Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt & Joe Ely - Songwriters' Circle, Bush Hall, London, Britain, 10-15-2010

American singer-songwriter Joe Ely died yesterday, December 15, 2025, of age-related issues. He was 78 years old. It so happens that I'm not very familiar with his music. I've heard good things, but there's just so much music out there, I haven't gotten to everything I'd want to. So I hadn't planned to post anything to mark his passing. But it also just so happens that I had an episode of the BBC TV show "Songwriters' Circle" in which Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, and Joe Ely took turns performing their songs. I figured this was the ideal time to post that, so here it is.

Before I say anything else, I want to give a thanks to a musical friend named Peter. A few weeks ago, he sent me a bunch of high quality full-length videos of this show, including this one. So I plan on posting a few more in the near future, knock on wood. He didn't have all of them, however. Here's a list of the ones I still don't have:

Joan Baez, Matraca Berg & Gretchen Peters
Paul Heaton & Dave Rotheray, Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham, & John Martyn
Allen Toussaint, James Dean Bradfield, & John Grant
Bill Anderson, Clint Black, & Bob DiPiero

If anyone has any of those and wants to share, please do. I've noticed the one with Toussaint, Bradfield and Grant is on YouTube, but only individual songs in no particular order, and no banter between songs. So I'd rather hold out for the whole show with that one.

Another comment before I get to the details of this album: some of the videos that Peter sent me were of episodes I already had. I didn't need to make any changes to the audio for those. However, some of the album covers I made weren't very good, based on low-res YouTube videos. I was able to remake some of the covers, and they look much better now. In fact, I've made at least some changes to all the Songwriters' Circle covers I've posted so far, standardizing the font type and size, and things like that. So I recommend you redownload those. Look to the label on the side of this blog called "Songwriters' Circle." There should be five of them prior to this one.

Okay, getting to the content of this album already, if you look at the cover image, you can probably tell that all three singer-songwriters here had long careers by the time they appeared on this show in 2010. Joe Ely's first album (with the Flatlanders) is from 1972, John Hiatt's first album is from 1974, and Lyle Lovett's first album is from 1986. They all are influenced by folk and country, so their styles fit well together.

As is the usual format for the show, each of them took turns performing songs, then they came together to all perform the last song. However, there were some instances where they backed each other on guitar or backing vocals. I only included that in the song credits if it was significant, such as "Thing Called Love," a Hiatt song where Lovett also had a prominent singing role. 

The music is unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and two minutes long. 

01 talk (Joe Ely)
02 Billy the Kid (Joe Ely)
03 Thing Called Love (John Hiatt & Lyle Lovett)
04 talk (John Hiatt & Lyle Lovett)
05 If I Had a Boat (Lyle Lovett)
06 talk (Joe Ely)
07 My Baby Thinks She's French (Joe Ely)
08 talk (Joe Ely & John Hiatt)
09 Master of Disaster (John Hiatt)
10 She's No Lady (Lyle Lovett)
11 talk (Joe Ely)
12 All that You Need (Joe Ely)
13 talk (John Hiatt)
14 Drive South (John Hiatt)
15 talk (Lyle Lovett)
16 Simple Song (Lyle Lovett)
17 Honky Tonk Masquerade (Joe Ely)
18 Have a Little Faith in Me (John Hiatt)
19 My Baby Don't Tolerate (John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett & Joe Ely)
20 Old Dusty Road [Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad] (John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett & Joe Ely)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UVyWdHLC

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5j5miq1rhL3x2st/file

The cover image is a screenshot from a video of this exact concert.

Various Artists - A Celebration of Townes Van Zandt, University of Texas at Austin, Austin City Limits, Austin, TX, 12-7-1997

Here's something I only recently discovered, so it went to the top of my pile of albums to post, while it was still fresh in my mind. It's a tribute to singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt, from 1997.

Van Zandt died on January 1, 1997 from heart failure. That wasn't that surprising, since he fit the profile of a "live hard and die young" kind of person. He had addictions with alcohol and heroin pretty much is entire adult life, and was manic depressive as well. But he was a much beloved figure in the Texas country music community. So most of his musical friends took part in this concert, put on by the "Austin City Limits" TV show, to honor his legacy.

