BY LARRY NAGER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Emmylou Harris jokes that ‘‘the only reason’’ she’s back with Lilith Fair is ‘‘being able to sing bass.’’
One of her favorite parts of last year’s inaugural Lilith was, ‘‘Everybody out there singing ‘The Water is Wide.’ I got the low part. I love it when people ask me to sing low. It’s so much easier than singing high.’’
Ms. Harris, 51, was supposed to have the summer off, part of her year away from the music business, a time she set aside for songwriting.
She’s also executive producing an all-star tribute album to Gram Parsons, the iconoclastic father of today’s alt-country movement, a CD due out in 1999. It’s a personal project for Ms. Harris, who first came to national attention in the early ’70s singing harmony with the late Mr. Parsons, with whom she also was linked offstage.
Another CD she’s involved in is the long-awaited follow-up to Trio, her 1987 album with Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton.
‘‘I’m knocking on wood,’’ she says of the release of the disc, recorded in 1994. ‘‘It was a lovely record and I think people should hear it. It’s time. It’s aged. We will release no Trio before its time.’’
She also contributed a track to a Tammy Wynette tribute in which she sings with Ms. Ronstadt and sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle.
But her only planned performances this year is the upcoming eight-day stint with Lilith, the first date of which is Saturday at Riverbend.
‘‘I’m so glad it worked out,’’ she says by telephone. ‘‘I said, ‘I do want to do Lilith Fair,’ because I had such a good time. You just come back almost like taking a refresher course in something that you love.’’
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The Lilith chronicles
First came the Lilith Fair CD. Now here’s Lilith, the book.
From Lilith to Lilith Fair by Buffy Childerhose (St. Martin’s Press; $19.95 trade paperback, 128 pages) covers last year’s musical experience in words and pictures.
It’s the authorized story written by ‘‘my dear friend Buffy,’’ Lilith organizer Sarah McLachlan writes in the foreword.
The book begins with the biblical Lilith and goes on to explain how the Lilith Fair came to be, its goals (charitable fund-raising), why men were excluded (the idea is to promote women in music), how the word spread (the Internet; http://www.lilithfair.com got 300,000 hits a day last year) and the media hype. Chapter 6 offers background on 16 performers.
The narrative is meant to ‘‘capture the spirit that binds Lilith together’’ and relates the ‘‘girlie gab sessions’’ and forged friendships.
Sprinkled throughout are color and black and white photographs of the 1997 Lilith experience and short but interesting profiles of women in history who helped pave the feminist path.
Some names are familiar, such as Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Some are not: 16th-century Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi; Countess Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer, and the Trung sisters, Vietnamese folk heroes who led a revolt against Chinese rule in A.D. 39.
— Ann Hicks
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She’s again bringing her two daughters with her, Meghann, 19, and Hallie, 28.
Other than fest founder Sarah McLachlan, Ms. Harris is the only returnee on the version of Lilith Fair coming to Riverbend.
She has a new album to promote, a live set featuring Spyboy, her band, with guitarist/vocalist Buddy Miller, bassist/drummer/vocalist Daryl Johnson and drummer/vocalist Brady Blade.
The name Spyboy comes from the Wild Tchoupitoulas song ‘‘Indian Red,’’ and refers to the advance man in Mardi Gras parades who warms up crowds for the groups of marching, singing, costumed ‘‘Indians.’’
Unlike its name, Spyboy’s sound isn’t solely based in New Orleans. It’s a radical departure from Ms. Harris’ earlier music, even the eclectic sound producer Daniel Lanois brought to her Wrecking Ball album.
Mr. Miller is a hard-country singer and picker who replaced Mr. Lanois in the Wrecking Ball touring group. Mr. Miller’s raw, Appalachian style brings out Ms. Harris’ traditional country roots, while the New Orleans rhythm section superimposes a percussive, African sound. The result combines the primary colors of American music in a dramatically new way.
‘‘That comes from being infused in traditional music and borrowing from
traditional music and having it sort of, by osmosis, seep into your music,’’ she explains. ‘‘People who play music from New Orleans and Shreveport and that whole area, every kind of American music has come down the Mississippi. My drummer Brady, he can play anything. I thought, ‘Well, we might have a problem with the shuffles.’ But from the first beat, he had it.’’
With her new sound, Ms. Harris makes an ideal role model for her younger sisters on the Lilith tour. Almost 25 years after her first album, she’s making some of the best, most adventurous music of her career.
‘‘I come from loving traditional music,’’ she says. ‘‘But when you think of where I come from, I come from Gram Parsons, who was very radical. He had a love of traditional music, but he brought it into his own particular, very personal and unique vision.’’
In that light, Ms. Harris believes bringing together the high, lonesome sound of Appalachia with the deep, powerful rhythms of New Orleans makes perfect sense.
‘‘It has all flowed together,’’ she says. ‘‘The influences are there, whether we really see the distinction or not. This is the country that we are. We’re influenced by so many different things, there isn’t one particular American music. What we have is something unique because of all the pieces.
‘‘We are greater than the sum of our parts,’’ she concludes. ‘‘If there’s no other proof, then I think the music shows that we are.’’
