On Intertwining Her Life With Rodney Crowell

It took roughly four decades for lifetime friends Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell to entwine their emotive voices and craft a duets album together, but not nearly so long to follow it up with a second helping. The veteran pair – both living legends in the Americana oeuvre in their own right – released the album Old Yellow Moon back in 2013, and it quickly scooped them both a Best Americana Album gong at the Grammy Awards and Album Of The Year at the Americana Awards for its beguiling collaborations on a batch of genre standards and lesser-known covers (although Crowell did pen a handful of the record’s tracks himself). Now the pair has returned to the well for follow-up effort The Traveling Kind, only this time the two singers decided to throw some of their own songwriting creativity into the mix as well.

“The one that thing that Rodney really had in mind was that he wanted me to contribute more writing, and that we would write together – I’m always very satisfied to sing other people’s songs,” Harris explains with a giggle. “I do like to write on occasion, but he was very generous to pull me into that. So it was great, we had some lovely times at his house and then he would come to my house, and we also got to work with our dear friend Will Jennings on one song and the young Cory Chisel who contributed to a couple of songs. It was a really good experience, and I think it added a little bit of a different thing. We’re not trying to change the world here, it’s me and Rodney singing songs together – there’s nothing new, but I think people enjoy seeing two people who just love singing together and who’ve been friends for a long time and make pretty good records.”

“Rodney is such a great writer and from first time I ever heard him I loved his songs. I’m more of a part-time writer, but it was great to be in the room and to contribute some, and to see something come about from nothing. You start with maybe a line – or I think Cory brought a couple of ideas – and then at the end of the day you’ve got a song! Then you take it into the studio and it’s like birthing a baby with less pain.”

"Our lives have intersected – as we’ve both gone through marriages, divorces, births of children and now births of grandchildren and the loss of very dear friends."

Despite having co-penned a number of the tracks on the new album, Harris tells that she doesn’t have any more emotional connection to those than any other songs that she tackles.

“Not really,” she muses. “I’ve always loved a good song, and it’s important to me to keep my writing chops up enough to where I feel like I can go into a room with someone like Rodney and contribute, or write a song on my own when I really get a strong idea. I’m really attached to songs by other people, and I really do try to make them my own.”

Harris has long possessed a great knack of taking other people’s songs and making them her own with her lovely voice, yet she’s still unsure what draws her to a particular song to tackle in her distinctive style.

“I don’t think it’s anything specific,” she reasons. “We had actually the Lucinda [Williams] song [I Just Wanted To See You So Bad] on our list for the first record, and it wasn’t left off for any major reason other than we just never got around to recording it and all of a sudden we had a record. But we’d always loved the song. I’d actually brought [Amy Allison’s] Her Hair Was Red to the [Old Yellow Moon] project too, but we felt that [Matraca Berg’s] Back When We Were Beautiful – while they’re obviously different songs – was treading in similar territory, and we didn’t feel that the first record could accommodate both. So I was very happy to get the chance to do Her Hair Was Red, because to me that is just a shining jewel of a song.”

Harris does concede, however, that the songs that she and Crowell tackle have to be something that you can imagine from the outset the pair singing together.

“Oh yeah, obviously with something like Her Hair Was Red we just loved it so much, there are certain songs that we know are not classic duets, but we take turns with the lead and the harmony,” she continues. “Like [Crowell/Harris co-write] The Weight of The World was obviously Rodney – he came up with that groove – and I’m not a real blues singer and I was a little concerned about my harmony on that, but I loved that song and I really thought we wrote a good song. I don’t know if you’re aware, but that was the first time that the band ever heard that song – that was the recording. I actually wasn’t there – I had to go out and do an interview or something – and I came back and I heard that and I couldn’t believe it! Well, I could believe it – it’s a great band! It’s a fantastic band, and we also had [country singer] Billy Payne sitting in with us – between him and [Australian-born vocalist] Jedd Hughes you just love moments like that! We try to get it as live as possible but to get a first take like that is pretty special.”

The Music recently spoke to fellow Americana exponent Joe Henry – who produced The Traveling Kind – who raved unreservedly about how special and creative the recording sessions were for the record. 

"Rodney was inevitable – he’s one of those artists where you just know that he’s going to be up there, making a difference"

“Yeah, it was really just a breeze once we got the songs together,” Harris smiles. “We’d been touring with this fantastic band, so we just went into a studio that’s literally five minutes from my house and cut the album, and then later on we decided to cut Just Pleasing You [by Crowell/Mary Carr] – I just think that’s one of the best country songs that’s been written in decades, and his singing of it is magnificent. It just oozes country.”

There’s an incredible chemistry between Crowell and Harris – as well as an easy rapport and clear respect – which is unsurprising when you think of how much water’s passed under the bridge since they first crossed paths.