As you can see from the cover photo, all the various singers were arranged in a large semi-circle facing the audience. There was a largely unseen band in the background supporting them. Each performer generally got one song, though Guy Clark got two, and sometimes there were duets or backing vocals.

If you're not familiar with the songwriting of Van Zandt, this is a good way to learn his best known songs. He didn't write many hit songs (with "Pancho and Lefty" being a big exception), but his songs were often covered by other country artists due to their quality.

As far as I know, everything here is unreleased. I found this on YouTube, converted it to audio, and broke it into mp3s. The sound quality is very good.  

This album is 51 minutes long. 

01 To Live Is to Fly (Guy Clark)
02 talk (Guy Clark)
03 talk (Peter Roman)
04 No Lonesome Tune (Peter Roman with Nanci Griffith)
05 talk (Steve Earle)
06 Ft. Worth Blues (Steve Earle)
07 talk (Steve Earle)
08 talk (Nanci Griffith)
09 Tecumseh Valley (Nanci Griffith)
10 talk (John T. Van Zandt)
11 Highway Kind (John T. Van Zandt)
12 talk (John T. Van Zandt)
13 talk (Willie Nelson)
14 Pancho and Lefty [Edit] (Willie Nelson & Emmylou Harris)
15 talk (Emmylou Harris)
16 If I Needed You [Edit] (Emmylou Harris with Steve Earle)
17 talk (Rodney Crowell)
18 Heavenly Houseboat (Rodney Crowell with Emmylou Harris)
19 talk (Lyle Lovett)
20 Lungs (Lyle Lovett with Steve Earle)
21 talk (Lyle Lovett)
22 talk (Jack Clement)
23 For the Sake of the Song (Jack Clement)
24 talk (Guy Clark)
25 Don't Take It Too Bad (Guy Clark)
26 talk (Guy Clark & Susanna Clark)
27 White Freightliner (Everybody)
28 talk (Guy Clark)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/peaMv6Ki 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/fAfL3f83E5vmOhc/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From right to left: Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Guy Clark, John T. Van Zandt, Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle, and Peter Rowan. The others were part of the circle (on the other side of Harris). But I chose not to fit them in, because if I did, everyone would have looked significantly smaller.

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Burt Bacharach & Hal David, White House, Washington, DC, 5-9-2012

I'm particularly psyched to post this album, because all the Gershwin Prize tribute concerts are nice, but most are very hard to find, and I want to post them all. Another tough one has been conquered. This one is a tribute to the great songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

By the way, with this one, I've posted ten of the Gershwin Prize concerts. That leaves four that I'm still missing. These four. If anyone has any of them, please let me know!: 

2013 Carole King
2016 Smokey Robinson
2017 Tony Bennett
2019 Gloria & Emilio Estefan 

The timing of this concert was fortuitous, because it turned out Hal David died only a few months later, in September 2012, at the ripe old age of 91. He was too ill to attend the concert, and had his wife Eunice David accept the award on his behalf. But at least he lived long enough to know that he and his songwriting partner won this prestigious award. Bacharach died in 2023 at the age of 94. As an aside, I've included them in the "Covered" songwriter series, with five albums of their music.

This one was a real challenge to put together, which is why I said up above I feel like I "conquered" it. At first, it seemed easy, and I found a download for it at a popular bootleg sharing site. But while that got me the first two thirds, the file for the last third was corrupted. I asked if anyone could fix it, and waited a couple of months, but nobody ever helped. So then I found a list of all the songs performed and went to find the missing ones on YouTube. After much digging, I found them all, including the speeches at the end. This was a lucky break, because YouTube didn't have some of the songs from earlier in concert. 

All's well that ends well. Everything should be here, and in excellent sound quality. I only cut out a couple of unimportant bits, such as a track at the start where the emcee named all the music acts that would perform in the concert.

This follows the usual pattern of various stars performing covers of songs by the prize winners, then an acceptance speech, then the prize winners performing a song or two. One surprise was that comedian and director Mike Myers performed. But instead of doing a comedy routine, he sang a song. He didn't embarrass himself, and he said some comments showing that he was huge Bacharach-David fan.

