A SONGBIRD ON HIATUS!

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Of all the distinctive voices on the American music scene today, it's impossible not to identify the silvery-voiced Emmylou Harris. She has decided to take the advice proffered by the late Johnny Cash who once told her, "Sometimes just changing your routine is the same as taking a sabbatical". Harris' career has amazingly enough been a part of records--most recently with Mark Knoffler (of Dire Straits) Neil Young, and Elvis Costello just over the past year. I found out that she has an October 10th concert booked at L. A.'s Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. She is credited for allowing rock to infiltrate country without horrendous protest. In the 70's, she was playing 4 sets a night in Washington, D.C. clubs when former member of The Byrds' Chris Hillman mentioned to fellow musician Graham Parsons of "The Byrds" and "The Flying Burrito Brothers" that Harris just might be "the girl singer" he was seeking for his solo recording project. Harris and Parsons teamed up in Los Angeles, where the mercurial Parsons (who died soon after of a drug overdose) in fact, recorded his 1972 album and the song "Grievous Angel". Their last telephone conversation was about Emmylou's favorite song, "Angels Rejoiced' ", which appears on her new 4 CD box set called "Songbird: Rare Tracks & Forgotten Gems". Parsons told Harris over the telephone that "Grievious Angel" didn't fit the album they were working on, but it would go on the next album. After Parsons' death, Harris returned to Washington's folk/bluegrass music scene. Long before her trio CD's with Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton, or the terrific Daniel Lanois projects, she influenced writers from Rodney Crowell, Ricky Skaggs and Lucinda Williams (whom I recently saw in concert and blogged about). What I admire about Emmylou is the fact she is a maverick. Texan Rodney Crowell, who appeared with the late Elvis Presley's "TCB" road band renamed "Hot Band" sums up Emmylou this way. "Emmy inspires such loyalty because she has so much integrity", he says. "She's a poet--even before she started writing songs---and that's what we all respond to. Even more than that voice and the passion is the poetry, the timeliness, choosing the heart over commerce". On the heels of the albums "Blue Kentucky Girl" and the bluegrass "Roses in the Snow", came the commercially disappointing "Ballad of Sally Rose" (inspired partly by Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska"). A move to the Asylum record label still couldn't get Harris (nor Guy Clark--whom I saw in concert last year) on the radio. Closed doors followed and the financial strain hit Harris badly. Reflecting on this chapter of hard knocks she makes this observation. "There comes a time when you're no longer invited to the party. It happens to other people too. But if this is what you do, who knows what it'll be". Then she teamed up with the bluegrass group The Nash Ramblers to critical acclaim. Next, "Wrecking Ball" won a Grammy Award (she has 12 Grammy Awards now), but in a weird contradictory scenario it sold poorly. "Red Dirt Girl" finally brought her huge success. I'll have to hunt down "Songbird" because Chrissie Hynde and Beck appear on the song "Immigrant Eyes" (a 60th birthday present to Guy Clark--who performed it in the Cincinnati concert I attended). "I am 60 years old and have been doing this for a long time, and it's harder and harder to get inspired in some ways, and in others, well, all it takes is one song", says Harris. Rough years and all, it's very hard for me to fathom that Harris is really 60. I've loved every "Austin City Limits" appearance she has made for television. And she's on my list of concerts I eagerly look forward to attending. The 78 song boxed set hits the stores tomorrow, but sabbatical notwithstanding, she has a Cd project for 2008 and more planned for the future. And while Martha Stewart may or may not be a fan, to borrow her famous line about the road ahead for this great artist: "THAT is a good thing".