Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 8, 1993 TAG: 9305080210
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: C7 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: BETTY WEBB COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"In a way, it's a matter of coming full circle for me," Harris explains in a recent telephone interview. "I started as an acoustic folk singer with this terrible fear of drummers."
But then Harris teamed up with wild man rocker and ex-Byrd Gram Parsons, who had fused folk, rock and country - and cranked up the amps. She began touring with him and sang background vocals on his groundbreaking albums GP and Grievous Angel. It all ended on Sept. 19, 1973, when Parsons died near the Joshua Tree National Monument in California, where his ashes were later scattered.
"Gram had really turned me on to country music, and I wanted to carry on with that for him," says Harris. "I'd become so passionate about it that I wanted to bring it to the world of my peers, the people who listened to folk and rock 'n' roll. That became my mission in life, to turn everybody on to Dolly Parton and George Jones."
But Harris had never left her acoustic strain all that far behind. Even while touring with the Hot Band, she always included bluegrass segments in her show, complete with mandolin, dobro and banjo.
Which brings us to Live at the Ryman and life after the Hot Band. "It was a natural thing to experiment with bluegrass, but I also wanted to try something quieter, something where I could hear myself better and not strain vocally," she says, explaining why she disbanded the Hot Band and hooked up with the Nash Ramblers.
"I wanted to flex different muscles and try something where I wasn't on automatic pilot. That can happen when you sing the same kind of music for a few years. Yes, I was afraid of losing the power of the Hot Band and that I might wind up limited in my material, but thankfully, that turned out not to be true. I still had the drive and the power, but this time, from acoustic instruments."
Proving that acoustic instruments have a greater range than some believe are her covers of Bruce Springsteen's plaintive Mansion on the Hill, John Fogerty's darkly humorous Lodi and Steve Earle's raucous Guitar Town.
"We didn't want to be just limited to doing Bill Monroe covers," explains Harris, although Ryman does contain three Monroe covers, Scotland, Walls of Time and Get Up John. "We picked songs that could really kick."
Harris likes to blaze new - or at least, unusual - trails, a fact obvious to anyone who has seen her lately. Her hair is now a pure, pale silver, thanks to the premature graying genes that run in her father's side of the family. At first, though, Harris admits she took a trip down the Lady Clairol Highway.
Giggling, she says, "I got talked into doing the henna thing, but there was always the problem of roots, so I finally gave up and let it grow out. It's not that I'm against women coloring their hair. I just think that women should do whatever makes them feel good about themselves. In my case, I just love my hair being gray, so you can say I'm doing this out of vanity."
She also likes the look of experience that silver hair gives her, which isn't that surprising because so many of her musical heroes belong to the older generation.
"I included Tex Owen's Cattle Call on Ryman because the first song I ever remember hearing on the radio was Eddie Arnold singing it," Harris says. "Words can't say what meeting that man has meant to me. Now there's a career!"
by CNB