This album is 53 minutes long. 

01 talk (emcee)
02 I'll Never Fall In Love Again (Sheryl Crow & Lyle Lovett)
03 talk (Stevie Wonder)
04 Make It Easy on Yourself (Stevie Wonder with Arturo Sandoval)
05 talk (emcee)
06 talk (Diana Krall)
07 The Look of Love (Diana Krall)
08 talk (emcee)
09 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Shelea & Arturo Sandoval)
10 talk (emcee)
11 What's New Pussycat (Mike Myers)
12 talk (Mike Myers)
13 talk (emcee)
14 A House Is Not a Home (Rumer)
15 talk (emcee)
16 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Lyle Lovett)
17 talk (emcee)
18 Walk on By (Sheryl Crow)
19 talk (emcee)
20 talk (Michael Feinstein)
21 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Michael Feinstein)
22 talk (emcee)
23 Alfie (Stevie Wonder)
24 talk (Stevie Wonder)
25 talk (Barack Obama)
26 talk (Eunice David)
27 talk (Burt Bacharach)
28 What The World Needs Now Is Love (Burt Bacharach & Everybody)
29 talk (Barak Obama)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rHCqVPqb

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/MaAmDxJqb4273cL/file

The cover photo of President Obama giving the award to Bacharach is from this exact concert. 

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Paul Simon, Warner Theatre, Washington, DC, 5-23-2007

Here's another "Gershwin Prize for Popular Song" concert. This one honors Paul Simon.

This was the very first Gershwin Prize to be awarded. In 1998, some entertainment producers and promoters came up with the idea of having an award for comedians, which resulted in the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, connected to the Library of Congress and with an annual concert broadcast on PBS TV stations. That idea turned out to be a big success, so in 2003 the same group came up with the same idea, but for musicians. Then I guess it took a few more years before the first prize was awarded in 2007. You can read more about the prize and its history here:

Gershwin Prize - Wikipedia 

In this concert, there weren't that many guest stars performing Simon's songs. But that meant that most of the bigger names there (Lyle Lovett, James Taylor, Alison Krauss, Marc Anthony, and Stevie Wonder) got to perform two songs instead of the usual one.

As is usually the case with such concerts, it ended with a short set by the honoree, Paul Simon. Given the huge role Art Garfunkel had in Simon's music career as part of Simon and Garfunkel, I feel he got kind of dissed here, being only involved in one song, "Bridge Over Troubled Water." But the two of them had a turbulent relationship for decades. Their last tour together would take place in 2009, and their last performance together in 2010. After that, they had a more severe and prolonged falling out, though I was glad to see it reported that by 2024 they had reconciled as friends again.

This albums in unreleased in audio format. However, a DVD of it has been released. Strangely, it seems to be the only Gershwin Prize concert released on DVD. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and 36 minutes long. 

01 talk (emcee)
02 talk (Bob Costas)
03 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Lyle Lovett)
04 The Boxer (Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin & Jerry Douglas)
05 Mother and Child Reunion (Stephen Marley)
06 Homeless (Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
07 Slip Slidin' Away (James Taylor & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
08 Sunday Morning with the Sensational Nightingales (Billy Collins & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
09 That Was Your Mother (Lyle Lovett with Buckwheat Zydeco)
10 Still Crazy After All These Years (James Taylor)
11 El Condor Pasa (Marc Anthony)
12 Late in the Evening (Marc Anthony)
13 Gone at Last (Yolanda Adams & Jessy Dixon)
14 Something So Right (Dianne Reeves)
15 The 59th Street Bridge Song [Feelin' Groovy] (Grover & Elmo of the Muppets)
16 Graceland (Alison Krauss & Jerry Douglas)
17 talk (emcee)
18 talk (James H. Billingston)
19 talk (Paul Simon)
20 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes (Paul Simon & Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
21 talk (Paul Simon)
22 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
23 talk (Paul Simon)
24 Father and Daughter (Paul Simon)
25 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon with Stevie Wonder)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 Loves Me like a Rock (Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
28 The Sound of Silence [Instrumental Version] (Philip Glass)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/C2ct9sek

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3k0vX3n5GD90SUE/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Simon with Stevie Wonder and some members of the Dixie Hummingbirds when they performed "Loves Me like a Rock" together.

