Emmylou Harris slates new CD

The upcoming disc includes 11 new songs by Harris and 2 covers. Jay Joyce (Cage the Elephant, Patty Griffin) produced. A deluxe edition of the album, which includes a DVD featuring six performances interspersed with interviews, will also be available.

Harris will embark on a series of performances including a showcase at the 2011 SXSW Music and Media Conference on Thursday, March 17, at the Americana Music night.

"We did the whole record in about a month, which is quite unusual for me. But I had all the material beforehand. I'd written 11 of the 13 songs and I really wanted to include two more by other writers," Harris said. "One of the covers is Ron Sexsmith's Hard Bargain, which I absolutely love. The other is by Jay Joyce, called Cross Yourself.

"We did the whole thing with just three musicians, me being one of them. Jay, the producer, and Giles Reeves play everything between them. It's not a stripped down record though; there's only one song that's a little bare bones. I'm basically a slow ballad-y person, but Jay managed to really move the songs up a bit. But they still have the same emotional feel."

Two of the songs look back at relationships that were central to Harris' creative life. She wrote Darlin' Kate for her close friend and collaborator Kate McGarrigle, who died last year of a rare form of cancer, while The Road casts its eye further back to the formative time Harris spent with country/rock icon Gram Parsons at the beginning of her career.

Songs are:
1. The Road
2. Home Sweet Home
3. My Name Is Emmett Till
4. Goodnight Old World
5. New Orleans
6. Big Black Dog
7. Lonely Girl
8. Hard Bargain
9. Six White Cadillacs
10. The Ship on His Arm
11. Darlin' Kate
12. Nobody
13. Cross Yourself