Emmylou Harris' Graceful Stumble: Stumble Into
Grace
Nonesuch 79805
Format: CD
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 I just flat out love Emmylou Harris, so I'm not an
unbiased source here, but I believe she has taken her career to even greater heights over
the last decade. I think her newest recording, Stumble Into Grace, is a fantastic
record.
Many people disagree. Like 1995's Wrecking Ball and
2000's Red Dirt Girl, Stumble Into Grace is a departure from the high-energy
folk-rock and countrypolitan sound that characterized Ms. Harris' career-establishing
records, from Pieces of the Sky to Cowgirl's Prayer. They're right -- and
that's just one more thing I love about that lady. She takes chances.
She took a huge chance back in 1980, when she
abandoned folk-rock for full-bore country -- acoustic country, bluegrass to be precise, at
that. Good as her earlier records were, Roses was brilliant and, 20 years before
the crossover success of O Brother Where Art Thou, it proved that a mass audience
was hungry for the wisdom and honesty of real acoustic country music.
Wrecking Ball [Elektra 61854] was another fabulously
gutsy move. Approaching 50, "too old" to be a country star (according to
Nashville's conventional wisdom), Ms. Harris returned to rock with a vengeance. She hired
producer Daniel Lanois; recruited U2's drummer, Larry Mullen, Jr.; grabbed a handful of
songs from Steve Earle, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Buddy Miller, and Jimi Hendrix; and mixed
up a disorienting miasma of sound-pictures that was unlike anything she had ever done
before.
People hated it; people loved it. Like many others,
I journeyed from one to the other, starting with a what the . . .? to a standing
ovation as I grappled with that astonishing work of art.
But Wrecking Ball was very much a studio
album, one that seemed impossible for her to reproduce in a concert tour. Again, that was
selling Ms. Harris short. Over the years her ear for songwriting was only surpassed by her
ability to pick her bands (Rodney Crowell, Albert Lee, James Burton, Ricky Skaggs, and Sam
Bush, just to name a few musicians from her groups over the years) and she made a very
canny decision to tour with Buddy Miller.
Miller put together a power trio that consisted of himself
on guitar, Darryl Johnson on bass, and Brady Blade, Jr. on drums. The result was a band
capable of cutting through the artful murk of Lanois' production and taking Harris back to
her rock roots without compromising her tuneful purity. The album that resulted from that
tour, Spyboy [Eminent 25001], was a triumph -- artistically and sonically. And it rocks.
Then, on Red Dirt Girl [Nonesuch 79616-2], Ms.
Harris, always best known for her sensitive interpretations of other people's
songs, turned in a collection of her own material. She had written songs before -- her
"Boulder to Birmingham" is about as good as popular songs get -- but she had
attempted an entire album of original material only once before, The Ballad of Sally
Rose [Warner Brothers 25025-2], an album that was not well received.
Red Dirt Girl, however, was a triumph. Drawing as
much inspiration from Flannery O'Connor as from Elvis, it addressed the twin themes of
loss and squandered promise, supported by music that was direct and beautiful. No
gimmicks, no trendy touches, just powerful images and subdued melodies.
But did it ever hold up to repeated listening! The last
song on that album, "The Boy From Tupelo," invokes the twin shades of Elvis
Presley and Gram Parsons with lyrics crammed with popular culture references:
. . . it's a shame and it's a sin
Everything I coulda been to you
Your last chance Texaco
The sweetheart of your rodeo
A Juliet to your Romeo
The border you cross into Mexico
I'll never understand why or how
Oh, but baby it's too late now
Just ask the boy from Tupelo
He's the King and he oughta know
Harris has been quoted as saying that she likes to
"end a record with a song that's kind of like a 'dot, dot, dot,' to be continued --
tune in next time." Now that she's released Stumble Into Grace [Nonesuch
79805-2], we can listen to "Boy From Tupelo" and judge for ourselves whether or
not it led naturally into the next disc.
It did, er, does. "Here I Am," which opens the
album, begins as though continuing the same conversation:
I am standing by the river
I will be standing here forever
Tho' you're on the other side
My face you can still see
Why won't you look at me
Here I am
Harris, once again, has written or co-written the songs
here (except the traditional "Plasir d'Amour") and Malcolm Burn once
again -- as he did on RDG -- produces. Buddy Miller, Brian Blade, Darryl Johnson,
and Daniel Lanois, among others, accompany her.
But while Stumble Into Grace transitions smoothly
from Red Dirt Girl's final notes, it's not simply more of the same. Stumble
isn't as dark as RDG, it has an airiness the preceding album lacked. The record's
theme, if it must be stated, is probably expressed best by "Plasir d'Amour"
("Joys of love/Are but a moment long/Pain of love endures/The whole life long"),
but Ms. Harris is clearly an optimist -- the game is clearly worth the candle.
She's joined on Stumble Into Grace by a whole passel
of strong women performers -- Jane Siberry, the McGarrigle sisters, Julie Miller, Gillian
Welch, and Linda Ronstadt -- and it's obvious that Harris is invigorated by their
presence. There's an earthiness and grit present here that is quite refreshing.
Part of that is undoubtedly due to age. Ms. Harris is best
known for the silvery sparkle of her extraordinary voice, but time has darkened it. That
sparkle has less zing these days and she sings lower in her range. In a lesser singer,
this would pose a problem, but Ms. Harris sings the songs, not just the notes.
Her intelligence informs everything she sings. If she can't
quite hit the top of her youthful range, she hasn't lost a step in her ability to
communicate a song's meaning -- if anything, she's even better.
And that's just another reason I adore Emmylou Harris. She
has never stopped growing and never given up. As she says of Evangeline, a heroine she
obviously deeply identifies with,
You stayed out in that ring
When nobody's even keepin' score
But round by round you earned
Your stumble into grace.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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