“It’s interesting, because I’d heard about the song, and I had not heard the song, which is hard to believe,” she explains from her home in Nasvhille. “But I was in this little store in Adelaide, they’re playing music, I don’t know if it’s the radio or whatever it was, and this song came on, and I thought just as the guitars started, ‘This really sounds good’.
“And then the singing came and it made me stop. And then I heard the line about me and Gram and I said, ‘Oh, that’s the song that everyone’s been talking about!’ What a way to hear it. No expectations at all, and I was completely won over even before the chorus. You can really tell a song, something about how it moves in and pulls you in right away, even before the singing started, I wanted to know what it was.”
I recall my own experience talking to First Aid Kit’s Klara Söderberg and how the duo are engulfed by fans thanking them for being the vessel of introduction into the world of Emmylou and Gram Parsons (check out 1973’s GP or Grievous Angel from the following year if you’re still unaware). Sisters Klara and Johanna did not grow up in a house filled with country or folk music, but they found their way to Harris and Parsons via interviews with Conor Oberst, their big high school crush. Harris is noticeably humbled and shocked at her role in indie pop music circa 2013, but can also relate.
“For me, I just remember Peter, Paul & Mary where huge in the States when I was growing up, and they did this song Blowin’ In The Wind,” she continues. “And then all of a sudden you ask yourself, ‘Now, who is this fellow called Bob Dylan?’, which sets you off down a whole path of musical discovery. That’s what it’s all about”.
She might not have heard that song if she wasn’t in a little shop in Adelaide, like she may never have put together an album with country rock titan and longtime friend Rodney Crowell. Old Yellow Moon is an album of country mainstays peppered with contributions from various friends, and the sense of fond nostalgia could almost be overwhelming if the results weren’t so delicious. Crowell, ya’see, was one of the earliest guitarists in Harris’ Hot Band during the ‘70s, but it wasn’t too long before Crowell left to stake his own claim on the country music landscape. Like two wagons circling (what is it about country music stars that prompts cowboy similes?) the two formed a strong bond over the decades since without working together substantially. When it was finally decided to release an album together, it made sense to continue the friendly affair and list the likes of Brian Ahern (Harris’ longtime producer and ex-husband) and other members of the Hot Band.
“I think there’s a lot of nostalgia [on this album], and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” Harris offers. “It’s about a friendship that’s almost 40-years-old, we met in 1974, we’ve kept our friendship going over these years, completely effortlessly, because we might go for years without seeing each other and we just pick right up where we left off.
“Rodney and I have seen each other through, marriages, divorces, births of children, births of grandchildren, deaths of friends. So I think this album is the result of a journey. And I think the songs we’ve selected, it’s not a romantic duo, it’s about life and friendship and the things that happen. We didn’t set out to do it, but it came about organically that this record gathered up people and stories and lines that run through our lives.
“We tried to get live recordings as much as we could. But my favourite story from recording, it doesn’t happen very often. I had just taught Rodney Old Yellow Moon, and we demoed it one time, with just two guitars and vocals, and later on when we listened back…that was it. We weren’t going to be able to get the feeling of the singing any better than that. You just don’t look that in the eye and say, ‘We can get it better’.”
BY MITCHELL ALEXANDER
