Pierce Pettis and Grace Pettis
$16 advance / $18 door — Buy Tickets
Saturday, February 4 / 8:30pm
Call 540.213.8777 for dinner reservations in the Music Hall.
"For those who know how to listen, who respond more to slowly falling tears than screeches, screams or scantily clad joke-dancing, this is the place for you. Friday night offered no better example than in the choice pairing of headliner Pierce Pettis and his incredibly gifted 23-year-old daughter, Grace, who recently won the New Folk Songwriting award at the Kerrville Folk Festival. They were supported by surprising newcomer Liz Longley, a 2009 New Folk finalist who served as an unforgettable opening act, and Dirje Smith, a terrific cellist, who accompanied Pierce and Grace...
Pierce Pettis won the 1987 New Folk award at Kerrville, making him and his daughter the only father-child combo to have captured it. This is a guy who knows how to write, whose songs feel as much like novels or carefully woven short stories as they do memorable ballads. His compositions have wound up as hits for the likes of Garth Brooks and Art Garfunkel, but I prefer his own renderings. Hearing him sing "You Move Me," the one he wrote for Brooks (he recently told his 7-year-old son from his second marriage that it paid for their house), it's no wonder that elite vocalists find his tunes so alluring. "That Kind of Love," which he sang as a poignant duet with Grace, offers no better proof of the power of the man's writing.
The second set featured Grace singing "Little Bluebird," a sweet homage to a songwriter's heaven, the Bluebird Café in Nashville, Tenn., and one of two for which she won the New Folk award. The other, the majestic "Lighthouse," which can be either a Christian allegory or an unforgettable love story, got the rousing ovation it deserved. She also sang "Nine to Five Girl," which offers its own adroit commentary on the condescending way that so many view the working class, and the moving "Love Is There." (To learn more about Grace, please read my recent feature on her in The Dallas Morning News.)
For an encore, Pierce sang one of his older songs but one of his best, "Just Like Jim Brown (She Is Leaving)," which cleverly equates a woman leaving a relationship with what some called the premature exit of the best running back in the history of professional football: "Jim was something, that's a fact/the all-time greatest running back/but Jim knew something fools don't know/he knew when it was time to go."
Grace says she prefers to sing "Speak Tenderly" only with Smith playing cello behind her, and if that's the case, she should take her with her everywhere she goes. It's a wonderful song, which feels destined for a Hollywood soundtrack (as, for that matter, do so many of the songs she and her father sing - Hollywood, where are you?). Pierce closed the night with a pair of Bob Dylan classics, "The Times They Are A-Changin' " and "Down in the Flood," on which he sent the crowd home with his killer harmonica. Great night. If only they had made a video. "
