Copyright © 1999 The Seattle Times Company

Entertainment News : Thursday, September 02, 1999

Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt
pairing brings sweet chemistry of old
friendship and Tucson tunes

by Patrick MacDonald
Seattle Times staff critic

Emmylou Harris knows about Bumbershoot.

"It's a great festival," she said over the phone from New York. "It always felt so good to be there."

Harris, the great traditional country singer known for her pure, expressive voice, has played the festival several times, and has also appeared at Summer Nights at the Pier and Chateau Ste. Michelle.

She's returning to Bumbershoot this year with her longtime friend and colleague, Linda Ronstadt. The two have recently released their first album together, "Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions." They were in New York to tape an interview for "The View," a daytime talk show, and "Sessions," a live concert series.

The Bumbershoot appearance is one of only 17 concerts the two are doing in support of the new album. Harris is a tour veteran who's regularly on the road, but Ronstadt, one of the most successful female recording artists in pop, with sales in excess of 30 million records, announced her "retirement" from touring several years ago, to concentrate on raising her two young adopted children. But she didn't have to be coaxed into this tour.

"It was a prerequisite for the project," Harris said. "Not from me, but from the record company (Asylum). They said `We need you to support this,' and she was all for it. She's very happy to be going out with somebody rather than the pressure of headlining her own tour. She prefers to be with people she's comfortable with.

"She and Bernie (Leadon, the guitarist, who's on the album and in the tour band) go way back, to her second LP (1970's "Silk Purse"). She practically invented the Eagles, when she brought him and the other guys together, so they have quite a history.

"The band that's touring with us are the same people who made the record, which doesn't happen very often when you put together a group for a studio project."

The album was recorded in Tucson, where Ronstadt lives, so she could be with her children. They rented a house on the spacious grounds of the old Tucson Inn, and recorded there. They'd get up in the morning, have breakfast in the flower-filled, shaded garden, start recording about 10 a.m. and continue until dinnertime.

The sessions went so smoothly, Harris said, they were able to complete two songs a day.

"I went in there with 14 songs, which we recorded, and all but one of them are on the record. I'm kind of a song magnet. I gather songs as a singer who doesn't write all my own material. I just don't come up with that many songs, so I'm always looking for ones that move me one way or another."

Among the songwriters represented on the album are Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash, Leonard Cohen, Patty Griffin, Sinead O'Connor, Patty Scialfa and her husband, Bruce Springsteen. The variety of songs makes for an eclectic album of many moods. Some songs are country-flavored, others are folk, pop and rock.

Harris contributed three songs, including "Raise the Dead," a tribute to artists who have died, which she wrote specifically as a duet for Ronstadt and herself. She co-wrote the rocking "Sweet Spot" with Jill Cunniff of Luscious Jackson, and the sweet "All I Left Behind" with Kate and Anna McGarrigle, who also contribute backup vocals to it and another song on the album, "1917," a moving, dramatic piece about World War I by David Olney, one of many unheralded songwriters Harris champions.

"I can't tell you how happy I am that the McGarrigles are going to be at Bumbershoot, too," Harris said. "We're going to be there on the same day, which is just perfect. Don't know if we'll perform together. We'll have to wait and see. But we are definitely going to hang out together."

Harris and Ronstadt will probably do most, or all, of the 13 songs from the duet album in their set, along with some songs from the two "Trio" albums (which Ronstadt and Harris recorded with Dolly Parton) and at least one solo each.