Under cover of her own material

Emmylou Harris’s latest album, her 21st, mostly dispenses with cover versions, but she doesn’t necessarily feel that songs are more personal just because they’re her own

BY THIS STAGE Emmylou Harris has, as they say, been there, done that. She is 64 years old, her career is littered with successes and yet she still has the passion – and finds the time – to release albums. Her 21st and latest is Hard Bargain, in which she reflects on her age, the passing of time ("it plays tricks on you, and, you know, I think you just have to accept them") and the value of friendship (her ally and collaborator Kate McGarrigle died just as the album was nearing completion).

Like her past few albums Hard Bargainsees Harris mostly leave behind cover versions, a mine of possibilities for interpretive creativity that, in Harris's hands at least, guarantee quality. She seems to have become so much more comfortable writing her own material that it comes as a surprise to learn that she still finds the process quite nerve-racking.

“I’m comfortable after the fact is the truthful answer,” she says. “I always have to set aside some time to do it, and so I do that: I get up in the morning, lock myself into a room, start to write and then hope that something comes out. There is a pressure, because, you know, maybe you won’t come up with anything. So far I’ve been lucky – and I’m knocking on wood right now – but I don’t know if this album is the end of the original writing or not. Hopefully I can always go back to covering songs, but certainly I find it very gratifying to write my own material.”

Having said all of this, does she feel confident enough to know that she can actually do it? “Well, yes, because I have done it I know that I can, but there’s always that thing called writer’s block. Anyone can fall into a slump, that’s for sure. You just have to roll with it. Next time we’ll see what happens.”

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she began her music career in the late 1960s as a folk singer in the Greenwich Village clubs of New York, covering Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan songs. She released her debut album, Gliding Bird, in 1970 on the small record label Jubilee, but its wary critical reception prompted her to move first to Nashville, then to Washington DC.

It was in the latter city that she was discovered singing in a folk club by the former Byrd Chris Hillman and the Flying Burrito Brothers member Rick Roberts. Roberts knew that his colleague and friend Gram Parsons was looking for a female partner and suggested that Parsons audition her. As soon as Parsons heard her voice he knew he had found his mate.

“It was at that point in my life,” Harris recalls, “where I felt like I became an artist, or at least knew what I wanted to do, from working with Gram. That was certainly the beginning for me. In the early days I wanted to be a folk singer, but I was just kind of copying Joan Baez before I ran into Gram. Simply put, he helped me find my own voice. As I say, I was copying at the start – copying the good people, of course – but he put me on a path that was more real for me.”

One of the few artists of her vintage who can cajole something distinctive and delicate out of other people's songs (note the differences between her title-track version of Ron Sexsmith's Hard Bargain,originally on his 2004 album, Retriever), Harris is at pains to stress that her relationship with cover versions is far from over. "I feel very strongly about the songs I cover, and that's the reason I do them. I never ever think they're second-class citizens just because it didn't come from deep down inside of me. I usually try to make those songs, the songs that other people have so brilliantly written, my own."

Although she realises she can dig deeper through the writing of her own songs, she doesn’t believe they always more personal. “I feel a very close relationship to the songs I cover. I have to relate to my own songs on a personal level, obviously, so you would think I would feel the difference, but I don’t really. At the time that I’m writing my own songs I feel good to be able to have an idea and see it to its proper end. Sometimes what the song ends up being tells you more about yourself than you maybe knew when you were starting. You were, so to speak, on the hunt . . . But just like you relate to a book you’re reading, other people’s words can have a profound effect on you.”

Harris seems to realise that time, or lack of it, is a problem. Lonely Girl, one of her songs on Hard Bargain,looks back on the richness of the years that have gone before, viewing a life full of so many things that it is difficult to experience them all properly. Has time passed too quickly? "In a way it's been an eternity," says Harris. "And in another way it seems like yesterday. Most major religions are trying to tell us to live in the moment, but I think that's difficult to do. It's wonderful to be able to visit your past and to embrace the memories – you carry those with you like a precious gift – but you shouldn't live in the past.

“And to worry about the future, which we all do, of course, is not a good idea. I think we should look on life as a gift – but listen to me: I say it like I can do it! I suppose l just don’t know what to do, like many other people.”

With 21 albums over the 40 years of her recording career, Harris has a reasonably good strike rate of one record about every two years. Such is her pragmatism that it has never crossed her mind to be more prolific.

“I think every album comes about with its proper gestation period,” she says. “Between being on the road and doing other projects, such as collaborations and my animal shelter, I’m very busy.”

She admits to liking time at home, and feels that she has struck a good balance between career, business, art and life. "I reckon everything is as it should be at this point. I'm quite content, really. I've had an extraordinary career, and, with luck, I'm going to keep at it. As long as I have the opportunity and the passion, I will."