EMMYLOU HARRIS & RODNEY CROWELL WITH RICHARD THOMPSON
The title song of Old Yellow Moon may be the concluding track on the first official album-length collaboration between Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, but it actually represents a starting point for this long-anticipated project, produced by Brian Ahern. These two old friends and occasional band mates, Harris explains, "were picking songs as we sat around Brian's big kitchen table, with his extraordinary microphones hooked up to the computer just to make a demo. We would pick a key or toy around with an idea just to make a sketch." Harris was going over Hank DeVito and Lynn Langham's "Old Yellow Moon" with Crowell for the first time, but their impromptu performance together was so naturally emotive that Ahern decided to build a track around it. "That's a kitchen table recording. Brian later brought in Lynn to play the piano; she had a certain feel that only she could do to really honor the song and the reading we had given it. We added a few other things and it became the title track." Harris pauses to consider this before declaring, "I love the way records get born!"
It was nearly 40 years earlier, in 1974, when Harris first heard Rodney Crowell. At the time, she was also sitting at a table with Ahern, then based in Toronto, who was tasked with producing her first solo recording for Warner Bros. Records following the sudden passing of Gram Parsons, Harris's singing and touring partner. They were auditioning song demos, but the session wasn't going too well, Harris remembers: "There was nothing that appealed to me. I would listen to a whole song and Brian finally said to me, ‘You know, Emmy, you don't have to listen to the entire song, you're going to know right away, it's going to pop out at you.' At the end of the day, Brian said, ‘I have one more thing, a songwriter I haven't even heard. I signed him on the recommendation of somebody whose opinion I value.' So, as I recall, we listened to Rodney, both of us, for the first time. The first song was ‘Bluebird Wine,' and from that first bar of music, I just knew. It was the bomb. Brian immediately tried to get in touch with Rodney, who was on a plane. We were finally able to hook up in Washington, DC, where I was living at the time, and he played me ‘Till I Gain Control Again,' and I knew my instincts were right."
A year later, as Crowell recounts, Harris was passing through Austin, where the Texas native was then living, and offered Crowell a plane ticket to Los Angeles. Crowell went on to become rhythm guitarist and harmony singer in her now legendary Hot Band-many of whose original members joined Harris and Crowell in Nashville for the Old Yellow Moon sessions, along with such guests as singer-guitarist Vince Gill, violinist Stuart Duncan, and Little Feat keyboardist Billy Payne. Crowell soon landed his own solo deal with Warner Bros., releasing his Ahern-produced debut, Ain't Living Long Like This, in 1978. Harris would quickly be recognized as one of the finest young song interpreters on the nexus of country, folk, and rock, and Crowell himself would become a sought-after songwriter, producer, and performer, whose work would be covered by Johnny Cash, the Grateful Dead, Etta James, and Bob Seger, among countless others-and continue to be treasured over the years by Harris.
The spirited "Bluebird Wine" became the opening track of Harris's 1975 Top Ten country debut, Pieces of the Sky. Ahern and Harris insisted they revisit it on Old Yellow Moon, but Crowell had misgivings: "I said, ‘Come on guys, I wrote that when I was 21 or 22, somewhere back then, I can do better.' So I went home and rewrote the first two verses because, you know, the writer's best friend is revision. So I revised those first two verses and I said, ‘Okay, that's a little more in keeping with my sensibilities now.'"
Adds Harris, "The meat of the song is the same but he took the writer's license of being able to change a little bit that he felt reflected his life now. It's the same song musically, and the spirit of the song is the same-it's a joyful song. Being joyful at 20 or being joyful at 60, it's still joy."
The passage of time-time well spent, time misspent-is a recurring motif on Old Yellow Moon, especially on Matraca Berg's heartbreaking "Back When We Were Beautiful" and Crowell's own preternaturally wise "Here We Are," which Harris had originally recorded in 1979 as a duet with George Jones. Harris says, "I love that song. And even though I had done it with George Jones, it seemed to fit this project. It can be a song about lovers, about a relationship, but this record for me is all about friendship."
As with "Here We Are," Old Yellow Moon offered Crowell an opportunity to perform self-penned compositions he'd never gotten around to recording himself, like "Bull Rider," which his former father-in-law Johnny Cash had cut back in 1979. "Bullrider" has an almost cinematic clarity to it, drawn from Crowell's own young life in Texas, which he also addressed in a 2010 memoir, Chinaberry Sidewalks: "Growing up in Texas, we rode bulls the way inner city kids played basketball. It's just part of the culture, part of the rhythm of our lives. I always loved the language of the rodeo. There's a poetic tone to it. I remember writing that song and wanting to capture that."
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