By Steven Rosen

First of all, Buddy Miller is the luckiest guy in the world.

When three of the finest singers in contemporary folk – Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin and Shawn Colvin – decided to do a tour together, they called on him to be their solid rock. He would provide consistently tasteful accompaniment on his baritone electric guitar and mandolin. And, as they performed round robin, he would get to solo on every fourth song. Nice work if you can get it. (Miller has worked in Harris’ band previously; Colvin was once the singer in an early Miller band.)

At Indianapolis on a bitterly cold evening, in a university concert hall before an audience as quiet as a student in a library, the four shared a night of musical warmth. Seated in chairs on the stage – Griffin, Harris, Miller and Colvin, in order – and surrounded by a store’s worth of acoustic guitars, they worked without a prepared set list.

Each chose a song to perform when the turn came, with Miller having the responsibility to provide principal accompaniment. The show ran two hours without intermission, giving each a chance to sing five songs – plus a gospel closer from Harris. She seemed most in charge of the event, but she was so gracious to the others she was like James Lipton in Martin Scorsese’s presence. One almost forgot she was an artist, too – until the second she started to sing.

Harris began the show with “Jupiter Rising,” a song she co-wrote. “Since I’m the oldest, I get to start,” she announced, also noting that she’s 60 although she seems ageless with her iconic stature. Her subsequent selections included Lucinda Williams’ “Sweet Old World” and her own “Michelangelo,” both sung with the ethereal breathiness that has marked her work since “Wrecking Ball.”

When talking to the crowd to introduce their songs, Colvin and Griffin were studies in contrast. Griffin was an earnest, sincere storyteller while Colvin had an ever-so-slightly sarcastic edginess, especially when recalling her bar-band days. But Colvin’s voice, with its cool, penetrating intonation, revealed straightforward intimacy whether she was singing her own songs (“Diamond in the Rough,” “Four Walls”) or covering hometown boy John Hiatt’s “This Is the Way We Make a Broken Heart.”

Griffin at first was disappointing with a generic-sounding fast song, “Chief,” but grew spellbinding as she worked up to her slower and more dramatic material, especially “Top of the World.”

Not to be discounted – far from it – was Miller, a vastly underrated country-soul singer whose versions of his and wife Julie’s “Shelter Me,” Roosevelt Jameson’s enduring “That’s How Strong My Love Is” and Porter Wagoner’s “Burning the Midnight Oil” (with Harris taking Dolly Parton’s part) were rousing.

For an encore, Harris first led the group in O Brother Where Art Thou’s “Go to Sleep Little Baby” and then Griffin performed the powerfully gripping, slowly building “Mary,” which ended with the others singing counterpoint to her “la, la, las.”

[Emmylou Harris photo by Jim McGuire]