Various Artists - A Country Music Celebration, Grand Ole Opry House, Nashville, TN, 1-13-1993

There are so many interesting tribute concerts that have taken place over the years but then were largely forgotten because they didn't get an official release. Here's another one I happened to find recently. 

There have been many country music themed TV specials over the years. I'm not familiar with most of them. But in terms of sheer star power, I couldn't overlook this one. The vast majority of the biggest names in country music at the time performed, back before country music went downhill with "bro country," rap, Autotune, and so forth. I don't know how often the Country Music Association has put on shows like this. I did find their 25th anniversary concert on YouTube, but it's less than an hour long and not as impressive a line-up.

This concert crammed in a surprising number of songs in the amount of time it had. That's because it often only allowed for truncated versions of songs, meaning two minutes or less. In the worst case, Glen Campbell's version of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" was under a minute long. But the plus side is the show kept moving, so if there's a song you don't like, it wasn't long until the next one started.

I pretty much kept the show intact, until near the end. Very late in the show, around track 45, there was an extended tribute to Dolly Parton. I cut the vast majority of it out, because it was a video presentation, with short snippets of the recorded versions of her most famous songs. I cut all that because it was meant to be seen more than heard, with no live musical performances in it. However, immediately following that was a speech by Parton, and I kept all that.

The sound quality is excellent, even though this all remains unreleased. The only problem I had was with the last song, "I Will Always Love You" by Dolly Parton (with Kenny Rogers assisting). Clearly, the time allotted for the TV show came to an end, because the song was cut short, at only about a minute long, and then faded out. But at least it seems the performers knew the version was going to be a short one, because they only sang the chorus over and over. However, even that short version was marred by an announcer speaking over part of it to hype up the next shows coming up on that TV channel. I managed to cut that out by largely repeating one of the choruses. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title. 

Oh, by the way, this website has a couple dozen nice photos from the event:

Nashville Then: A Country Music Celebration to honor CMA in 1993 

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long. 

01 talk (emcee)
02 This Nightlife (Clint Black with Ricky Skaggs, Glen Campbell & Mark O'Connor)
03 talk (Clint Black)
04 Road Scholar (Lee Roy Parnell & Delbert McClinton)
05 talk (Clint Black)
06 Here I Am (Lyle Lovett)
07 talk (Clint Black)
08 Heartland (Bob Dylan & Willie Nelson)
09 One More Last Chance (Vince Gill)
10 talk (Vince Gill & Travis Tritt)
11 What Would Elvis Do (Pam Tillis)
12 Wear My Ring Around Your Neck (Rodney Crowell)
13 T-R-O-U-B-L-E (Travis Tritt)
14 Devil in Disguise (Trisha Yearwood)
15 That's All Right, Mama (Vince Gill)
16 talk (Reba McEntire)
17 A Little Bit of Love (Wynonna Judd)
18 talk (Reba McEntire)
19 Goodbye Again (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
20 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
21 Take It Back (Reba McEntire)
22 talk (Randy Owen)
23 Old Time Rock and Roll (Little Texas)
24 talk (Randy Owen)
25 It's a Heartache (Lorrie Morgan)
26 talk (Randy Owen)
27 Hard Working Man (Brooks & Dunn)
28 Drive South (Suzy Bogguss)
29 I'm in a Hurry (Alabama)
30 talk (Vince Gill)
31 The Heart Won't Lie (Reba McEntire & Vince Gill)
32 The Whiskey Ain't Working Anymore (Travis Tritt & Marty Stuart)
33 Love Certified (Ronnie Milsap & Patti LaBelle)
34 Silver Bells [Instrumental] (Charlie Daniels, Mark O'Connor & Sam Bush)
35 talk (Charlie Daniels & Emmylou Harris)
36 Too Far Gone (Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill & Ricky Skaggs)
37 Two More Bottles of Wine (Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill & Ricky Skaggs)
38 I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (Glen Campbell)
39 talk (Glen Campbell)
40 The Ride (John Anderson)
41 Talking to Hank (Mark Chesnutt & Joe Diffie)
42 talk (Glen Campbell)
43 Midnight in Montgomery (Alan Jackson)
44 You Decorated My Life (Kenny Rogers)
45 talk (Kenny Rogers)
46 talk (Dolly Parton)
47 Full Circle (Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers & Glen Campbell)
48 talk (Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton)
49 I Will Always Love You [Edit] (Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Eosyj9Qd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2l2znKTYkfdFKDm/file 

