The Civil Wars at Amoeba

Four of us from the newsroom left work Tuesday at a decent hour for a change and sped to Hollywood's Amoeba Music for an in-store performance by the Civil Wars, whose debut CD, "Barton Hollow," is recommended to fans of Robert Plant/Alison Kraus' "Raising Sand," Gram Parsons/Emmylou Harris or even the Everly Brothers. The close-harmony duo was playing at Largo that night and are also performing Thursday night at the El Rey.

Joy Williams and John Paul White, whose romantic ballads tend toward the serious, turned out to be playful and utterly charming in live performance. They performed for a half-hour as the audience stood in the record stacks.

Aside from a half-dozen of their own songs, they did a slow cover of "Billie Jean" (versions from other venues are posted to YouTube). They also challenged the audience to guess who was responsible for their final song and to find the CD. Here's an excerpt of that: