Emmylou Harris - Wrecking Ball

    Emmylou Harris – Wrecking Ball

    29 Jan

    By

    Label: Elektra
    Format: 3 × Vinyl, LP, Album, Deluxe Edition, Limited Edition, 180g
    Country: USA
    Released: 1995
    Producer: Daniel Lanois
    Length: 53:05
    Genre: Country rock, folk rock, alternative country, country folk
    Style: Folk Rock, Country, Folk, Country Rock

    Studio album by Emmylou Harris

    Looking for water from a deeper well – you’ll find it flows purely where Country meets Ghetto.
    Alabama-born singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris moved around the South as a child, eventually settling in to the ’60s New York scene with legendary Graham Parsons of the Flying Burrito Brothers as a mentor. Over the course of her decade-spanning career, she has released 26 studio albums and won 13 Grammys. Most people know her as a Country music singer.

    Country music can often be misplaced in a lot of audiophile catalogues as the mainstream highly formulaic versions can leave a lot of us cold. However, having attended a Randy Houser concert at the Forum in Melbourne in 2018 to see a packed house of passionate “out of towner” fans screaming every word to every song, you can appreciate the art form is well and truly alive and kicking. Randy is married to a local Melbourne girl whose father is a fellow analog music lover. Randy has forged a serious career as a talented country musician. In that scene Emmylou Harris is revered as royalty.

    In 1995 she released Wrecking Ball (absolutely no relationship to Destiny Hope Ray Cyrus who is a wrecking ball of another kind). This Wrecking Ball is taken from Neil Young’s composition and floats through space on a cloud of gravity defying musical notes and reverb. Cavernous spaces and mixes of multiple instruments and harmonies steered by the influences of Daniel Lanois. In fact multiple tracks are perfectly suited to belong to Acadie which is a Daniel Lanois masterpiece (For proof try to separate the groove at Daniel Lanois – Acadie). In fact his influences have permeated through every river and tributary on a lot of great albums (Joshua Tree by U2 is one, Aaron Neville’s work is another). Acadie is an album you must have in your collection. So to hear Emmylou Harris backed by an incredible group known as Spyboy and produced by Lanois the album shaped up to be a match made in heaven.

    Wrecking Ball is the eighteenth studio album by American country artist Emmylou Harris, released on September 26, 1995 through Elektra Records. It wasn’t her traditional acoustic country sound. Her collaboration with producer Daniel Lanois (best known for his production work with U2) and engineer Mark Howard created an incredibly atmospheric feel (which is the magic of Lanois at work). It featured guest performances by Steve Earle, Larry Mullen, Jr. (yes that “Larry” from U2), Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Lucinda Williams and Neil Young, who wrote the title song.

    So when she decided to tour Palais Melbourne in April 2001 with Spyboy (which comprised Buddy Miller – Vocals, Electric Guitar, Mando Guitar, Brady Blade – Vocals, Drums and Daryl Johnson – Vocals, Electric Bass, Bass Pedals , Djembe, Percussion) and supported by Kasey Chambers I would have crawled over broken glass to hear it live. Thankfully I didn’t have to go that far and scored some Stalls seats in row B middle section where Emmylou was barely 20 feet away from my life partner and I. Emmylou was a beautiful apparition on stage. Was it her, a hologram or hallucination?
    I’ve always thought you could put a talentless person like me on stage to sing and the Palais acoustics would make it bearable (well it was worth a try ;-). The Palais is our Musikverein or Concertgebouw. Put real musicians in there and it becomes magical.

    It was originally built for Dame Nellie Melba to sing Opera and has provided Melbourne music lovers with an incredible venue for sonic bliss for almost a century (To think it was almost lost to a corporate who wanted to flatten it and put up a supermarket until some of Melbourne’s true patrons decided to fight and preserve it is a story for another day).

    The Wrecking Ball concert can be enjoyed on YouTube as it pretty much captures the same programme that was played at the Palais in that tour series.
    The album is of course more refined and opens with a composition from Lanois “Where Will I Be? Steve Earle’s “Goodbye” follows which Emmylou nails. Earle’s life story could fill a few books and if you’re not a fan as yet you can start digging here to see if you like it: Emmylou Harris & Spyboy – Live in Zurich 1997. Lucinda Williams “Sweet Old World” track is lyrically tough material to contemplate but if you’ve ever lost a friend prematurely you’ll understand the ache.

