Out & About

Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings made a compelling argument for steering youth in the direction of becoming doctors and lawyers and such with their 1977 cover of Ed Bruce’s “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” They warned about the dangers of letting them “pick guitars and drive them old trucks,” lamenting that cowboys “never stay home and they’re always alone, even with someone they love.”

But if Nelson and Jennings had let you know that, sometimes, someone cowboys love–or just hang around–may be a woman like Emmylou Harris, you can bet that many future M.D.s and J.D.s would think twice about forgoing the cowboy way. Sure, WASP-y girls with Hotchkiss and Smith pedigrees are fine and dandy, but do they possess a voice that can bring rush-hour traffic to a plaintive halt? Highly unlikely. Granted, Gram Parsons was no ordinary cowboy, fusing late-’60s psych rock and country folk into his third-eye-opening “cosmic American music.” But it was Harris’ voice that grounded Parsons’ stratosphere-flying 1972 GP and 1973 Grievous Angel, keeping them from floating into the ether of substance-addled wishful thinking along with Parsons.

Since, Harris has shown that she didn’t need Parsons to be musically adventurous. With 29 albums spanning three decades, Harris’ career has included more surprising turns and arresting bends than “Mississippi” has crooked letters. Whether it be her early, touchstone albums such as 1975’s Pieces of the Sky or 1980’s Roses in the Snow or the underrated poignancy of 1985’s The Ballad of Sally Rose, Harris has always ducked safe ground in favor of more adventurous terrain.

Her most recent release, 2000’s Red Dirt Girl, isn’t quite the jaw-dropper that 1995’s Wrecking Ball was, but it’s still a commendable outing. That it came out on the Nonesuch label–a small division of Warner Bros. best known for its association with modern composers like Steve Reich or arty solo artists such as Caetano Veloso and Laurie Anderson–lets you know what sort of respect Harris commands in the industry. What such unbridled eclecticism brings with it, however, may be Red Dirt‘s biggest drawback. Harris is joined, to good and not-so-good ends, by the likes of Buddy and Julie Miller, Guy Clark, Dave Matthews and Luscious Jackson’s Jill Cunniff for these 12 originals. Sometimes the experiment works well–as on the moody dirge “Bang the Drum Slowly,” written by Clark and Harris, or the electro-fueled “J’ai fait tout,” co-written by Cunniff. At other times–especially on “My Antonia,” a duet with Matthews–you’d wish it was more Harris and less other people: Matthews’ sense of phrasing can’t compete with Harris, and putting them in the same song is downright cruel. Luckily, Matthews and other so-called names won’t be littering the mix when Harris hits the stage this week, so come prepared to have your breath stolen by one of the most charismatic voices in music today.