What’s your favorite roller coaster?

I used to be asked that question a lot. I was a member of ACE, the American Coaster Enthusiasts, and I loved riding roller coasters. I loved reading about them, I loved planning trips to ride them – I even liked just watching them run. In 1994 I decided I would ride 94 roller coasters and write about the experience for my local newspaper. It was a great summer and my total actually surpassed 100.

For years there were two answers to the question. The first answer was, “The Texas Giant, at Six Flags Over Texas.” She was a magnificent, huge, fast, heart-thumping, ass-lifting pleasure machine that I rode often on three separate trips to the Dallas/Fort Worth area. She was renovated in 2010 and reopened the next year as the New Texas Giant, with a steel track structure, replacing the original wood. I haven’t ridden this iteration, and my love of coasters is for wooden roller coasters; steel and steel hybrids are fun, but they’re not the real deal.

I was thinking about roller coasters last night on my way home from the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts as I traversed a beautiful and winding country road. I had just heard Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell in concert and was high on the incredible energy they and their band put out. It’s probably a good thing the road was curvy like a roller coaster, but not as steep.

I first knew of Emmylou Harris in perhaps 1980, hearing her two 1975 albums Pieces of the Sky and Elite Hotel and falling in love especially with 1976’s Luxury Liner. Since then I’ve heard some but not all her music. She’s put out a lot of it and earned twelve Grammys over the years.

Rodney Crowell, who actually wrote songs for Harris in the 70’s, didn’t come to my attention as a singer til much later, with 1988’s Diamond and Dirt LP and Keys to the Highway from 2000. His song Many a Long and Lonesome Highway is one of my very favorites of any genre.

And to what genre do Emmylou and Rodney belong? Well, country maybe, or bluegrass. “Roots music” works. Certainly “Americana.” And, with last night’s concert ringing in my ear, I’d add ROCK AND ROLL for sure. In the 70s Harris toured as Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band. I gotta tell you, the guys backing her up last night were o-n-e  h-o-t  b-a-n-d:

- Steve Fishell  on petal steel guitar, filling the same role he did in the 70s
- Australia’s Jedd Hughes on a red Stratocaster lead guitar
- Bryon House, bass, both electric and stand-up
- Gerry Roe, drums
- Chris Tuttle, keyboard, accordion

It was a terrific concert in Caramoor’s wonderful Venetian Theatre -- a tent actually -- with open-air sides. They sang songs from their new album, Old Yellow Moon, but also reached back to my all-time favorite Emmylou song, the Townes Van Zandt classic, Pancho and Lefty, as well as a scorching version of Luxury Liner, with Jedd Hughes playing a blistering coda that earned him a standing ovation. Their voices melded beautifully all night, but never as sweetly as on a song first sung by the Everly Brothers, Love Hurts.

Back to the question at the top of the page: the other answer is “My favorite roller coaster is the one I just rode.” Just as my favorite concert is the one I just heard.