Before Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore established themselves individually among the leading lights of Texas music, the boyhood buddies teamed in this early-'70s band. Three decades later, a 2002 reunion performance on the Austin City Limits series finds their bonds of friendship even stronger than their musical bonds. Dressed for the special occasion in matching black cowboy shirts, the trio ease their way through a 17-song, 75-minute performance while swapping memories and sharing jokes with the Austin crowd. Instead of digging deeply into their individual catalogs, they concentrate on the collaborations from that year's Now Again reunion album, finding common ground for Hancock's Dylanesque rasp and harmonica, Gilmore's tremolo warble, and Ely's harder-rocking intensity. As their voices blend in unique harmonies that are somehow both ethereal and earthy, highlights extend from the big sky, Lone Star metaphysics of "Down in the Light of the Melon Moon" to the roadhouse twang of "I Thought the Wreck Was Over." They pay tribute to fellow Texas songwriters with spirited revivals of Terry Allen's "Gimme a Ride to Heaven" and Townes Van Zandt's "White Freight Liner Blues," with guitarist Rob Gjersoe putting an electric charge into the predominantly acoustic arrangements. Gilmore proclaims the evening "fabulously wonderful," and the appreciative audience plainly agrees. --Don McLeese
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