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At AmericanaFest’s Paul Simon Tribute, Jackson Browne, Dwight Yoakam, Jason Isbell and Latin American Stars Prove There Are 50 Ways to Hail Your Hero
A Paul Simon salute with Jackson Browne, Jason Isbell, Rufus Wainwright and Allison Russell felt like one of the best tribute shows L.A. has ever seen.
Others who were nominated this year and came to the club to pay musical homage to Simon included Crowell, Rufus Wainwright, Madison Cunningham, Silvana Estrada, Ruthie Foster, Sean and Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek, and Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show. The Americana Music Association has been putting on these annual pre-Grammy tribute shows since 2013, with past honorees including John Prine, Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, Glenn Frey and Phil Everly, all of them as spectacular as they have been hard to get a ticket for. But the more expected forms of Americana were also on powerful display during the show, starting with the show-opening Blind Boys of Alabama reviving the gospel of “Loves Me Like a Rock,” followed by Isbell, 400 Unit guitarist Sadler Vaden and fiddler Sara Watson making “Kodachrome” into a bluegrass number it’d never been before, or at least not this good, if anyone had ever attempted it.
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