By Brent Hallenbeck
Free Press Staff Writer
Emmylou Harris was speaking by cell phone last month as she was traveling north from Manchester on her way to Burlington, where she performed a benefit concert for Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Traveling is something the legendary singer has always done, literally and figuratively. She has traveled the country singing songs of heartbreak and longing. She has also traveled across musical genres that at once make her style hard to pin down and make her already ardent core of fans even more rabid.
At least she isn't traveling alone. The fetching 57- year-old will return to Vermont this Sunday with the Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue, a vagabond collection of some of her closest musical friends who, like her, are highly regarded performers who cross-pollinate among country, folk and pop. Patty Griffin, Gillian Welch, David Rawlins and Buddy Miller will join her at the finale of the Concerts on the Green summer series at the Shelburne Museum.
Harris said the idea for the revue was born when she was on the all-female Lilith Fair tour a few years ago, and her manager, Ken Levitan, suggested she should perform with a star-studded lineup of her own. The tour started last week in Atlanta and will end in early September in California.
"Of course it's incredibly appealing to hang out with your friends and make music," Harris said. "It's something I always hoped would happen."
This won't be the first time she has visited the Champlain Valley in a singer-in-the-round setting. Harris, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle, John Prine and Bruce Cockburn sat on the Flynn Center stage in Burlington in December 2000 and strummed their guitars during the Campaign for a Landmine Free World tour.
Sunday's show will differ from the Landmine show, Harris said. "We'll be standing up this time," she said. The Sweet Harmony performers will also play their own sets rather than trade off from song to song, though Harris said she hopes the entire group will be on stage at least for the opening and closing numbers.
The performance will be a little off-the-cuff. It won't be the same show with the same stage patter every night.
"We're not exactly your basic Las Vegas act," Harris said.
The Alabama-born singer's travels have landed her in Vermont regularly. "I delight any time I can come up here," she said while en route to Burlington. "I think it's one of the most beautiful places in the country."
She used to come to southern Vermont often to visit the Rev. James "Jet" Thomas, former professor of religion at Marlboro College. Thomas had been a guidance counselor at Harvard University when Harris' musical and romantic partner Gram Parsons, considered the prototypical country-rocker, was a student there in the 1960s. She has remained friends with Thomas long after Parsons' death from a heroin overdose in 1973.
"He's kind of the pastor to all us degenerate, itinerant musicians who have no particular church and a lot of questions," Harris said of Thomas, who now lives in Norfolk, Va.
Harris' questioning, curious nature comes out in her music, especially in the past decade, when her sound migrated from a country-folk vibe to an ethereal country/folk/pop/rock hybrid, starting with 1995's "Wrecking Ball," recorded with rock producer Daniel Lanois. The ensuing "Red Dirt Girl" and last year's "Stumble Into Grace" carry that sound further, with the bonus of songs penned by Harris.
She spent the bulk of her career singing the songs of others, and is still adjusting to the pressure of coming up with her own compositions.
"It's very rewarding when you've got it all finished," Harris said of writing songs. "I tend to put it off and say I'll never write another song again. Song writing is hard. You write a sentence and you go, 'God, that's terrible.' You have to have a high standard. I think I know when it's starting to stink."
Change and challenge are essential to Harris. "You never want to be in a state of stasis, even if it's just a subtle change," she said. "You have to exercise different creative muscles."
She continued to describe her musical journey with one more allusion to traveling.
"It's like I stand there in the middle of the road and see what comes next," Harris said. "I guess I should say the side of the road, because I've never been in the middle of the road, at least musically."