Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Emmylou Harris sings on Thursday night at the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre | See more pics from the show

Who knows if it was the cold, snow and slushy roads that kept so many people away from the Three Girls and Their Buddy show Thursday night at Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre.

Maybe it was the ticket prices, which ran from $52.50 to $68. Still, try to persuade those who came that this night wasn’t worth the money. Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin and their “buddy” — Buddy Miller — put on a loose, musical and harmonic show for the receptive 675 people who came. Capacity was 2,151.

The four seemed to have a great time in the fine-sounding room, sitting, singing, picking, beating on various percussion instruments and joking between songs.

Harris, forever the queen of roots country/rock, started out strumming and singing Gillian Welch’s “Orphan Girl.” Her voice still has the same reedy and rangy quality that it has always had. Though it would crack a couple of times on this night, it was 99 percent solid. Her falsetto was still sweet, and her vibrato even and distant.

She, Colvin and Griffin’s three-part harmonies on “Orphan Girl” forshadowed what would come. Her own “Red Dirt Girl,” with its tragic lyrics — by the way, these girls make a lot of jokes about the dark nature of their songwriting — and her triumphant love song, “Hour of Gold,” were among the night’s highlights.

Griffin’s voice is beautiful, high and adaptable, as she sang songs such as Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues,” and her ode to her dogs, “Heavenly Day.” Colvin’s resonant voice isn’t as rangy, but it's pretty, and it seems to bounce around nicely in her head before coming out of her mouth. She showed good fingerpicking on her own “Nothing Like You.”

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Miller showed why he is their buddy. Musically, he kept things sparse with dark and unusual chords and melodies, setting moods on a variety of acoustic and electric guitars, nearly all tremolo-wavy.

Americana icon Steve Earle has said that Miller is among country music's best singers, and he showed why. His style is classic country, without affected twang, but he showed stylistic diversity on songs such as "All My Tears" — which his wife, Julie Miller, wrote — and the Diana Ross and the Supremes smash, "Stop, In The Name of Love." The latter, still desperate lyrically, was more contemplative than Motown bouncy, but he pulled it off well.

Julie Miller is apparently the buddy who wasn't there. Colvin, who met the Millers during their Austin, Texas, days, told the audience that from then on, all she ever wanted to do was "sing like Julie."

Harris responded: "We all want to sing like Julie."

There was a lot of "I wish I didn't have to follow that" talk going on after songs. Colvin summed it up best, after Griffin's blues-torn scat singing on "Backwater Blues."

"I keep telling people, there's only one thing hard about this tour, and that's following Patty, Buddy or Emmy," she said. "And that's the way we like it. We inspire each other."

Harris answered with an "amen."

When the girls weren’t accompanying themselves with acoustics, they were using hand drums, shakers, tambourines — and small, flying-monkey dolls. Griffin introduced the monkeys, then Colvin couldn't get hers to stop yakking, so she let it fly to near the lip of the stage. As she walked over to pick it up, some comedy broke out.

"He was programmed to fly," Harris said of the monkey. "We're not being cruel. Please don't call PETA."

Colvin drew a big laugh by then challenging the crowd to "spank our monkeys."

It took another great song, Buddy and Julie Miller's "Shelter Me," to put things back into musical order. Griffin sang soul-soaked church harmonies behind Miller's lead, as he played a call-and-response guitar part.

Griffin got her zinger in, too, when introducing "Heavenly Day." She said she wrote it after a stressful period of renting, caused by road work too near her home. When she and her dogs were finally able to return, she was inspired by how nice it was to be back, with her little dog sleeping in her lap.

"It made me so happy," she said. "It was a perfect moment. So I threw her off my lap and wrote this song."