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Sources for Emmylou Harris

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relation to Phil Kaufman

Early

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Now, with the release of her LP Pieces of the Sky (Reprise), Emmylou Harris seems about to swim into the rich mainstream of popular music. As Emmylou sums it up: "After all the auditions in plush New York offices for men wearing sunglasses, all of a sudden the music I have always done is becoming accepted."

The Ballad of Sally Rose

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Inspired by Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" and the Glyn Johns-produced "The Ballad of Jesse James," she made her own concept record, "Ballad of Sally Rose." "It was a huge commercial disaster," Harris says. "I literally did not have enough money to buy a house."
I put out a record called The Ballad of Sally Rose [in 1985] — it was supposed to be my masterpiece. It was a huge commercial disaster. I started out with a big band and we played the record from start to finish, and by the time the reality of the financial burden came through, I had to strip down the band. I found myself playing one afternoon at a petting zoo and someone had a huge portable blaster on their shoulder, listening to the ball game in the front row, and there were big flies buzzing around and I thought "maybe I should think about other jobs."
Harris was scheduled to kick of her 22-city tour.... Harris says that all she looks for is artistic satisfaction.
Emmylou Harris says her LP ``The Ballad of Sally Rose,`` whose 13 songs profile a female musician who goes on the road with a famous singer and ends up a star herself, began as the stories of three women and was condensed to one: ``We felt it would be more effective emotionally to tell one love story rather than three.``
During her interlude of doubt, Harris recalls, she began to question whether the distinctive formula she has used for a decade, that of finding and singing unique country and rock oldies that address current concerns, was still valid.
``I thought I had nothing else to offer,`` she says. ``Especially before `Sally Rose` (``The Ballad Of Sally Rose,`` an all-original 1985 album whose songs were all written or co-written by Harris), I felt really redundant.
``I felt if I didn`t get the writing part of me going, I had just done everything. I mean, I could continue to find good songs and make good records, but if I was going to keep on, I was going to have to prove myself to myself. ``I doubt if any artist worth his salt doesn`t go through something like it sometime in his career.``
One of her doubts seems to have had to do with rock and roll. She says she has ``given up`` recording rock albums, recalling that her 16-year-old daughter was ``embarrassed`` by her last such attempt, ``White Shoes`` in 1983.
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.
So, except for The Ballad of Sally Rose, which took six years from inception to completion, I’ve pretty much worn the interpreter hat.
"I've never been terrified of making an album except that one," she says. "I felt stripped bare. I had scraps, notebooks, cassettes. Paul felt the pieces of songs were good and said, 'Finish them and we'll put it all together in a story later.' It was incredibly disorganized."
And actually, Sally Rose was a commercial disaster. But I’m glad I did it, I don’t regret it at all.
Emmylou Harris is about to kick off a February-to-April tour to promote her new album, ``Ballad of Sally Rose,`` in a big way. Starting in Nashville, the coast-to-coast (and back) jaunt will end in New York. Harris will visit each city a week before the scheduled show to do media promotion.
Each performance will be a 2 1/2-hour ``evening with Emmylou Harris.``
The first hour will offer music from Harris` career repertoire, then, after intermission, another hour will be devoted to the ``Ballad of Sally Rose,`` her first album of songs she has written.
I’m hoping that Rhino will at some point re-release ‘The Ballad Of Sally Rose’ with all the original demos, because I really still believe in that album, even though it was a commercial disaster from which I barely escaped! (Laughs)
On the final stop of a five-month tour, Harris performed only four songs from her recent "Ballad of Sally Rose" concept album, rather than devoting the second half of the concert to a complete run-through of that work as she had earlier in the tour.

