Emmylou Harris has long been regarded as the queen of progressive country,
and now, with her Grammy award–winning Red Dirt Girl, she is
finally being recognized as a great songwriter. Born in 1947, Harris
grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and started writing songs
in the early ’60s. In 1969 she moved to Greenwich Village to become
a folksinger. The dream didn’t last long. She recorded the lackluster
Gliding Bird and quickly moved back home, where she juggled life
as a single mother, waitress, and coffeehouse performer.
Then in 1971 she met Gram Parsons, the hard-living songwriter who’d
created a country-rock hybrid with the International Submarine Band,
the Byrds, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Meeting Parsons changed
Harris’ life. Singing on his GP and Grievous Angel recordings
taught her a love of country music and, even though she’d stopped writing,
gave her new direction as a singer. But Parsons died of an overdose
in 1973, leaving Harris the remnants of his band and a lifelong commitment
to his vision of "cosmic American music."
In 1975 she formed the Angel Band and then the Hot Band the following
year. She began recording one hit after another, covering a wide range
of music in a traditional country style and becoming alt-country’s first
star. Over the next ten years of work with husband and producer Brian
Ahern, she released 11 albums (with only three songs she’d written herself).
She left Ahern in the early ’80s, moved to Nashville, and started working
with singer-songwriter Paul Kennerley. The songs she wrote, like "White
Line" and "Woman Walk the Line" (from The Ballad of Sally Rose),
were some of the best she’d ever recorded, but critical response was
lukewarm and album sales were disastrous.
Harris went on to champion the new generation of country songwriters
and put together an acoustic band, the Nash Ramblers, in 1992. In 1995
she changed direction again, moving away from acoustic instruments with
the Daniel Lanois–produced Wrecking Ball. It was a huge success,
and it set the tone for the live record, Spyboy, and her latest
album, Red Dirt Girl. It’s the first time in 15 years that Harris
has written most of an album (the only nonoriginal is Patty Griffin’s
"One Big Love"), and it’s the first time her songwriting has ever shifted
away from country music. Liberated by open tunings, Harris is writing
in a new voice, somber and sonorous, haunting and poetic.
We spoke about writing songs and playing guitar the day after Red
Dirt Girl won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
When did you start writing songs, and why did you stop for so long?
Harris I came to New York in 1969,
during the era of the singer-songwriter. Dylan was everybody’s god,
and to be valid as an artist, you had to write songs. So I put
out an album [Gliding Bird], where I actually wrote five of the
songs. I don’t know why I stopped writing. Maybe my standards were too
high. I would write an occasional song, but I’d found all these great
songs and all I wanted to do was record them, to carry on the music
that Gram would have done. Plus, I have a fear of writing, of not being
able to come up with the goods. So, except for The Ballad of Sally
Rose, which took six years from inception to completion, I’ve pretty
much worn the interpreter hat.
Where does the guitar come in?
Harris The guitar is the key to unlocking
the song. I have to learn a song on the guitar. I have to. And
it’s not just the chord changes—I have to get the groove, the phrasing,
everything. It’s the vehicle that gets me to the song.
When I was growing up, everybody just assumed that I was musical. I
don’t know why; maybe I could sing in church. So I did the usual things:
piano lessons, song flute, clarinet . . . I did it all dutifully, but
it was a chore, something that had to do with other people’s expectations.
When I played my first guitar, you couldn’t get it out of my hands.
I played till my fingers bled, an old Kay guitar with strings that were
this high off the fretboard [she indicates a huge gap with her fingers].
I got a book, listened to records, and that was it. I became obsessed
with it. I had to learn it. So I subscribed to Sing Out! and
listened to the radio, trying to figure out the chords and fantasizing
about hopping a freight train in search of . . . something.
What did your parents think about that?
Harris Well, I wasn’t causing any
trouble. I was a straight A student, I was going to go to college and
be an actress, to study drama. So there was no cause for alarm.
When did you know you didn’t want to be an actress?
Harris When I started acting. I didn’t
have the same passion, the same comfort level as I did when I was singing.
It just felt very natural to sing, like breathing.
So you came to New York.
Harris Yeah, but I was too distracted
by everything. I was married, I was pregnant with Hallie. So I left
the city, quit music, worked at odd jobs. I lived with my parents and
my daughter—my husband and I had separated—and gradually I was able
to get an apartment and start working six nights a week in clubs around
D.C. I certainly wasn’t writing anymore.
Why not?
Harris I was too busy working and
trying to be a mother. I’m sure there are people who could find a lot
of inspiration in that, but I tend to get easily distracted. It’s very
hard for me to do more than one thing at once. Anyway, that was when
I met Gram, in 1971.
What’s the most important lesson you learned from Gram?
Harris I found my voice when I started
working with Gram. He made me fall in love with country music, with
the Louvin Brothers, with the soulful singing of George Jones. I learned
how to sing. I learned about the economy of phrasing, the restraint
of emotion that is inherent in country music. It was an enormous change
for me, to understand how to use this instrument.
Gram had something really unique to say, and the crowds responded to
him. We just assumed that we were going to keep working together--but
then, of course, he died. He was so excited about Grievous Angel.
He knew he had done a brilliant record. And he seemed to be getting
his life together, which is kind of ironic.
Because he wasn’t?
Harris Well, he was and he wasn’t.
He had actually straightened out, at least temporarily. And then when
he backslid it killed him. That’s a simplistic view of it, but that’s
basically what happened.
How did you know it was your job to carry on his work?
Harris I really didn’t have a choice.
That music had become so important to me. And I didn’t know how to do
anything else. It was either that or go back to waiting tables. So I
just got a little band together in D.C., rehearsed in a garage in the
freezing cold winter, and went back to the places I had been as an acoustic
act, before I’d met Gram, as much to continue the learning process as
just to survive.
