Live in England

Album review

After releasing 12 albums in 13 years (1968-81), Mickey Newbury dropped out of full-time recording to rest on his considerable song royalties. MCA Records released a best-of (Sweet Memories) in 1985, and he re-recorded some of his songs for Airborne (In a New Age) in 1988, but he did not really begin to re-emerge until the mid-1990s. This live album chronicles his 21-date tour of England in 1993, his first extensive bout of stage work in nearly two decades. (He helpfully explains in a stage remark that over the past 19 years, his concertizing has been restricted to a tour of Australia in 1984, a tour of Poland in 1988, and a few charity shows in the U.S. Actually, his live work in America has been more extensive than that, but not much.) It is curious, then, that when the disc was released belatedly in 1998, it was his third live recording and his second in four years. Newbury released Live at Montezuma Hall in 1973 and returned to recording with the concert album Nights When I Am Sane in 1994. On the latter, he employed a second guitarist, but all three records are spare efforts that focus on the singer and his guitar, and feature many of the same songs. "Cortelia Clark," "Easy Street," and "American Trilogy," heard here, are getting their second live releases, and "San Francisco Mabel Joy" is on all three albums. On his studio albums, Newbury's dirge-like performances are augmented with often elaborate arrangements, which relieves the gloom and the relentless tempo somewhat. In concert, his work can be forbidding unless you are already a fan, and especially for those who picked up Nights When I Am Sane four years earlier, Live in England is not an essential purchase.
© William Ruhlmann /TiVo