Emmylou Harris chosen to join Country Music Hall of Fame

It was announced today that Emmylou Harris, along with Tom T. Hall, Pop Stoneman, and the Statler Brothers, will be the newest members of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Here's what Harris had to say about that in a press release from the Hall. and below that, a look back at a post on the recent box set release Songbird.


Tom T. Hall said that induction is almost a spiritual experience. Has it been for you as well?

It will now. It's still got to sink in a little bit. There's that aspect of it, where you feel honored. What an amazing thing it is to be a part of that tradition, especially for somebody who didn't come to it naturally. I wasn't raised in Country Music, even though I'm from the South. We moved around a lot, and music wasn't a big part of my life until I discovered folk music. That's where my musical passion was until I started working with Gram [Parsons], and then I became this almost obnoxious convert.

Everything about Country Music, there is a certain reverence, so I would use that word as well as what he said, "spiritual." There's a reverence about the music because to me it's not just music that was played a long time ago. The good stuff is always resonant. For me, it always fuels my passion for Country Music moving forward, obviously not trying to just recreate what the early artists did. But you're infused with it, and you go on to hopefully add something to it.

How do you feel about being part of this Class of '08, with all that it reflects about Country Music?

Oh, well, it's great. Of course, I never met Pop Stoneman, but he's a part of that education for me. Also, the D.C. area, there's that connection, even though we were there at different times.

I was telling the Statlers that in that arrogant period of my youth, when I disdained Country Music, my brother was a huge Country Music fan way before it was cool in certain circles. I loved the Statler Brothers in spite of myself. You can't but smile when you hear "counting flowers on the wall."

And, of course, Tom T. Yes, you had the songwriting of Bob Dylan, which infused me and still does. But Tom T., cutting to the chase with simplicity of lyrics and storytelling that goes back to folk and the best of Country. So, I'm a huge fan of Tom T. Hall. When the original Hot Band was out, our motto was: "Faster Horses!" Rodney and I used to warm up with "Negatory Romance." And now, of course, Buddy Miller has recorded "That's How I Got to Memphis" with Solomon Burke. It's great to be a part of this class.




Songbird

Rodney Crowell, George Jones, Mark Knopfler, Patty Griffin, Linda Ronstadt, and John Starling are duet partners who show up with Harris here. It’s a fitting range of voices and connections for the adventurous singer, who is known to love to sing harmonies and to look for newer writers and singers, which both Crowell and Griffin were when first she knew them. Her harmony work doesn’t show up much here, by Harris’ choice: she felt it was important to include material on the project where her voice was the leading one. Makes these collaborations all the more interesting, both in themselves and in the reminders of other collaborative projects in which she’s participated.

Six of the seventeen cuts on this disc see their first release here, and there’s a live version of The Pearl, as well. Highway of Heartache and Snowin’ on the Raton, and First in Line, the duet with Starling, are three of the unreleased tracks.

Harris takes a bluegrass/country turn with Randy Scruggs and Iris DeMent on Wildwood Flower, and her song with George Jones, Here We Are, marked the first time she’d recorded with a singer who’d been a longtime inspiration for her own work. The last song of this seventy eight track trip finds Harris again with her friends Ronstadt and Parton, singing When We’re Gone, Long, Gone.

The ten cuts on the dvd span Harris’performing career from Together Again with the Hot Band through Love Hurts with Elvis Costello. I Ain’t Living Long Like This, with Spyboy, is especially notable. It’d have been nice to see some of Harris’ Austin City Limits performances, or her gigs at Merlefest; with nine cuts to span forty years, what is there are varied choices. The tenth video is Harris making a plea for a cause she believes in strongly, animal rescue.

She believes strongly in music, too. “The possibility of one song gets me out of bed in the morning,” she says.

All things considered, it’s as interesting see what Harris chose to include in this package as it is to hear the music.

more about Songbird There's a series of posts about the music on Songbird. Follow the links at the bottom of each post to see the others, as well as related material.

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now playing: will the circle be unbroken?

Will the Circle be Unbroken?

This is is a now reading selection, actually.

Country Music in America is the subtitle, and this 300 page plus book, published by the Country Music Hall of Fame in partnership with Dorling Kindersly Publishers, is a very interesting treatment of such a massive and in some ways controversial subject. As it’s from the CMHF, you know the scholarship is sound, and as it’s from Dorling Kindersley, you know the visual aspect is likely to be terrific. Both of those ae true.