“I was getting ready to make my first record in 1974, and I was searching out material with the man who was going to produce my album, Brian Ahern – who later became my husband – and he had come across Rodney, so a musician friend of his had Rodney send a tape up to Brian,” Harris recalls. “We listened to it together for the first time and I was just stunned by this voice – Rodney’s voice doesn’t sound like anybody’s. No one on the radio sounds like Rodney, he’s so authentic and so real and so in the moment. Bluebird Wine was the song, and I was just immediately captivated so we started trying to find him – I think he was somewhere between Texas and Nashville – and Brian arranged for himself and Rodney to fly to Washington DC, because I was still working in the clubs there. So I met Rodney at a place called the Childe Harold there near Dupont Circle in Washington DC and he sat in, and the next day he played me Til I Gain Control Again, and I thought, ‘Okay, I want everything this guy ever writes! I want to hear it first, before anybody else!’ Rodney was inevitable – he’s one of those artists where you just know that he’s going to be up there, making a difference.” 

Nonetheless, the pair must have been pleased with the critical acclaim and positive reception afforded Old Yellow Moon upon its release?

“We loved the record and being able to go out on the road and play and sing together like we had done in 1975, 1976 and 1977 before he made his first solo record,” Harris gushes. “Rodney was so much a part of those early years for me, he helped put me on that trajectory that I’m kind of still benefitting from – Rodney was a really big part of that. We stayed friends – our lives have intersected – as we’ve both gone through marriages, divorces, births of children and now births of grandchildren and the loss of very dear friends. Our lives have intertwined as friends, and I think that’s maybe something that comes through on the record. And the music of course I believe is really good, but I think there’s something else. People as we get older we realise how important friends are.”

"When you discover something that you’re good at and you’re not really self-conscious because it’s not about you, it’s about being part of something"

Crowell and Harris have recently been on the road in the States and receiving rave reviews for the shows, which touch upon all facets of the pair’s storied careers.

“Yeah, we go back obviously – we’ve got great material from the past in both our careers to pull from,” Harris tells. “Now the problem is going to be putting the new material in – we’re not Bruce Springsteen, we can’t play for three hours! I wish we could.”

Before heading down to Australia Harris has to make a detour via Sweden, where she is being awarded the 2015 Polar Music Prize by King Carl XVI Gustaf in recognition of her outstanding musical achievements.  Previous laureates include Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell and Björk (amongst a host of other incredible names) – does being bestowed such an honour give cause for Harris to reflect on her incredible career?

“It does kind of make you sit back and think, ‘Wow, this is great! Somebody’s been listening’,” she concedes. “It’s a great honour, it really is. I love to travel, and I love to go overseas, although there’s still places in the world I haven’t been. I remember the first time we got to go to Australia was so exciting – it’s a long plane ride! It was with the third Hot Band, probably the early-‘80s. The audiences down there are great, and that’s what you want – you just want people to appreciate you and enjoy what you do.” 

But apart from receiving the award and completing the Australian sojourn, Harris has no idea what’s next for her on the horizon. 
“There will always be another record, but I’m thinking about it,” she smiles. “You just never know. I’m keeping myself open – it will make itself known. All will be revealed.”

And finally it would be remiss to have an audience with the great lady without asking about the time she spent in the ‘70s with cosmic country legend Gram Parsons, the relationship which really helped place Harris on the country music map. Then still working in the folk field where she’d cut her teeth, Parsons heard her voice and plucked Harris from semi-obscurity to harmonise on his two solo albums – GP (1973) and Grievous Angels (1974) – which were sadly completed just prior to Parsons’ tragic death from a heroin and alcohol overdose.

“Oh well, of course it was an amazing time,” she offers. “Imagine, I was a little folk singer and all of a sudden I was thrown into this crazy rock’n’roll bus – it wasn’t even a rock’n’roll bus, it was just a Greyhound bus, we didn’t even have bunks! All of a sudden I realised how much fun it was to play with a band! I’d always thought that if you had a drummer you were destroying the soul of the song – I was a bit of a prig I think – and he taught me how to really have fun. But he was a lovely, lovely man and so generous – the only person I felt that he was really bad to was himself.” 

Was Harris aware at the time that the music she and Parsons were making was so special, and would reverberate down the ages?

“Well, no – it was special for me in that I felt that I was really learning how to sing, and I loved singing harmony,” she admits. “I loved not being the centre of attention and just being able to jump into those songs and give it my all. Of course I was being converted to country music – I was discovering the Louvin Brothers and George Jones and Carl And Pearl Butler, all of this great stuff that I’d done a hint of in my folk days. And I still love folk music, but I had dismissed a lot of great music early on because I didn’t understand it and I couldn’t hear it, but through Gram I started to really hear it and feel it. And singing harmony was such a thrill – I just loved it! And I was good at it! So when you discover something that you’re good at and you’re not really self-conscious because it’s not about you, it’s about being part of something, I think that’s a great gift. The harmony singing has always been important to, and that’s why I guess these records with Rodney are such a joy – yes, we’re both centre stage but we’re in it together.”