The cover photo is from the finale of this exact concert. From left to right: Emmylou Harris, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, and Willie Nelson.

Lyle Lovett with Randy Newman - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 12-18-2002

Here's another "PBS Soundstage" concert. I'm prioritizing posting the ones with key guest stars. This one is mainly a Lyle Lovett concert, but Randy Newman sings two songs with Lovett, and sings two more songs on his own.

Mark Isham is also a guest on two songs. He plays trumpet and keyboards, but he's mainly known for composing hundreds of movie and TV scores.

In February 2003, Lovett released an album called "Smile: Songs from the Movies." It was a compilation of songs he'd done for various movies in the previous ten years. This concert took place two months prior to the release of that album, but was timed to be broadcast on TV after the release. Lovett took the theme of the album seriously, because most of the songs he performed in this concert are from movie soundtracks.

Note by the way that "Mack the Knife" is a song originally written in German in 1928 by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, under the title "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer." It was later translated into English and became a huge hit for Bobby Darin in 1959. However, the translation was a loose one, shortening the song and taking out a lot of the gruesome violence. In 1976, a new translation was done that's much longer. This version is typically called "Moritat." That's the version Lovett did for a 1994 movie soundtrack, and performed in this concert. I've included both "Moritat" and "Mack the Knife" in the title.

By the way, Newman had his own Soundstage episode in 1974, but I can't find any recording of it. If anyone has it, please let me know. 

This episode is unreleased, but the sound quality is excellent.

This album is an hour and 21 minutes long.

01 talk (Lyle Lovett)
02 Blue Skies (Lyle Lovett)
03 talk (Lyle Lovett)
04 Straighten Up and Fly Right (Lyle Lovett)
05 talk (Lyle Lovett)
06 Smile (Lyle Lovett)
07 Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You (Lyle Lovett)
08 talk (Lyle Lovett)
09 Summer Wind (Lyle Lovett)
10 talk (Lyle Lovett)
11 Mack the Knife [Moritat] (Lyle Lovett with Mark Isham)
12 talk (Lyle Lovett)
13 Walking Tall (Lyle Lovett)
14 talk (Lyle Lovett)
15 You've Got a Friend in Me (Lyle Lovett & Randy Newman)
16 talk (Lyle Lovett & Randy Newman)
17 Political Science (Lyle Lovett & Randy Newman)
18 talk (Lyle Lovett & Randy Newman)
19 I Think It's Going to Rain Today (Lyle Lovett & Randy Newman)
20 If I Had a Boat (Lyle Lovett)
21 talk (Lyle Lovett)
22 That's Right, You're Not from Texas (Lyle Lovett)
23 talk (Lyle Lovett)
24 Long Tall Texan (Lyle Lovett with Randy Newman)
25 talk (Lyle Lovett)
26 What Do You Do (Lyle Lovett with Francine Reed)
27 Church (Lyle Lovett)
28 talk (Lyle Lovett)
29 What'd I Say (Lyle Lovett)
30 talk (Lyle Lovett)
31 I'm a Soldier in the Army of the Lord (Lyle Lovett)
32 talk (Lyle Lovett)
33 I'm Gonna Wait (Lyle Lovett with Mark Isham)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/48GxFzYj

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/znJifglgHgeuWSQ/file

The cover is a screenshot from this exact concert, with Newman at the piano and Lovett singing into a microphone. Actually, it's three screenshots. The video I took this from was really low-res. So I took screenshots of different sections, for instance one of just Lovett's head. Then I resized them and used Photoshop to merge them into one. After that, I used Krea AI to improve the image quality overall.

