Emmylou Harris is truly a modern innovator. For over 30 years, Emmylou has flowed effortlessly between genres achieving popularity in pop, folk, country and now alternative. The common bridge is an exquisite vocal style and a gift for discovering the heart of a song.
Emmylou has been called by Billboard magazine a “truly venturesome, genre-transcending pathfinder.” Throughout her career, she has been admired for her talent as an artist and song connoisseur, but it was with her 2000 album, “Red Dirt Girl,” for which Emmylou was awarded her 10th (out of 11 total to date) Grammy, that she revealed she is also a gifted songwriter. Continuing the trend with her September 2003 album, “Stumble Into Grace,” she wrote all but one track. Though Emmylou is the most admired and influential woman in contemporary country music, her scope extends far beyond it. She has recorded with such diverse artists as Ryan Adams, Beck, Elvis Costello, Johnny Cash, Lucinda Williams, Bob Dylan, Tammy Wynette, Neil Young, The Chieftains, Lyle Lovett, Roy Orbison, The Band, Willie Nelson and George Jones. Buddy Miller’s new release “Universal United House of Prayer,” finds his feet planted firmly in the territory that the roots-country musician staked out over the course of five previous records. Buddy effortlessly blends a dozen American styles and idioms, and he evokes the mongrel force that breathed life into America’s best mid-century pop and folk music. Behind the music is a modest man of extraordinarily broad skills. Emmylou Harris, in whose band Buddy served for eight years, calls the 51-year old Nashville transplant “one of the best guitar players of all time.” Steve Earle, another former band mate, pronounces him “the best country singer working today.”
Buddy’s singularity is in his willingness to subordinate his extravagant technical gifts to a specific program: the creation of a music that is purposefully personal, naturally eccentric and spiritually substantial. |
