mountain, the love song “A Love that Will Never Grow Old” won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song.

So after years of establishing their own names, these two artists have come together to record this beautiful road album. Though the songs evoke the southwest, I found them just as fitting for a recent hiking trip in Iceland. Unlike most of the music we hear these days, this album actually rewards you for every year of life tucked under your belt—so long as you are still traveling.

© 2006, Dustin Kidd.

Dustin Kidd is a sociologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, studying art and popular culture.  A native of Crozet, Virginia, he misses fresh peaches and the view from Afton
Mountain.  He has replaced these mementos with involvement in community puppet theater, yoga, and dive bars.

Editor’s Note: The view from Afton Mountain is sublime.

Comments

[Catherine Claire]

Indeed a great album, but then again who wouldn't love Emmylou?

[Serven]

I know Dustin Kidd too, and because of him, I'll buy this.
Yeah Dustin.

[Dustin]

Thanks, ya'll.

Hiya, Doug

-dustin