Emmylou Harris and Linda Thompson

Yes, there is a connection between the poster woman for New Country and British folk-rock's Ice Queen. I'm sure you know it, but I'll get to that later.

I just wanted to give a shout-out to Emmylou Harris, the woman who more than anyone introduced me to REAL country music. Hell, I even bought a "Best of George Jones and Tammy Wynette" LP because of her! "Elite Hotel" was the first Emmylou album I heard back in the late '70s when I worked at Everybody's Records in Bellevue, due to an enthusiast on staff who played the Flying Burrito Brothers and Emmylou despite a staff hopped up on the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. Emmylou gave wider exposure to singer-songwriters Gram Parsons, Rodney Crowell, Townes Van Zandt, Jesse Winchester, Guy Clark and Delbert McClinton -- and introduced greenhorns like me to Dolly Parton and the Louvin Brothers.

Later I went back and picked up "Pieces of the Sky" and "Luxury Liner", and my favorite, "Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town". I taped my 'Best of Emmylou Harris" (totally different from the 'official' best-of, typical!) and drove around quite happily singing along. And then...I met Emmylou Harris (well, her guitar, anyway.)

There was a time when between real jobs, I worked as a baggage handler on a commuter airline that flew out of Sea-Tac. (I still swoon at the scent of airline diesel.) One day, Emmylou took our little puddle-jumper to Orcas Island -- and I got to load her guitar! I was busy with other bags so I never actually saw her walk out of the boarding gate, but my fellow staffers (aware of my mini-crush on the Beautiful Emmylou) teased me and said right out of the gate she spit on the tarmac.

Later my future wife and I headed to Orcas because word was Emmylou was performing a free concert at the Grange. Short version: massive downpour, doors open late, everybody on the island is there so the place is fire-code-violatingly jam-packed, we sadly peel out of the parking lot because the last ferry is about to depart. A sad instance of Concertus Interruptus.

I liked many later Emmylou Harris albums well enough ("Blue Kentucky Girl", "Roses in the Snow", "The Ballad of Sally Rose", "Wrecking Ball"), but there was a period when her warble got more warbly and the vibrato got uncomfortably unlistenable, but she righted that ship and continues to amaze to this day.

So...Linda Thompson releases her first solo album following the wrenching breakup tour/divorce from folk-rock's Johnny Appleseed (what??) Richard Thompson. Fans who want The Dirt pore over the lyrics,  and Linda doesn't disappoint. I always liked the lyrics of the title track: "More an instant with the angels than a lifetime with a saint,  All I need is one clear moment, one clear moment's all it takes".  But then you get "Only A Boy"'s "long may you rot in hell". And "Talking Like A Man" is the coldest moving-on song ever: "if you get lonely, don't head back this way"..

And there's "Telling Me Lies": "I cover my ears, I close my eyes, still hear your voice and it's telling me lies" -- and that's the song that Trio (Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton) covered and earned a Grammy nomination.

Even the liner notes of the CD reissue complain about the dated late '80s production, but if I was hearing it with virgin ears today, I think the songwriting would still impress (and even over-produced as they are, there are some very good tracks.) Linda and Richard somehow eventually reached some sort of detente, and Richard appears on later Linda albums (with various spawn included.) Maybe blood is thicker than water (or vinyl) after all. 

Later, I'll talk about "Dreams Fly Away: A History of Linda Thompson", Linda's 'best-of' from 1996. Stellar.