Various Artists - An All-Star Tribute to Johnny Cash, Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City, 4-6-1999

I've previously posted "All-Star Tribute" concerts for Paul Simon and Brian Wilson. I discovered they were part of a short-lived annual tradition at the TNT TV network. There are only a couple more, so I plan on posting them too. Here's the next one, an "All-Star Tribute" to country legend Johnny Cash.

In 1999, Cash's health was in serious decline. He wouldn't die until 2003, at the age of 71. But by 1999, he rarely gave public performances. As he mentioned in his stage comments here, he hadn't performed on stage in the past year and a half. After this, he would only make about half a dozen additional musical performances, none of them full concerts. So although he did sing at the very end of this concert, maybe with his health in mind he only sang two songs.

The rest of the concert featured an impressive roster of musical stars singing songs made famous by Cash. It should be noted that the biggest stars, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and U2, weren't actually there but videotaped musical performances that were played at the concert. 

Unfortunately, one person who couldn't sing at this concert was Cash's famous musical daughter Rosanne Cash. This concert happened to take place during a three-year time period in which Rosanne was unable to sing due to a polyp on her vocal chords. She did, however, give a brief speech.

Most of the concert was emceed by actor Jon Voight. However, some of the other banter was by singer-songwriter Larry Gatlin, actor Kevin Bacon, and actor Tim Robbins. There were some additional parts that I cut out. These were narrated video tributes to different stages of Cash's life. I cut those out because they were mainly meant to be seen, not heard.

Like the other "All-Star Tributes" in this series, this concert remains officially unreleased. I found the video of it on YouTube, then converted that to audio. The sound quality is excellent throughout.

This album is an hour and a half long.

01 Jackson - Orange Blossom Special (Sheryl Crow & Willie Nelson)
02 talk (Jon Voight)
03 I Guess Things Happen That Way (Chris Isaak)
04 Get Rhythm Intro (Chris Isaak)
05 Get Rhythm (Chris Isaak)
06 talk (Jon Voight & John Carter Cash)
07 talk (Willie Nelson)
08 I Still Miss Someone (Willie Nelson)
09 talk (Jon Voight)
10 talk (June Carter Cash)
11 Ring of Fire (June Carter Cash)
12 talk (Jon Voight)
13 Train of Love (Bob Dylan)
14 talk (Jon Voight)
15 The Man in Black (Mavericks)
16 talk (Jon Voight)
17 The Ballad of Ira Hayes (Kris Kristofferson)
18 talk (Kris Kristofferson)
19 Sunday Morning Coming Down (Trisha Yearwood with Kris Kristofferson)
20 talk (Larry Gatlin)
21 Ghost Riders in the Sky (Brooks & Dunn)
22 talk (Jon Voight)
23 Tennessee Flat Top Box (Lyle Lovett)
24 talk (Lyle Lovett)
25 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
26 Give My Love to Rose (Bruce Springsteen)
27 talk (Jon Voight)
28 Flesh and Blood (Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
29 talk (Kevin Bacon)
30 Delia's Gone (Wyclef Jean)
31 talk (Jon Voight)
32 talk (Dave Matthews)
33 Long Black Veil (Dave Matthews & Emmylou Harris)
34 talk (Jon Voight)
35 talk (Rosanne Cash)
36 talk (Marty Stuart)
37 Belshazzar (Marty Stuart with the Fairfield Four)
38 talk (Jon Voight & Bono)
39 Don't Take Your Guns to Town (U2)
40 talk (Jon Voight)
41 talk (Tim Robbins)
42 Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash)
43 talk (Johnny Cash)
44 I Walk the Line (Johnny Cash with June Carter Cash)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VysgekNb

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/FO4eXOKBVGBjELk/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/dmd9S

The cover shows John Mellencamp with Johnny Cash at this exact concert. Curiously, Mellencamp didn't appear in any of the songs. Perhaps he had a song or two that got cut out of the TV broadcast, or perhaps he had a non-performing role, I don't know. But I thought it was a good photo to show how Cash was honored.

