These long-time friends and musical cohorts have waited three years to follow their long-promised and award-winning duet project Old Yellow Moon. The Traveling Kind is another beautifully produced (Joe Henry) collection of country, folk and rock with blues, jazz and Cajun hues and would comfortably sit in what today would be labelled Americana. Opening with the haunting title track, the two singers pay tribute to songs and poets of the past amid gorgeous harmonies and evocative mandolin. Most of the songs are co-written with Crowell, some with Harris, and all display great humour and wit in examining the joys and sorrows of relationships from an older but wiser perspective.

In one way or another Harris and Crowell were there when country music crossed over and found a rock audience in a big way in the 1970s with the Hot Band and its array of guitarists such as James Burton and Albert Lee. Crowell met Harris when she began covering his songs and the pair hit it off so well that he was taken on as rhythm guitarist and back-up singer. Crowell had been part of the thriving but not mainstream Austin music scene that was fermenting the cosmic-cowboy and outlaw-country songwriters, including Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Guy Clarke and Jerry Jeff Walker to name just a few. Harris was also becoming a sought-after session singer for the likes of Neil Young and Linda Ronstadt. After a few years their careers moved in different directions, but the pair always swore to work together again and The Traveling Kind is a testament to two mature artists who love making music together and made good on that promise.

Track three, ‘Bring it on Home to Memphis’ is a tough, rocking paean to Lucinda Williams that features some smoking electric and slide guitar. A few tracks later they cover Lucinda’s breakthrough tune ‘I Just Wanted to See You So Bad’. If it’s the more traditional sounds of fiddle, mandolin and pedal-steel guitar that you like, there’s plenty of that too in the soulful ‘You Can’t Say We Didn’t Try’. The album ends with a romp in English and French, ‘Le Danse De La Joie’. The Traveling Kind more than delivers on the fine work begun on Old Yellow Moon.

Paul Barr