Harris joins Buddy for benefit

YOUTUBE VIDEO: Watch Emmylou Harris and Buddy Miller perform 'Gold'

Two extraordinary voices of Americana music are coming to Utah in support of making the world a smarter place.

Emmylou Harris and Buddy Miller are headlining a benefit for Zambia's Scholarship Fund, a Brigham City-based organization established 10 years ago to help students of the African nation attend college to become teachers. The charity has since expanded to help sponsor teachers and children in the lower grades, so they have a possibility of making it to higher education. Zambia's Scholarship Fund has taken the additional step of starting an "adobt-a-school" program, where sponsors provide such things as textbooks, computers and essentials like bicycles that teachers use to get to their classrooms.

"It is so inspiring to see what the people of your community have done with this scholarship," said Harris, calling from her home in Nashville. "It is really a wonderful thing, and I find it a very inspiring evening to be a part of. I love helping with this kind of thing."

Harris said she is especially happy to be doing the show with Buddy Miller, who has become one of her main musical compatriots in recent years. They met on a European tour in the early '90s, when Harris was out with her bluegrass outfit, the Nash Ramblers, and Miller was playing guitar for Jim Lauderdale.

"We did a long tour together, but I don't think I heard Buddy say one word." Harris laughed. "It wasn't that he was unfriendly, he was just quiet."

Later, he and his wife, Julie, moved to Nashville, and wanted Harris on their song, "All My Tears." They all became quite close after that project, recording and touring together.

"It's hard for me to imagine now what my life was like before Buddy," Harris said. "Obviously, he was been incredibly important to my music."

She has toured numerous times with Miller as a duo, as well as going out with him and his wife. She and Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin and Miller went on tour last year, calling themselves Three Girls and Their Buddy, doing fan favorites from all of their repertoires.

"Nowadays I get to go out and sit in with Buddy when he opens, and it is a wonderful sensation." She laughed. "Who could ask for anything more, as the song goes."

All she intended

Harris latest album, "All I Intended to Be," also included Miller on numerous cuts. The disc, released in 2008, was produced by Brian Ahern, whom Harris married in 1977. They had a daughter, Meghann, before eventually going their separate ways.

"It stayed friendly, though," said Harris. "We raised a child together, and did a one-off here and there. So we thought, well, why don't we do a whole album? I had a few ideas for older songs I meant to record over the years."

The first song they did was one of Harris' longtime favorites, called "Shores of White Sand." Ahern had produced the original version, sung by Karen Brooks. The song also had the work of drummer Keith Knudsen, formerly of the Doobie Brothers, a man Harris became friends with after meeting him at a California benefit concert for an animal shelter.

"He (Knudsen) passed away, and it got me thinking of that song again. I asked Brian if he thought we could get permission to use Keith's drum track, in memory of him. But we actually got permission to use the whole track."

They took Brooks' lead vocals off, and added Harris' and Miller's, as well as a tuned-down guitar line that Harris often plays.

"But basically, it is Brian's production 25 years later. I was really pleased how that turned out."

Much of the material for the album was written by some of Harris' musical inspirations, such as Billy Joe Shaver and Merle Haggard. Friends like the McGarrigle Sisters sat in on tracks.

Harris has finished several songs she'd long been tinkering with, thanks to Ahern's input and encouragement.

"Sometimes I work best under pressure, and Brian offered just enough pressure, pushing me to get me to finish those songs," Harris said. "So, without actually planning it, it was a sort of a reunion album. We brought people in for specific songs and did a lot of recording, just me and Brian at the house, building up tracks. A Billy Joe Shaver song we did, 'Old Five and Dimers' has that line, 'All I intended to be' -- and it fit for a title, seeing as I was looking back. ... I've interpreted many of these songs for many years, and the album touched the people who crossed my path."

Americana's Mama

At 62, Harris, is still stunningly beautiful in both appearance and voice. She might not be what you'd picture as a founding mother of a musical style, and yet she is. Her early work with Gram Parsons in the '70s is often pointed to as the music that sparked the movement then called country rock, now often labeled Americana.

Harris said she and Parsons had not really been looking to start a musical movement. Rather, they were looking to older sources to inspire their own good, solid American music. But she is pleased to be considered one of the architects of the style.

"It is good to see this music so successful," she said. "Of course, like any genre, there is some that is better than others. And it is not like it ever went away or anything -- you've always had really huge artists who've always gone with the style ... (and) a rich tradition of cool groups, like The Band."

The biggest danger of embracing an heirloom form, said Harris, is twofold -- trying to do too much at once, or trying to treat the music as something antique, rather than a living tradition.

"There is so much there, you don't want to leave anything out, so that gets tricky, learning how to pick and choose," she said. "And you have to be very careful not to do just watered-down versions of originals. A lot of new artists really capture it -- Gillian Welsh and David Rawling, Buddy Miller, The Be Good Tanyas -- many of them my pals. They do it well, enriching the soup, instead of watering it down."

PREVIEW

• WHO: Emmylou Harris and Buddy Miller
• WHAT: Zambia's Scholarship Fund benefit/10-year anniversary celebration
• WHEN: Doors open at 7 p.m. Thursday; concert at 7:30 p.m.
• WHERE: Kingsbury Hall, 1395 E. Presidents Circle, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
• TICKETS: $80, available by calling (801) 581-7100