Did the song you wrote after his death, "Boulder to Birmingham," feel
different from the songs you’d written before?
Harris Really different. I think it
was my first real song. I really had something to write about.
And you wrote about it again in The Ballad of Sally Rose. Why
did it take six years to write that album?
Harris I was gathering ideas, and
I was on the road. Finally, I got to a point where I stopped believing
that the project was going to write itself. I had gotten involved with
a concept album called The Legend of Jesse James, and I realized
that was what I was trying to do. And of course Paul [Kennerley]’s work
was so brilliant, and I thought, "Here’s the person that can help me
with this." Because I didn’t have enough confidence in my abilities.
I had confidence in the ideas and in some of the lyrics. But as far
as the melodies go, I wasn’t that confident. Paul said, "The first thing
you do is don’t worry about writing a concept album. Just take your
ideas and see if you’ve got good songs." And yes, I was very satisfied
with it. It told a story that I wanted to tell, that I needed to tell.
Well, it was a commercial disaster. It’s a pretty hefty thing to throw
at a record company, especially when you’re a marginal artist at best.
But that keeps you humble. The satisfaction of actually finishing that
album is still something that I’m very grateful for.
And it took another 15 years before you tried it again.
Harris I made a conscious effort to
do this new record, gave myself a cut-off point where I said, "OK, no
more touring." I let my band go, asked to be released from the record
company. I had to eliminate all the things that would pull me away from
the writing table. Because I’ll find any excuse to not write. Then in
July, I had my first meeting with [producer] Malcolm [Burn]—and even
though I only had two songs finished, I had some other pieces in the
works, lyric ideas, bits of melody, parts of songs. By the time we got
to recording, I had six. And then we took a break until February, and
in that February I wrote the rest of the songs, except for "Red Dirt
Girl," which I wrote after everything was done, driving from Nashville
to New Orleans to finish the record.
It just came to you on the road?
Harris You know, some of the songs
come to you, like "Here I Am." And others just seem to elude you, take
you down all kinds of dead-end roads. Just because I spend a lot of
time and end up with three verses and a chorus doesn’t mean that it’s
a song. It doesn’t mean it’s become truth. It doesn’t mean that anybody
should ever hear it. That’s a real important part of the process: knowing
when you’ve taken a wrong turn in writing a song and being willing to
retreat or abandon it completely.
How do you know when a song is done? How do you know if it’s any good?
Harris You really just know. Or maybe
that’s too arrogant: Sometimes you know. I have a few people whose opinions
I really trust, and they were enormously helpful to me in this process.
But then there are some times when you just know. It’s the same reason
I’m a good interpreter: I know when a song is good. I think also as
an interpreter, though, I can allow myself to do a song that is slightly
flawed, because I can pass the blame onto the writer. Whereas if you’re
writing it yourself, you can’t get away with that. The song has to succeed
on every level.
Do you know why so many of the songs on Red Dirt Girl are
about loss?
Harris Well, every day you lose a
little more, don’t you? And that has been a real big theme of the last
few years. This has been a real inner-life period for me, especially
the last seven or eight years, since my father’s death. I’ve basically
been a solitary person, and a lot more of my energy is focused inward.
As you get older, you’re more obsessed with loss.
At what point in the writing process do you reach for your guitar?
Harris I don’t really have any one
particular method. But I always have a guitar to inspire me, and the
open tunings had a lot to do with this record. Daniel Lanois showed
me an open-A tuning that is present a lot on Red Dirt Girl: A
A A E A A. Somehow, I’m not as intimidated by my lack of musical knowledge
with the open tunings. There’s something about the drone, and the fact
that you can sort of play a melody on one string, and the bigness of
the sound. There’s a scary quality that the open-A tuning has. That’s
what "The Pearl" was written on, and "The Pearl" was the first song
completed for the record. That gave me the confidence to take the next
step and try for another song. Then I discovered open tunings on my
baritone guitars. I have a Danelectro baritone that I wrote "My Antonia"
on. Also, "Tragedy" was written on another baritone guitar that was
made for me by Joe Glaser. I just love the sound of a six-string bass.
Do you think you’re going to keep writing songs?
Harris I’ll try to write. If I come
up with some good songs, you’ll hear them. If I don’t, you won’t. That’s
all I can say. I got a great deal of satisfaction from writing this
record. I don’t want that to turn into something stressful, so that
from now on I have to continue to write. Whether it’s interpretations
of other people’s songs or writing your own, you have to be passionate
about what you do in order to get through it. But you can’t conjure
that up; you can just sort of pray to that god, "Please, please come
see me. This is where I am. This is my email address. This is where
I live."
SELECT EMMYLOU HARRIS
DISCOGRAPHY
Anthology (two-CD set), Rhino 75705 (2001).
Red Dirt Girl, Nonesuch 79616 (2000).
Trio II (with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt), Asylum
62275 (1998).
Spyboy, Eminent 25001 (1998).
Portraits (three-CD set), Reprise Archives 45308 (1996).
Wrecking Ball, Asylum 61854 (1995).
Cowgirl’s Prayer, Asylum 61541 (1993).
At the Ryman (live), Reprise 26664 (1992).
Angel Band, Reprise 25585 (1987).
Last Dance, Eminent 25040 (1999, originally released by
Reprise in 1982).
Excerpted
from
Acoustic Guitar magazine,
August 2001, No. 104. That
issue also contained a transcription of the Emmylou Harris song "Red
Dirt Girl," a profile of classical and jazz guitarist Ralph Towner,
and a feature about yoga for guitarists.
