Denver Post.com - Gardens glow for Emmylou

Harris could not remember if her 30-year career included previous shows at the Botanic Gardens. "I can't remember names of areas," she said.

That, of course, does not hold true for Telluride.

"It is definitely one of my favorite places to play," Harris said of the festival. "The scenery is great, but also you get to see a lot of music. This time, unfortunately, we are in and out. Usually, we've been able to stay a couple of days at least. So, that is a little disappointing. But still we get to partake of that fantastic audience, and that is always the best part."

This marks her sixth time as a billed act: once with the legendary Hot Band, twice with the Nash Ramblers and twice as a solo. These visits, however, were not her only ones.

"I have gone a couple of times just as your kind of all-around harmony singer to just walk around and kind of sit in wherever I am asked. It is almost like taking a vacation," Harris said.

Her Colorado stops come as part of a year-long tour that began last August in support of her album "Red Dirt Girl" (Nonesuch Records), which continues to bask in critical and commercial success. It is closing in on its 40th week on Billboard's Top 100 country albums after having peaked at No.5.

"I have had a wonderful experience with Nonesuch," she said. "They really understand how to promote an artist that is not played on the radio - is not mainstream - and that there is life after mainstream radio. There is a huge audience for a certain type of artist, and it just requires a great deal of imaginative promotion."

"Red Dirt Girl" is unusual in Harris' three decades of making music because she wrote eight of the album's 12 cuts and co-wrote three others.

Her success at selling records, both singles and albums, mostly has come from applying her voice, as clear and pure as a mountain lake, to songs written by others. She has successfully covered everyone from the Louvin Brothers to Bruce Springsteen.

Another major factor in her career has been the ability to attract music's best and brightest players to her studio work and to her tour bands. This time out she is joined onstage by Spyboy: guitarist Buddy Miller, drummer Brady Blade and bass player Tony Hall, a newcomer to the group but a session player in 1995 on Harris' masterpiece album "Wrecking Ball."

Much as been written about the five years that passed between the recording of "Red Dirt Girl" and "Wrecking Ball."

However, she noted that the five-year wait was just between solo studio albums and that during those years she released other records, including "Spyboy," a live album named for her band; "Trio II," which also features Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt; and "Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions," an album of duets with Ronstadt.

She served as co-executive producer and sang on three cuts of the 1999 release "Return of the Grievous Angel - a Tribute to Gram Parsons," which featured such diverse acts as The Mavericks, Beck, Elvis Costello, Whiskeytown and Sheryl Crow performing songs written by Parsons.

Part of the proceeds from the album were earmarked for the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation's campaign to eliminate land mines, a cause to which Harris donates her talent and her time. Her efforts include an annual series of "Concerts for a Landmine Free World."

She became involved when a friend went to work for Bobby Muller, the Vietnam veteran who started the foundation. The foundation and Medico International, a German humanitarian organization, started the international effort in 1991.

"A very dear, old friend of mine introduced me to him and to the campaign, and I offered my services. We did a few things. We did a big concert with bands in Washington, D.C., and I went over and played the concert when the Nobel Peace Prize was announced," Harris said.

More important, she came up with the idea of an ongoing concert series that would raise money for the project and public awareness of the problem. She suggested the shows use a common Nashville format featuring four or five singer/songwriters and their guitars.

That setup keeps ticket prices down because there are no bands to pay and production costs are minimal.

"You get an evening of music that is very off-the-cuff," Harris said. "People end up singing and laughing together. There is a lot of talking back and forth, which makes for a very intimate, unique evening of music. Then you have the opportunity to speak to people about the land mine problem," Harris said.

An album with 11 songs by 11 artists recorded at various benefit concerts was released in March. All the acts on "Concerts for a Landmine Free World" (Vanguard) donated their royalties to the campaign. The label also pledged a portion of the album's earnings to the foundation.

The third concert series begins later this year in the southeastern United States, but Harris said the fund-

raising effort probably will visit Denver one day.

"We are going to continue with these concerts," she said. "It is going to take a long time get these things out of the ground. It is going to take a lot of money." A VVAF spokeswoman said there are 60 million to 80 million land mines in 92 countries and some 26,000 people are killed or maimed by land mines every year.

While Colorado doesn't get a land mine concert this year, it does get another visit from Harris. She is scheduled in October for a four-day gig at the Lincoln Center in Fort Collins with Spyboy guitarist Miller and his wife, singer/songwriter Julie Miller.

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