Editors Alanna Nash and Paul Kingsbury drew on the talents and interests of a wide range of writers to create the work, and that said, some sections of the material read better than others. It’s book that works, though, whether you read it straight through, dip into it for reference or special interest, or mainly look at the pictures. There’s not nearly enough space to handle the whole history of country music in America, of course, but they’ve done a really good job of hitting the highlights, some of the sidelights, and a few of the low lights, to give a balanced idea of how this music got where it is today, both commercially an artistically, and to open up avenues and ideas for more exploration.There are timelines, sidebars, loads of photographs and very well done layout and graphics, to go along with the text.If you only buy one book about country music this year, this should be it -- but be forewarned, it’ll send you on explorations to read and listen and learn more.

Voices: Vince Gill

Vince Gill is a dedicated musician, a down to earth guy, and a man of open spirit who is easily moved to tears. Stars of the music business including his former boss, Emmylou Harris, co-writer Bill Anderson, and wife Amy Grant gathered to celebrate with Gill on October 28th when he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, at ceremonies held at the Hall in Nashville. Just in his fiftieth year, Gill was recognized with this honor for both his music and his far reaching goodwill and generosity. Here, he talks about his most recent recording project.

"When you make a record, you try to load it up with the ten best sides you can find, every song that could be a hit," Vince Gill said. "With this it was the same thing, but not every song had to be a hit song." At least one of them, so far, has been. Gill won a Grammy for country male vocal performance for the song The Reason Why, taken from his latest release, the box set These Days.

The set comprises forty three songs, divided into four CDs, one focusing on groove, one on rockabilly sound, one on country, and another on the acoustic sounds of folk and bluegrass. Gill wrote or co-wrote all of the songs, and sings and plays on all, as well. It was a project that evolved, rather than one started with a commercial plan.

"I had this idea," Gill said, "that I wanted to record a song a day, and finish it as much as we could, just spend the whole day on one song. When we got to the end of the week, I thought gee, I have so many songs that I just wonder what they could be, what they could sound like. The band was available, in various configurations, and so we just kept going. By the time we were done, we had thirty one songs and I said, oh boy, I've done it now," Gill recalled, laughing.

"As I started going through the songs,"he continued,"I realized I had material for three different records, and I thought that might be a a way to go outside the box of how things are done in country music, to release three different records close together, and it would also be a thank you for the fans who have stuck with me over the years."After his garage band days growing up on Oklahoma, Gill played in bluegrass bands in Kentucky and in California, until a recording contract brought him to Nashville in 1982. It would be seven sometimes frustrating years until he hit major mainstream country success with when I Call Your Name in 1989, years in which he played on sessions and cemented musical friendships that come into play on These Days, as a range of guests from Guy Clark to Rodney Crowell, to Patty Loveless, Emmylou Harris, and Bekka Bramlett appear, as do not so country artists Diana Krall and Bonnie Raitt, nwere faces such as Gretchen Wilson, and Gill's daughter Jenny. All the guests have meaning and presence to Gill, but his daughter's work stands out. "I think I've been waiting all my life to hear that blood harmony," he said.

So he took the idea of a three album release to his record company -- and they came back with the idea of making it four. "We were still in there finishing things up, and Luke Lewis said, why don't you go in and record enough to make a bluegrass record too? and we'll put them all out together, a four record set of all original songs. That was like throwing gasoline on a fire!" Gill said. The fourth record includes as much folk material as it does bluegrass, and it is a side of his music that Gill has not often put on record, so he especially welcomed the chance to add that aspect to the project.

The forty three songs range from a jazz duet with Krall called Faint of Heart to a stone country rock anthem with John Anderson, Take this Country Back, from a haunting on the road ballad with Lee Ann Womack called if I Can Make Mississippi to full tilt high speed bluegrass gospel on a song called All Prayed Up.Some are newly written and some have been on the back burner for a while. Its a set worth hearing both for the individual songs which may appeal, and for the breadth of the project. Whichever genre of his focus, Gill is able to inhabit it as an authentic part of his musical personality. He's clearly having fun with the rockabilly guitar playing, the many moods of stone country are like second nature to his high tenor voice, the groove based songs extend that country to a varied range of pop influences, and the bluegrass and folk are where his roots are and a place he can still be at at home.

"With this much material, there's always the fear that people will say, oh, ten songs would have been enough," Gill said, laughing. It's certainly true that some songs work better than others, and some work better for different listeners than others. Gill is prepared for that. "I really love seeing people's different reactions to the different songs,"he said."And I just wanted to be creative at every turn."

The Reason Why was co written by Gill and Gary Nicholson, with backing vocals from Alison Krauss. The box set These Days will be eligible for the Grammy Awards in 2008.