By JIM FUSILLI
The Wall Street Journal
June 19, 2008; Page D7
Nashville: Emmylou Harris is treating me to a visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame and moves directly to "the well from which it all springs," as she put it, Maybelle Carter's big-bodied 1928 Gibson L-5 guitar. We study, in the next display case, the most famous mandolin in American music history, the 1923 Gibson F-5 that belonged to bluegrass legend Bill Monroe, a friend and mentor of Ms. Harris until his death in 1996. When we're invited behind the scenes, we see materials for a coming Kitty Wells exhibition spread on a table, but Ms. Harris's eye is drawn to a mustard-yellow guitar that Ira Louvin built, placed near an original copy of his only solo album.
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Musician Emmylou Harris performs during the Stagecoach Music Festival last May in Indio, Calif.
By showing me these seminal instruments, the wispy, silver-haired 61-year-old is commenting, however inadvertently, on her 35-year career -- as well as on her induction into the Hall of Fame in April and on her album "All I Intended to Be" (Nonesuch), issued earlier this month. Ms. Harris delivers her songs with Mother Carter's passion and unadorned directness; knows that Monroe's musical adventurism trumps the homogeneous sound of contemporary country; and in the early 1970s, with Gram Parsons, studied the Louvins' vocal harmonies.
Her new disc features "She Could Sing the Wildwood Flower," co-written with Kate and Anna McGarrigle, which references the Carter Family hit "Wildwood Flower." Monroe compositions have been part of her sprawling repertoire, and her first solo hit was a cover of the Louvin Brothers' "If I Could Only Win Your Love."
Not that Ms. Harris has always been deeply steeped in country music. As a young folk singer, she'd toss in a few country tunes in her shows -- "tongue in cheek, I have to admit," she told me. She was performing Wells's "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels" in a Washington, D.C., club when members of the Flying Burritos Brothers were in the audience. They told their former colleague Parsons about her, and he hired her to sing harmony for his first solo album, "GP." She said Parsons taught her to respect a country song.
"There's something about country music where you lock in with the words and you lock in with the melody and you let the song carry you," she said, which is a pretty fair description of her approach on "All I Intended to Be," a lovely, somber disc that made its debut on the country charts at No. 4 and on the pop charts at No. 22, the highest debuts of her career.
Parsons' death from a drug overdose in 1973 "came as a shock," Ms. Harris told me as we neared a case holding his Nudie suit festooned with images of pills and marijuana leaves. "I thought he was on his way to reclaiming himself." Back in Washington, she started her own group, playing country, pop and rock. "It was the first time I ever fronted a band," she said. "I was terrified for the first half of the first song, but I don't think I've been nervous since."
Ms. Harris issued two albums in 1975 -- "Pieces of the Sky" and "Elite Hotel" -- that foreshadowed her career, placing country classics alongside songs by pop writers and Nashville newcomers. Her affinity for pop has given her career a second track as a harmony vocalist and co-partner to some of rock's elite. Neil Young hired her in 1975, beginning a long and fruitful relationship. Bob Dylan brought her in for his "Desire" album. "I found out later that he just wanted a girl," she told me. "He didn't know who I was." Recently, she performed with Elvis Costello and Mark Knopfler.
Her varied career also comprises two hit albums of pop standards with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt titled "Trio" and "Trio II," a bluegrass phase, a prominent appearance on the "O Brother, Where Art Thou" soundtrack, and some innovative music with producer Daniel Lanois, including the gorgeous 1995 release "Wrecking Ball." Her two solo albums that preceded "All I Intended to Be" -- "Red Dirt Girl" and "Stumble Into Grace" -- skew toward the experimental folk-rock sound she developed with Mr. Lanois and his colleague Malcolm Burn, who produced both discs.
Zina Saunders
Her new album is a blend of country and folk. Ms. Harris composed three of its songs and co-wrote two others with the McGarrigles. The rest of the songs she's been saving for years -- compositions by Merle Haggard, Billy Joe Shaver, Jack Wesley Routh, Tracy Chapman and others. She first heard Mark Germino's "Broken Man's Lament" 25 years ago. "I've been a song finder for most of my career," she said. "The song is the gemstone and everything else is the setting."
After leaving the Hall of Fame, we drive to her white-columned house, built in 1926. She apologizes for the chaos in the kitchen, but its disarray suggests family life. A niece greets us with news of Ms. Harris's mother, who's recovering upstairs from a fall. Ms. Harris takes me to meet her dogs, Bella and Keeta, and to show me the headquarters of Bonaparte's Retreat, her organization that provides foster care to shelter dogs facing euthanasia. We settle in a cozy parlor filled with family photos and a scattering of memorabilia. None of her gold or platinum albums is in sight.
For "All I Intended to Be," Ms. Harris reunited in the studio with her ex-husband Brian Ahern, who produced her first 11 albums, and old friends John Starling, Tom Gray and Mike Auldridge, whom she's known since the early 1970s; Ms. Parton and Vince Gill, who sing harmony; and keyboard player Glen D. Hardin, who was on her early albums. But loss is the album's theme.
"From a very young age, I was always attracted to songs about loss, and I don't know why," she said. "I had the happiest childhood. My parents were wonderful." She pointed out that romantic heartbreak is addressed in only one tune -- Patty Griffin's "Moon Song." "Most of them are about growing older, and the inevitability of death. And yet," she said, "I don't think of myself as a sad person. . . . When it's all said and done, we're going to lose the people we love." But, she added, to understand that is to embrace life. "It's about living."
Her new album's personal statement, and its organic underpinning that at times harkens back to the acoustic sound of the Carter Family and folk music, seems a rebuke to contemporary country, whose stars seem more like actors playing singers than people relating genuine experiences. As we wound up our conversation -- she was awaiting a phone call from Mr. Costello and then would hop on the bus with Bella, Keeta and her band to resume a U.S. tour that runs through July -- I asked Ms. Harris if her career would be possible if she were starting out in Nashville now. "I don't think so," she said after a moment's thought. "I came at exactly the right time. But right now, I just can't imagine it."
"It could be that country as we knew it is gone," she added. "But the great thing about the Country Music Hall of Fame is you can trace it back."
That's the great thing about Ms. Harris too. Through her music, we find the roots of country.
Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusilli@wsj.com.
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