    The album has flow. Each track flows perfectly into the next. If you got onto a hand paddled canoe and set down a slow moving river this album flows with the stream. It is unlike Peter Gabriel’s SO album which has similar incredible quiet flowing tracks which join seamlessly until the producer throw’s in a “Big Mouth” to ruin the flow and make you jump from your seat and skip the track. It is a lot like Wrecking Ball doesn’t make you want to skip any tracks or ruin any mood. Instead it leads you down a path of incredible song streams. It’s almost as if they got in the studio and partook of some magic air to create a deeply relaxing mood in the listener.

    Harking back to that night at the Palais, Emmylou probably had bottled some of that studio air and had deeply inhaled. Her eyes were glassy and she seemed to be on another planet when she sang. She wasn’t wasted but whatever medicine she was on it created a magic flow in the music and powered her angelic voice.

    Brian Blade on drums and Daryl Johnson on Bass and Moog Taurus brought the Ghetto groove and synergy like Sly and Robbie do to Simply Red (you can’t have one without the other). This conjecture of musical cultures (country and urban city) would normally make you think unlikely flavours but the magic is in the creole blend. Imagine a signature slow cooked dish where the flavours have had time to meld and create new messages served hot and paired with a refreshing ale to cool the tastebuds. To be consumed as the sun sets over the back porch.

    The album received nearly universal acclaim, making many critics’ year-end “best of” lists, Wrecking Ball won the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Recording.
    Every time I hear this album it takes me back to that magic night at the Palais. I don’t need any other drug to get high on this album. It’s about as pure a dopamine hit as an audiophile can self-generate (you know what I’m talking about). It’s an addictive ride into the heavens as described in the penultimate track Blackhawk and White Winged Dove.

    Track listing

    No. Title Writer(s) Length
    1. “Where Will I Be?” (with Daniel Lanois) Daniel Lanois 4:15
    2. “Goodbye” Steve Earle 4:53
    3. “All My Tears” Julie Miller 3:42
    4. “Wrecking Ball” Neil Young 4:49
    5. “Goin’ Back to Harlan” Anna McGarrigle 4:51
    6. “Deeper Well” David Olney, Lanois 4:19
    7. “Every Grain of Sand” Bob Dylan 3:56
    8. “Sweet Old World” Lucinda Williams 5:06
    9. “May This Be Love” (with Daniel Lanois) Jimi Hendrix 4:45
    10. “Orphan Girl” Gillian Welch 3:15
    11. “Blackhawk” Daniel Lanois 4:28
    12. “Waltz Across Texas Tonight” Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris 4:46
    Total length: 53:05

    Personnel

    Emmylou Harris – vocals, acoustic guitar on 3 5 7 10 11 12, harmony vocals on 10
    Daniel Lanois – mandolin on 1 2 3 5 8 10 11 12, electric guitar on 1 2 3 4 6 8 9 11 12, acoustic guitar on 2 7 11, bass on 1 3, dulcimer on 10, duet vocals on 1 9, chant vocals on 3, percussion on 4, bass pedals on 8
    Malcolm Burn – piano on 2 4 8 11 12, tambourine on 4 10 11, vibes on 4, organ on 5 7, synthesizer on 5, keyboards on 6, slide guitar on 8 12, bass on 11, drums on 11, harmony vocals on 11
    Larry Mullen, Jr. – drums on 2 4 6 7 8 9 12, cymbal on 4, hand drum on 10
    Tony Hall – percussion, bass on 2 4 6 7 12, stick drum on 10
    Daryl Johnson – high harmony vocals on 1, tom tom on 1, drum kit bass pedals on 5, backing vocals on 5, harmonic bass on 6, harmony vocals on 10

    Additional personnel

    Brian Blade – drums on 1, Indian hand drum on 5
    Steve Earle – acoustic guitar on 2 7 8
    Sam O’Sullivan – roto wheel on 4
    Neil Young – harmony vocals on 4 8, harmonica on 8
    Kufaru Mouton – extra percussion on 5
    Lucinda Williams – acoustic guitar on 8
    Richard Bennett – tremolo guitar on 8
    Anna McGarrigle – harmony vocals on 12
    Kate McGarrigle – harmony vocals on 12

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