The Harris resume includes 11 Grammy Awards, five No. 1 hits, eight gold albums and three platimun albums.
By SHERRY JONES of the Missoulian
Preview
Emmylou Harris and Spy Boy are in concert Monday, June 26, at 8 p.m. at the University Theatre on the campus of the University of Montana. Tickets are $27 in advance at TIC-IT-E-Z outlets and $29 the day of the show.
Call 1-888-MONTANA.
Songwriting isn't exactly a joyous endeavor for Emmylou Harris.
"I think writing songs is one of the most difficult things there is," she says. Perhaps that's why the songs on her new album, "Red Dirt Girl," are so mournful.
"The Diva of Remorse," New York Times writer Daniel Menaker called her in an unflattering profile published last September. "Her core repertory, and her new album, thrum with self-reproach," he said.
She's not alone, of course. Allison Krauss, for one, has admitted to serving the muse of sorrow, and pain has doubled as inspiration for countless other wielders of the pen.
"I almost can't imagine writing a happy song," Harris says in a phone interview last week. "If you're in a good mood, you want to go out and feel good." Her laugh is dry, bereft of humor. "Why would you want to make yourself miserable sitting down to write?"
Why, indeed? Harris has made a 25-plus-year career for herself singing other people's songs, with great success. She's won 11 Grammys and had five No. 1 hits, eight gold albums and three platinum albums based mostly on her ability to choose good songs by other people and perform them in her powerful voice.
But Harris, daughter of a military man, professes to a restless nature, one not content with sameness even when it brings success.
"I always had kind of an eclectic approach to music and I was always experimenting," she says. As a teen, she listened to, and played, folk - Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and, after a failed marriage, ended up performing in coffee shops and folk clubs around her parents' Virginia home. During such a gig in Washington, D.C. she met alternative-country musician Gram Parsons, who flew her out to Los Angeles the following year to record with him. Through Parsons, her mentor, Harris discovered the charms of country.
"At the beginning of my career it was really, really important for me to get up and proclaim very loudly that I was a country artist," she says. "I was an ex-folkie-hippie who had discovered country music, who loved the beauty of it. I wanted to turn people like myself - I was a huge Bob Dylan fan, for instance - to say it was OK, not only OK but mandatory, if you want to appreciate music or celebrate music, to listen to George Jones. You shouldn't have to choose, was my point, has always been my point."
Radio stations embraced her early efforts, but by the advent of the '90s artists such as Shania Twain and Garth Brooks were grabbing the spotlight with their slick, commercial sound and Harris was finding it more difficult to sell records.
"I still wanted to push the envelope," she says. "As the envelope has gotten smaller and smaller instead of larger, I had to distance myself from country music. The music I'm making now has little to do with mainstream country music."
Indeed, "Red Dirt Girl" won a Grammy for Harris last February, but as Best Contemporary Folk Album. The songs do have a definite country feel, but folk, pop, gospel and Celtic influences wind through, as well.
Harris has recorded original songs before - three on a recent album with Linda Ronstadt - but "Red Dirt Girl" is her first all-original, completely self-written effort. She's pleased with the results, hard as they were to achieve: "I have a pretty high standard," she says.
She has a few songs tucked away that she hasn't recorded yet, and hopes, she says, to record more albums of originals.
"I would like to do my little songwriting dance, and I hope I can get the music to visit me again," Harris says. "I'll certainly try."