Lyle Lovett - West End Cultural Center, Winnipeg, Canada, 10-23-1997

It's high time I finally post some music by Lyle Lovett. I'm not a big of most typical country music, but Lovett's music is different. He mixes country, jazz, folk, gospel, blues, and more, and adds in a quirky sense of humor. So you might like his stuff even if you don't typically listen to country.

The sound quality of this concert is freaking amazing. Yes, it's a bootleg (and a soundboard), but it's hard to imagine a concert being recorded any better. During the quiet parts between songs, you could have heard a pin drop. The performance is excellent too, and the set list is strong. If you were to listen to just one live recording from him, I would suggest this one, even over his one official live album, "Live in Texas." That one came out in 1999, so not too distant in time from this one, but many of the songs performed are different anyway. Besides, this one is nearly twice as long!

Lovett has typically performed his concerts with three backing bands: his Large Band, his Small Band, and in an even smaller acoustic format. This concert was performed with his Large Band. 

I wish all bootlegs were this easy to deal with. Not only is the sound quality fantastic, there were no problems to fix. The only change I made was that I cut out some dead air between songs, mostly guitar tuning.

This concert is an hour and 55 minutes long.

01 Which Way Does That Old Pony Run (Lyle Lovett)
02 talk (Lyle Lovett)
03 Good Intentions (Lyle Lovett)
04 talk (Lyle Lovett)
05 God Will (Lyle Lovett)
06 Give Back My Heart (Lyle Lovett)
07 talk (Lyle Lovett)
08 Sleepwalking (Lyle Lovett)
09 talk (Lyle Lovett)
10 Fiona (Lyle Lovett)
11 talk (Lyle Lovett)
12 Fat Babies (Lyle Lovett)
13 talk (Lyle Lovett)
14 Fat Babies [Reprise] (Lyle Lovett)
15 If I Were the Man You Wanted (Lyle Lovett)
16 talk (Lyle Lovett)
17 Her First Mistake (Lyle Lovett)
18 talk (Lyle Lovett)
19 This Old Porch (Lyle Lovett)
20 talk (Lyle Lovett)
21 Nobody Knows Me (Lyle Lovett)
22 L.A. County (Lyle Lovett)
23 If I Had a Boat (Lyle Lovett)
24 talk (Lyle Lovett)
25 Walk through the Bottomland (Lyle Lovett)
26 She's No Lady (Lyle Lovett)
27 talk (Lyle Lovett)
28 Family Reserve (Lyle Lovett)
29 Church (Lyle Lovett)
30 talk (Lyle Lovett)
31 Closing Time (Lyle Lovett)
32 talk (Lyle Lovett)
33 You Can't Resist It (Lyle Lovett)
34 Road to Ensenada (Lyle Lovett)
35 Simple Song (Lyle Lovett)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8nZbiVqd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/xBe1TcfMH4hyHYR/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/kbD9d

The cover photo was taken at a concert at the Medinah Temple in Chicago, Illinois, on November 12, 1997. The colors were quite messed up, with his skin tone too red to be human. I tried to fix it in Photoshop, but the colors are probably still a bit off.

Various Artists - Dead Man Walking - The Concert (Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA, 3-29-1998)

Here's something I stumbled across the other day. I've owned the "Dead Man Walking" movie soundtrack since it first came out in 1996. I think it's great. It's rare for movie soundtracks in that all the artists wrote songs specifically about the movie after seeing an early cut of it, and that it's a great list of artists, including the likes of Johnny Cash and Bruce Springsteen, doing excellent songs. I didn't know until I came across this that there was a concert that took place two years later. It was meant to bring more attention to the same issue as the movie and the soundtrack, namely, the moral issue of capital punishment.

There's good news and there's bad news. The bad news first is that the concert was over four hours long, and most of that isn't here. I found a bootleg of the full performance, and unfortunately the sound quality is too low to be enjoyable, in my opinion. The good news is, much of the concert came out on DVD (only, no album), so the sound quality is great.

