SANTA MONICA, CA -- Vanguard Records announces the April 10th release of Concerts for a Landmine Free World, a compilation culled from the sold-out concert series featuring artists from folk-rock to country crossover held to educate and raise public awareness about the global landmine tragedy. Picking up where Princess Diana left off, Emmylou Harris spearheaded the roster of artists supporting the Campaign and proposed the singer/songwriter concert series after traveling with Bobby Muller, president of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) and co-founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, on a trip to Cambodia and Vietnam.

Heralded as a “musical event of historical proportions,” the first series of concerts were presented in California on five successive nights in December 1999. These concerts united some of the most distinctive voices and finest singer/songwriters of our time, sharing their songs and stories in an intimate, acoustic setting. Included on this compilation are performances by Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Mary Chapin Carpenter, John Prine, Nanci Griffith, Guy Clark, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Kris Kristofferson and Bruce Cockburn. Coming off its sold-out 1999 tour, the VVAF recreated the musical event by featuring a second series of dates in the Northeast United States and Canada December 2-6, 2000.

Founded in 1998, by the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation (VVAF), a Washington, D.C.-based international humanitarian organization, the Campaign for a Landmine Free World is a comprehensive program that addresses the danger and damage caused by antipersonnel landmines. Operating post-conflict rehabilitation clinics and landmine awareness programs around the world, the campaign also conducts mine impact surveys in landmine-affected nations, educates the public on the worldwide impact of the problem and works to ensure the U. S. government will join the Ottawa Convention, a convention established to ban the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of antipersonnel landmines.

According to the United Nations, 340 types of landmines are produced by forty-eight nations. These landmines are designed not to kill, but to inflict injury, pain and suffering. Landmine victims - those that survive the massive bleeding - require amputations and a life of unending pain and surgeries. The State Department estimates that 60-80 million landmines are in the ground worldwide. One-third of the world’s countries are mined and every twenty-two minutes, someone is killed or maimed. Of the 26,000 men, women and children injured or killed each year, nearly 90 percent are civilians.

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"There will never be peace in a country like Cambodia, because the people don't have the freedom to walk their homeland. That's a basic right we take for granted." Emmylou Harris, Chicago Tribune, January 5, 1998

"It's not enough to say we won't put anymore in the ground; we've got to get them out,' says Harris. "It comes down to a basic courtesy, something you learn in kindergarten: You clean up after your mess when you're through. Until we do, these countries are going to be hostages. They're going to continue to live the war many, many years after peace has been declared." Emmylou Harris, The Washington Post, October 9, 1998

"To me it's not a political issue," says Harris. "The war's over, we're gone, so people think the issue is resolved. It's not resolved. The trash we left behind is killing someone every 22 minutes. We take for granted that we can go outside for a walk, or our children can, without getting [body parts] blown off. But millions of people live with that fear. That's why they call it terrorism in slow motion." … "It's one thing to know intellectually that people are victims of landmines," she said. "It's another thing to actually see it and how common it is. We're not talking about handicapped-access countries, either." Emmylou Harris, Boston Sunday Globe, August 13, 2000

"I'm sure there was a good reason for using nerve gas, too, but there's a certain point where you have to say, 'Yeah, we could use it, this could be handy in this situation, but when you look at the pros and cons this is really fighting dirty and the civilian population around the world is going to suffer.'" Emmylou Harris, Star Phoenix, December 22, 1998

"The people who are killed by landmines are for the most part civilians, 90 per cent are civilians ... Every 22 minutes, someone is maimed or killed by a mine ... they can't plow fields, they can't farm, they can't gather firewood." Emmylou Harris, Ottawa Citizen, December 2, 2000

Thursday, September 14, 2000

Emmylou landmine concerts coming to CD

By PAUL CANTIN
Senior Reporter, JAM! Showbiz

TORONTO -- Emmylou Harris's series of star-studded concerts to promote the anti-landmine campaign is being recorded, and the shows will be released on a series of CDs in the new year, the singer told JAM! Music.

Harris's "Concerts For A Landmine Free World" -- which began last year in California and have included guests Steve Earle, John Prine, Bruce Cockburn and Mary Chapin Carpenter -- will continue this December with a series of dates, including shows at Ottawa's National Arts Centre on Dec. 3 and Toronto's Massey Hall on Dec. 4.

"Vanguard (Records) is going to release the live shows on a series of albums, which are going to come out next year," Harris said Thursday while in Toronto to promote her new CD, "Red Dirt Girl."

"The first one will obviously be the ones we did last December (in California). We are doing the second series this December, and we are going to keep doing these concerts every year. We hope to take it overseas," she said.

The Toronto and Ottawa dates will be included on a compilation CD drawn from the five shows in the upcoming concert series. Past shows have been arranged in an intimate, acoustic format, with the acts sharing the stage and collaborating on songs.

And that won't be the end of Harris's efforts.

"We want to play some places that have dealt with this problem, like Sarajevo and Belfast -- even though it is not a landmine problem, but it is war-torn," Harris said. "We have been invited by Queen Noor to come to Jordan."

The anti-landmine campaign organizers won a Nobel peace prize, but Harris said the honour has had the unintended consequence of making the public believe the problem has gone away.

"It is just a matter of keeping at it, keeping at it, and keeping the visibility ... People think, 'That's taken care of,' but it is not nearly solved," she said.

Harris first became involved in the landmine cause through a friend who was working for the Vietnam Veterans Of America Foundation, and ended up going on a fact-finding mission on the issue to Vietnam and Cambodia.

"I thought the 100 million landmines in the ground was a typo. It's such an astonishing fact. Almost absurd. In Cambodia, there are more landmines than people," said Harris, who sported a green silk scarf created by a co-operative of Cambodian women victimized by landmines. The women support themselves by manufacturing the scarves, which Harris sells at her concerts.

"It has been a fantastic chapter in my life. It is a chance to give back, to use my celebrity," she said, making quotation marks in the air as she says the word, "to talk about something other than myself and music ... and George Jones."

Harris had scheduled an October concert at Toronto's Danforth Music Hall, but the show was cancelled so as not to conflict with ticket sales for the Dec. 4 benefit show at Massey Hall. But she said she will return after the landmine show to play her own concert.

"I plan to tour this record ("Red Dirt Girl") well into 2001. I can't imagine not coming back to Toronto. This town has always been close to my heart -- my Canadian roots," she said, referring to her years with ex-husband, Toronto-based producer Brian Ahern. Coincidentally, her two most recent producers -- Daniel Lanois and Malcolm Burn -- have both lived for a time in the Toronto area.

En route to the interview, Harris's limo got a flat tire on the highway and she was delayed an hour until a new car could make it through the gridlock to pick her up. She had flown in from New York a night earlier, after performing her new single, "I Don't Want To Talk About It Now," on David Letterman's show, and her flight was hours late. Despite the hectic schedule and unexpected setbacks, she was gracious and patient.

"Musicians on the road invented Murphy's Law," she joked, adding that her experience with the anti-landmine campaign has given her a better perspective.

"Everyone who lives the cushy life, it is a good thing to do," she says of her trips abroad for the cause.

"It cuts down on the whining. It is probably why I am smiling. All I had to deal with is a flat tire, in a limo. Excuse me!"

More on Emmylou's involvement.