Wheatfield scores with heyday tunes

11:49 PM CST on Friday, January 7, 2005

By MATT WEITZ / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

There was just a hair less than 50 people at the reunion of the once-popular '70s country-rock band Wheatfield on Thursday night at Poor David's Pub. Not too bad for a wet, rainy Thursday night, but still, you could be forgiven for hoping for better. Of course, that's just the way of impending geezer-tude: 25 years from now club kids (now with leather patches on the elbows of their sweaters) will be nattering on about "Prodigy that" and "Moby this" while their kids roll their eyes and sigh, "Whatever, Dad."

Future gray-haired techno-'rents will consider themselves well-served if their reunion shows come off as well as Wheatfield's. Reduced to the band's creative core – vocalist and guitarist Connie Mims, guitar/flute/mandolin player Craig Calvert and guitar/banjo guy Ezra Idlet (the tall half of Trout Fishing in America) – the trio delivered dovetailed harmonies and acoustic strumming that ably presented their legacy. The pop side consisted of long-ago radio standards such as the bluegrass-y "Waxahachie Woman" and sultry "The Lady Has No Heart." Both songs are a yin-and-yang examination of the joys of sexual liberation modified at the end by an admission of that freedom's dark side.

Ms. Mims' voice was as rich and full – perhaps even more so – than in the band's heyday (Wheatfield, which started in 1973, morphed into St. Elmo's Fire and was over by 1979). Her covers of Joni Mitchell songs such as "Carey" and "Conversation" were her own, full-bodied and mature. They performed other signature songs such as Steve Young's "Seven Bridges Road" and their own "Cardinal," but the real evidence of the attention they once garnered were the numbers from the scores they did for the Houston Ballet.

"Drifting Along" and "Roll Over Dave Brubeck" (with tasty flute work from Mr. Calvert) were from Caliban, a retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest from the point of view of Prospero's slave, Caliban. "At first, all these opera and ballet people were just terrified by this 'acid rock,' " Mr. Calvert recalled after the show. "In the end, we won them over and even took the show on the road, including a stop in Dallas." "Bed of Roses" was from Rasputin, another ballet – this one about the legendary "mad monk" of Czarist end times. "It was an incredibly creative time," Mr. Calvert said. "But we thought we had to have a major-label deal," he added, sounding a bit wistful when considering the options the Internet has opened for bands too unique for mass marketing.

But the trio has kept up with the times, and fans who no longer trek to live venues to see old favorites can check out sound clips from a new album of '70s recordings by going to www.mytexas music.com/wheatfield and the band's site, www.wheatfieldband.com.

Better late than never.