In 2025, three years after I first posted this album, a set Tom Waits did for the concert, which wasn't included on the DVD, somehow was leaked to the public with excellent sound quality. So I've added that in as well. It seems to have been the longest set of the night. I found a blog post by someone who attended the concert in order to figure out where to put the Waits songs relative to the others in the concert. It turns out he did most of his set in the middle of the show, but also did the final song at the end, so that's how I have it. 

Note that this final song, "Innocent When You Dream," included the other stars on stage. However, I've watched the video of this, and they generally just stood around not doing much, maybe adding a little backing vocals, and that's it, so I haven't included them in the artist credits for the song. But Bonnie Raitt showed up for this last song as well. That was a surprise, since she wasn't billed as a performer. In fact, she just sat in the audience and watched most of the concert. But she did play some slide guitar which can be heard on this last song, so I did include her in the credits for it.

However, some music still is missing from this concert. Michelle Shocked played four songs, and none of those are here. Furthermore, Steve Earle played three more songs than what's here, Lyle Lovett played one more, and Ani DiFranco played two more. I'm guessing Shocked wasn't included due to some kind of licensing or rights issue, and the other songs were cut to keep the DVD a reasonable length.

All the musicians here did a good job, but the main reason I'm sharing this is Eddie Vedder's set. Personally, I'm not a really big Pearl Jam fan. However, I thought the two songs he contributed under his own name to the "Dead Man Walking" album were excellent. I like those better than almost anything else he's done in his long career. Both songs were written by Vedder, but performed with the famous Pakistani musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. It was a remarkable blend of Western music with Indian music that worked really well.

Luckily, all of Vedder's set is included here, and rightfully so, since it was the highlight (and closing act) of the concert. He started with a Cat Steven song done just solo acoustic. Then he had a little bit of accompaniment on the next song. However, the main event was the last two songs, with were those same two songs he did for the "Dead Man Walking" soundtrack. Unfortunately, in the time between the release of that album and this concert, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan died. However, he was very capably replaced by his nephew Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and a famous musician in Pakistan in his own right. The two songs are much longer than their album versions, almost ten minutes apiece, and they took the world music collaboration to the next level.

The DVD was about ten minutes longer, but I cut out a bunch of talking. In particular, actor Tim Robbins, who directed the movie, had some long talking sections that I felt didn't have much relistening value. For instance, he had one section where he listed jokey and obviously made up song titles that didn't make the soundtrack album. All that got cut. But any talking between songs by the musicians here was kept.

This album is an hour and 38 minutes long.

UPDATE: On November 17, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. As mentioned above, I added the Tom Waits songs, increasing the album length by over half an hour.

01 talk (Steve Earle)
02 Ellis Unit One (Steve Earle)
03 Promises (Lyle Lovett)
04 L.A. County (Lyle Lovett)
05 talk (Lyle Lovett)
06 Lungs (Lyle Lovett & Steve Earle)
07 Walk Away (Tom Waits)
08 talk (Tom Waits)
09 Gun Street Girl (Tom Waits)
10 talk (Tom Waits)
11 The Fall of Troy (Tom Waits)
12 talk (Tom Waits)
13 A Little Rain (Tom Waits)
14 Goin' Out West (Tom Waits)
15 Big Black Mariah (Tom Waits)
16 Jesus Gonna Be Here (Tom Waits)
17 Yesterday Is Here (Tom Waits)
18 Crime for Crime (Ani DiFranco)
19 Up Up Up Up Up Up (Ani DiFranco)
20 talk (Ani DiFranco)
21 Fuel (Ani DiFranco)
22 Trouble (Eddie Vedder)
23 talk (Eddie Vedder)
24 Dead Man (Eddie Vedder)
25 The Long Road (Eddie Vedder & Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan)
26 The Face of Love (Eddie Vedder & Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan)
27 Innocent When You Dream (Tom Waits with Bonnie Raitt)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Wn5C3B4Z

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/1dHOsxfGFmNoQIm/file

I couldn't find any good images of many of the artists together. Since Eddie Vedder was the big star and musical highlight of the show, I went with a photo of him. This is from when he was the only one on stage, playing "Trouble" by Cat Stevens. Oh, and I used the actual logo from the concert at the top, but I inverted the colors so it would match the black background of the rest of the cover.