Friday, October 17, 2003
By John Hayes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Staff Writer
After setting her mind on breaking into mainstream country, Emmylou Harris won a stack of gold and platinum albums, Grammy Awards, No. 1 hits and a lifetime membership to the Grand Ol' Opry. When she dropped out of the mainstream, she quickly established herself as mainstay of the fledgling Americana movement, and released some of the best music of her career.
As a song stylist, Harris has a knack for picking gems that stretches back to her 1975 major label debut, when she packed "Pieces of the Sky" with everything from the Louvin Brothers' "If I Could Only Win Your Love" to The Beatles' "For No One."
She's been writing songs that became hits since 1978's "Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town," and wrote most of her 1985 release, "The Ballad of Sally Rose." But Harris says it wasn't until 1995's "Wrecking Ball," for which she penned several tunes, that she started thinking of herself as a songwriter. She's written most of her last two albums.
"It's hard work. Maybe it's easy for other writers," she says, "but I don't find it easy."
Country radio unintentionally did Harris a favor by moving the focus to younger, newer cookie-cutter acts in the 1980s. Artistically unbound, freed of Nashville's penchant for feeding potential hits to proven hit makers, Harris exploded in the later half of the 1990s with poignant, introspective, self-penned songs. Her 2000 release, "Red Dirt Girl," became her best-selling album in 20 years and won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Her new disc, "Stumble into Grace," is her third with producer Malcolm Burn.
"I was fortunate early on to be played by FM stations and country radio," she says. "Then, after [the mainstream airplay] dropped off, I became the poster child for there being life after radio. ... I never had a formula and never felt restrictions, but since then I've been totally freed of the radio mentality. I just don't think about it."
A self-described "music junkie," Harris says she still listens to a broad range of sounds. Holding her songs to the same high standards as the music she's covered in the past has caused her some consternation.
"As an interpreter, using songs that someone else has written, I was looking for songs that have a certain universal appeal, a universal truth," she says. "I think I feel that more deeply when I write. All of my songs, with a few exceptions, are autobiographical. I struggle with them, but at some point they just come out like they've been practically given to me. They come fully formed, like they were already written and decided to reveal themselves through this plane to me. But you still always feel like you can wreck it."
Harris didn't wreck anything on "Stumble into Grace." The third album of her career composed entirely of songs she's written or co-written is in some ways a quieter collection than "Red Dirt Girl." A rocker she recorded in January with Mark Knopfler was left off the disc because, she says, "it didn't fit," but most of the songs she's completed since her last album made it onto "Stumble into Grace." Working with Nashville stalwart Buddy Miller and Spyboy as her backing band for the past eight years hasn't affected her songwriting, she says, and neither has the influence of producer Burn.
"I can't write like that," she says. "I don't think in terms of how this will sound with a band or what Malcolm may do with it, or what people will think. I guess everybody has their own place that they create from. For me, I just need the song to get me excited."
"Strong Hand," her tribute to June Carter, was written before the deaths of Carter or Johnny Cash, and "Lost Until This World," her collaboration with Daniel Lanois, was "a response to too many horrible stories that document us as a species." The lyrics to "Little Bird" were written around a traditional Peruvian melody sent to Harris by a Pittsburgh fan, teacher Lisa Cain, who is credited on the album.
But despite her new emphasis on songwriting, Harris says she sees more covers in her future.
"I'm not going to give up my job as an interpreter," she says. "There are a lot of good songs out there."