Singer/songwriter Emmylou Harris is lauded not only for selling 15 million records and winning 14 Grammy awards but also for her decades of good-deeds activism. Harris is coming to the Santa Cruz Civic on Saturday, April 18th promoting the reissue of her 1998 live album, Spyboy.
Harris was born in Alabama, but spent much of her youth traveling with her military family, until they landed in Virginia. Harris would listen to radio station WAMU and teach herself songs on the guitar.
Harris’ ability to continually tune into the central zeitgeist of every decade has been a fierce combination of talent, perseverance, luck and having the right patron saint to guide her. For Harris it came in the form of singer/activist Joan Baez.
“I first picked up the guitar because of Joan Baez and her beautiful voice,” says Harris from her home in Nashville. “And then Dylan and the protest songs. The songs that were shining a light on the civil rights movement. It sort of gave me my life in music. I realized what I was supposed to do, and fortunately, there were people that came into my life that made that possible.”
Artists do not need to continually evolve their public personas to attract new followers and remain algorithmically popular. True artists evolve because they find new muses, hear the whispers of guiding voices, and then the public follows. Back in 1970, Harris released her first album, Gliding Bird, a collection of songs that casually revealed her calling card to the world. Within five years, Harris would receive a much broader reception with her muse-infused second effort, Pieces of the Sky.
This particular muse revealed itself in Harris’ relationship with Gram Parsons, who had left the Byrds and was looking for someone to sing harmony with. This cosmic duo, seemingly destined to meet, moved their collective needles smack dab into the middle of a revolution within the (what had become) staid country music world. They were the new breed of outlaws.
The 1979 No Nukes concerts (and later Farm Aid) were massive awareness raising events in which Harris was instrumental. Her early years of merging singing with social activism were in fruition and garnering headlines around the globe.
Almost fifty years later, Harris is still combining performance with action. “As far as my focus and my energy, it is very localized,” Harris says. While Harris is still very involved in supporting organizations that combat the evils of corporate farming, “realize that by harming animals and killing them and raising them the way we do, we’re actually harming ourselves,” her main emphasis is on dogs.
Beginning in 2004, Bonaparte’s Retreat, which focuses on dogs left behind in shelters, is named for one of Harris’s road dogs of 10 years. “Once you have the experience of having a dog on the road with you, you don’t realize how lonely you’ve been without one.”
Bonaparte’s Retreat takes in dogs nobody else wants. “Especially older dogs and dogs with pretty big issues that require expensive surgeries and we take care of that, then they’re able to be adopted,” says Harris
Harris is at the place in her career where even if she went full-time into caring for her rescued dogs, her legacy is widespread. Her 1987 Trio album with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt went platinum. Rock history books credit Harris as a pioneer in the country rock movement starting in the 1970’s and throughout the 1980’s. A large swath of musicians credit her inspiration for their careers (just as she credited Joan Baez) including: Miranda Lambert, Trisha Yearwood, LeAnn Rimes, Carrie Underwood, and even bands like Wilco.
It was in 1995 that Harris reestablished her place on the charts with her Grammy-winning Wrecking Ball. It was a plateau achieved, involving a look back and a look forward. This current tour features songs from her vast catalogue
Emmylou Harris will be at The Santa Cruz Civic Center, 307 Church Street at 8pm Tickets are $73 and available at santacruztickets.com