Thirteen

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Angel Band

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So "Angel Band" comes as a dramatic shift that is bound to spark speculation about Harris' religious convictions and whether she has turned her back on secular music. On that count, however, Harris' fans can relax.
"We ended up sort of by accident with a gospel album," she said. "The traditional music, the acoustic backing, the sparse arrangements, the live singing and harmony--those are the aspects of the album I see and hear when I listen to the album. It isn't a personal statement. My own philosophy is private. More than a religious statement ('Angel Band') is a musical statement--but all music is spiritual to me."
In fact, Harris said with a laugh, "That's exactly what it was. We were sitting around in (songwriter-producer) Paul Kennerly's living room, and it so happens that Paul has a 16-track recording studio in the house."
"We were literally sitting in one part of the room singing, and Paul was in the other part of the room (recording). It was purely done as a meeting of friends who sing; we weren't even wearing headphones. We thought it would be something nice, but we didn't think it would turn out as good and as stunning as some of the harmony is. Those are the things you go for in studio, but a lot of times when that red light goes on, you tense up and have to go back and get it with overdubs."

Bluebird

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Brand New Dance

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"My albums aren't selling very well," Harris sighs. "That's disappointing. It's not like I'm going into oblivion, but I don't get much radio play. I decided at one point that all my fans died of a mysterious disease all at once."
On the record: Speaking of Emmylou Harris, she says her brand new album, "Brand New Dance," is "a brand new dance for me as an artist" because she stepped out of all production roles on it, leaving them to Richard Bennett and Allen Reynolds. "If you are first and foremost a singer, getting more into the production can be good and bad," she says.
"I haven`t had my artistic license revoked," she says wryly. "I`ve had enough success in this business that I`ve never had any need for compromising."

At the Ryman

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Her latest album, the live release "At the Ryman," is a fine example of an acute musical intelligence at work. The all-acoustic album, recorded at the auditorium that formerly housed the Grand Ole Opry, delves deep into country tradition, but it is also an exploration of the wider tradition of good songwriting.
In one three-song stretch, Harris goes from a 19th-Century hymn, Stephen Foster's "Hard Times," to a Bruce Springsteen meditation, "Mansion on the Hill," to a high-stepping Celtic-bluegrass tune by Bill Monroe.
But Harris doesn't just collect good material with an ear toward diversity.
In the album's second half, her sensitivity toward theme and story enable her to array songs in a sequence that allows ideas to resonate from one tune to the next, creating something akin to an essay on what it means to live with loss and loneliness.
In the quest for ever younger, more photogenic performers, the industry has turned its back on such country kings and queens as George Jones, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard and Emmylou Harris, despite excellent work from each in recent years.
Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson get more exposure nowadays from their Taco Bell TV commercials than from country radio.
Lorrie Morgan acknowledged the trend when introducing the nominees for male vocal performance on the Grammy telecast: "They're all young, successful, handsome and very sexy."
Harris and her band the Nash Ramblers received the lone award given to a veteran in key categories, for performance by a group with vocal, for their exquisite "At the Ryman" live album.

