Emmylou Harris, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow

For some decades now, Southern belle Emmylou Harris has been a muse to the folk-rock industry. As it's grown from the psychedelic fringes of West Coast 60s rock to its current mainstream incarnation, Harris has been a winsome sister and now godmother to the genre, inducted into the County Music Hall of Fame earlier this year. She certainly cuts a fine matriarchal figure. Her head of silver hair the only obvious sign of age. The singer must have lived cleanly to have weathered the years so gracefully, and particularly to have maintained a singing voice which endures in such mint condition.

Her speaking voice isn't so bad, either. Harris is an easygoing, languid storyteller, with a tale or a few insightful words to go with each track. There was no more exemplary a reflection of the genteel, old-time country gig than Harris' reminiscing about sitting down to write songs with her old friend Kate McGarrigle, for example: "It's okay if we don't write anything," she says, "because we just eat a lot of sugar pie and smoke cigarettes together."

This welcoming homespun feel is the high and low of her set, in all fairness. Those of her generation and all the many couples in the midst of a refined night out see her as a graceful legend, a doyenne of old-fashioned charm. Such opinions would be right, of course, but this was also the sort of show in which a rash mid-song clap or yelp might attract stern glances.

Yet those happy to view from behind such a curtain of politeness would have found a lot to love about the 90-minute set. Highlights from her four-decade career like "Together Again" and the shining "Boulder to Birmingham" were sprinkled judiciously, although Harris seems proudest of songs from her new album All I Intended To Be.

Her first in five years, it has also reunited the singer with Brian Ahern, producer of her first 11 albums (she's now made 21). Her pride is justified, because many of the show's best moments stem from this record; a gorgeous, lingering cover of Tracy Chapman's "All That You Have Is Your Soul", for example, or a resonating version of Billy Joe Shaver's "Old Five And Dimers Like Me".

At one point, support act Kimmie Rhodes also emerges for backing vocal duty on "Love and Happiness", and the pair laugh warmly about the fussing paranoia of motherhood. How much you relate to the joke might directly correlate with your enjoyment of Harris's show, although her stately mastery of her art would surely charm most doubters.