Last week, Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris kicked off a brief U.S. leg of a tour in support of their amazing collaborative album, All the Roadrunning. They’ve chosen to hit only a handful of big cities on this jaunt, keeping the energy up, and the time spent away from their families down.

Judging by the intensity of their performance at Radio City Music Hall on Thursday, it’s a formula that’s going to work. The Songlines team was lucky enough to be in attendance, and we were floored.

From the first notes, the skill of the eight musicians Knopfler had assembled was brought into focus. The distinct instrumental strains melded to form an almost ethereal cloud of sound welling up behind the duo. (Radio City’s incredible acoustics played a part, no doubt.) Performers included keyboard wizard Guy Fletcher, Dire Straits drummer Danny Cummings, and Richard Bennett, whose guitar prowess would’ve been unmatched on nearly any other stage. But this was not, of course, another stage. Bennett was standing only a few feet away from a genuine badass of the six-string; Knopfler’s mastery, in person, is almost otherworldly. Knopfler rolls the swagger and humility of the blues into every note. He doesn’t show off; nothing is in excess. This was particularly apparent on “Song for Sonny Liston,” the current single “This Is Us,” and a brilliant version of “Speedway at Nazareth,” which was the last song the group played before the encore.

All in all, the set included seven songs from the Mark Knopfler/Dire Straits back catalog, four tunes that have appeared on Emmylou Harris records, and seven tracks from the new album. Appropriately, the night began with “Right Now,” and its deep grooves were followed in quick succession by the jangly shuffle of “Red Staggerwing.” Afterwards, things slowed down a bit; the next highlight was Harris’s rendition of “Red Dirt Girl.” The command and clarity Emmylou’s voice in a live setting is astonishing. I kept wishing that she’d step away from the mic, and let her songs sail unaided up into the rafters. I’m confident that it could.

I’ve always thought that Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet” is the perfect timeless lament about star-crossed love. The song satisfies on so many levels, with layer upon layer of meaning. It’s wistful, but it has attitude. It’s literate, but not heavy-handed. In short, I was thrilled to recognize its tinkling piano intro on Thursday night; it’s one of my favorites, and I didn’t expect that I’d get to hear it. The live performance ended up delivering in more ways than I’d have imagined, though. It became one of those memorable, magical concert moments. The crowd couldn’t resist cheering in response to twists in some of the original phrasing (”all I do is keep the beat / with rock and roll company”). Everyone began to realize that this wasn’t quite the song they had always loved; filtered through experience, it was one they ended up loving more. Because this was no longer a young man talking about a single squandered opportunity to hold on to love. That man would have many more chances ahead of him. What we were hearing was an older, wiser man, looking back at one shot at love that might’ve sustained him. The performance, though it was in mid-set, sparked a spontaneous standing ovation, and Knopfler, characteristically self-depracating, simply said, “Aw. You’re sweet.” Said another way, that comment might make it sound like he didn’t appreciate what had just passed between the stage and the seats. Instead, it was pure, bashful delight. We got it, we got him, and he knew it.

If you don’t have a chance to make it to one of these shows, don’t despair: a DVD is in the works.

–Melanie Shrawder