Cowgirl's Prayer

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Now she says simply, I tend to cover eccentric, slightly twisted songs that appeal to a small number and always will, and that's never bothered me because I still am more popular than I ever could have imagined. After the first album came out, somebody said it was number 107 on the charts. She laughs. I mean, it never occurred to me that I would even make it to the charts! In September Harris will release her 22nd album, which is as yet untitled. Although she prefers to unearth old gems rather than write her own songs (Writing really intimidates me, she admits), there will be a self-penned tune on it, as well as a cover of a new song by one of her favorite singer- songwriters, Lucinda Williams. As always, Harris is unconcerned about her album selling a million copies.
"I think it's a general lament about superficiality," she said. "I think everybody yearns for something deeper. That's the theme of the whole album, not that I set out to do that. There's that sort of dissatisfaction with so much that is around us all the time, the emphasis on looks, the emphasis on youth, the emphasis on success on a shallow, purely superficial level. But it's not a sermon. It's a fun song to sing."
The new album finds Harris on the recently revived Asylum label, her first new record company since she signed with Warner Bros. in 1974. Although it wasn't a hot seller, Harris' last album for Warners, the live set "At the Ryman," won her and the Nash Ramblers a Grammy (her sixth) this year as the best country album by a duo or group.
If there was any pressure to try something different to reignite the record sales and radio play that have died down for Harris over the past few years, it doesn't show on the new album, which eschews radio-ready slickness and takes her usual varied, adventurous, anti-formulaic approach. Harris used the same team of producers, Richard Bennett and Allen Reynolds, that worked on her two previous albums.
"I've had to exist without country radio for quite a few years," Harris noted. She characterized contemporary country radio, with its overriding emphasis on new performers, as "obviously a party to which (she's) not invited. My records and what I'm doing is certainly good enough to be played, but there's a reality that you're competing against yourself. They'll play something you put out 12 years ago, and feel you've (already) had your time on the radio."
Q: Do you feel that the album represents a change of direction?
A: Not at all. To me, it's part of the same musical journey. In fact, that's one of the criticisms country radio has with me. They say I'm stuck in a rut. Well, I happen to like this rut, if that's what you call it. To me, life is about searching, and music should reflect that search. That's one of the reasons music means so much to us. Whether you are listening to Billie Holiday or Loretta Lynn, Hank Williams or Bob Dylan, the best artists are trying to articulate the things we all feel inside.
Review (favorable)
If this gets Harris airplay on religious radio stations or a guest spot on The 700 Club, so be it. Cowgirl's Prayer still doesn't sound like a reactionary career move; the music is too tasty, too hip, to be narrowly pious or regional. Her country is a nation wide, and as high as you can get on heavenly love.

Wrecking Ball

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Leaving Normal
The people that are my mainstream, Harris explains, the people that have been with me since the first record, come to me because of the digressions I make.
This time, Harris says candidly, I really don't expect any country airplay.
"I think I could record an album of Hank Williams songs and be told (either) that it was not country enough or (that it was) too traditional," grouses the 48-year-old performer who during the past two decades has reintroduced Americans to dozens of country music roots heroes.
"It's pretty obvious to me that I'm not going to be played on country radio, so why not just go (to) that other place that I've always been, anyway?" she says. "I've always had one foot in left field. So I just decided to plant the other one there."
Early reports indicate that Harris' end run may be successful. The reviews of "Wrecking Ball" in influential journals have been almost adoring, notes Asylum Records' John Condon. "Cowgirl's Prayer," which had three singles and three videos, sold just 178,000 copies counted by Soundscan, the first-week Soundscan sales figure for "Wrecking Ball" was 10,000 without a single or a video, Condon says.
"I don't know how that (10,000 figure) compares to `Cowgirl's Prayer' (for the same period)," Condon adds, "but my gut tells me this record is doing better."
Question: How radical a departure was "Wrecking Ball" for you?
Answer: Material-wise, for the most part, I don't think it was such a radical departure. I've always been an eclectic hound in my material, so the diversity isn't unusual. I think the main distinctive feature of the album is Daniel's production, what he gets as far as grooves, and then the sounds that he puts with those grooves.
Q: What were your commercial expectations for the album?
A: I've sort of made my peace with the commercial expectations side of music. I'm in a very fortunate place, because I sort of have carte blanche to do whatever I want, and I seem to sell a respectable amount of records, enough to enable me to take whatever direction I want and try whatever project I want. I have a fan base that seems to respond to that and gives me that go-ahead. I don't have that pressure of having to sell 3 million records every time out.
Lanois, after all, lushly produced "Wrecking Ball," the 1995 Grammy winner for best contemporary folk album -- but it did not sell very well.
Harris was disappointed.
"I'm not an artist that's going to sell millions of records," Harris told The Dallas Morning News. "But I did feel that there was perhaps a larger potential audience for 'Wrecking Ball' than was reached. When it came down to the bottom line, I think there was a certain point where it kind of got pushed back for new product. This is the way it happens. It's not just Elektra, it's everywhere."

Spyboy

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Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions

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contains a detailed interview on everything up to 2000

Red Dirt Girl

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Stumble into Grace

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All the Roadrunning

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All I Intended to Be

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Hard Bargain

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(actually about the whole life)

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