Emmylou Harris

The first song on Emmylou Harris’ latest CD, “Hard Bargain,” is called “The Road.”

    She says it’s the first song she wrote of the original compositions on that album, released 18 months ago. “The Road” is about Gram Parsons.

    “It just fell out,” she said. “I didn’t have to dig for any details. It’s been an incredible journey but it really began with Gram.”

    Harris performs Thursday, Oct. 18, at the MSU Riley Center in Meridian.

    Originally from Birmingham, Ala., her connection with Parsons is intertwined somewhat with Meridian as well. In a telephone interview Tuesday she remembered Meridian native Chris Ethridge, who passed away in April, as a real “sweetheart.”

    Ethridge was part of the original Flying Burrito Brothers with Gram Parsons, and collaborated with him on other projects until Parsons’ death in 1973.

    “I met him first with Grievous Angel,” Harris remembers of Ethridge. That was the title of the Parsons solo album that would ultimately be released a few months after his death. She also remembered cooking a not so memorable meal for them back in those days.

    “Gram wanted to take us all out to dinner,” she said. But, wanting to save him money, she insisted on cooking for Gram, Chris and others instead. “It was not a great dinner. I only knew how to make one thing, my mother’s chicken elegante.”

    Harris laughed, then said: “Yeah, this has been a bad year,” as she thought of those who have passed on.

    Also on “Hard Bargain” Harris pays tribute to her longtime friend Kate McGarrigle with her song “Darlin’ Kate.” McGarrigle, a Canadian folk music singer and songwriter, died in 2010.

    There is the song “My Name Is Emmett Till” on the album, about the 14 year old boy from Chicago who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after whistling at a white woman.

    The story has long been well known by most, but Harris said while listening to a radio show about the incident the words to her song started forming.

    “Writing is such a strange thing,” she said. “As soon as they started talking about it the words came into my head — ‘I was born a black boy, my name is Emmett Till.'”

    Spending her first six years of life in Birmingham, Harris was not paying attention to the Civil Rights movement then, but by the time she was a teenager she said she became aware of injustices going on in some places. Those were conflicted times nevertheless, because she was raised in a military home where she saw no racist attitudes whatsoever.

    Of the injustices she said: “We knew it was wrong. We knew it had to change, and that line in the sand had to be drawn.”

    Harris also sings about “New Orleans” and that city’s fight for life after Hurricane Katrina on “Hard Bargain.” And, she sings about one of her road partners, Bella, a dog she rescued from a shelter, on the song “Big Black Dog.”

    Harris founded Bonaparte’s Retreat, an animal rescue program in Nashville, as a way of dealing with her grief after losing one of her previous road companions, Bonaparte. “Bonaparte’s Retreat” also is the title of an old fiddle tune.

    “He was a big, gangly, black poodle mix,” she said. “He looked like something Dr. Seuss would have drawn. As a little girl I fantasized about rescuing dogs and being a veterinarian. Obviously other things happened. It’s an extraordinary thing, and I’ve been moving toward this all my life.”

    More information on Bonaparte’s Retreat, Harris, her music, and her career, which has spanned more than 40 years, and included a dozen Grammy’s with many other honors, can be found on her website www.emmylouharris.com.

    For those attending Thursday night’s show, Harris said her repertoire goes all the way back to her first record.

    “I’ll probably do “Red Dirt Girl,” and things from the new record,” she added.

    She’ll be coming to Meridian from a show in Birmingham, and on Oct. 24 at Marathon Music Works in Nashville she’ll give a special performance of her album “Wrecking Ball” to benefit Crossroads Campus.

    November is filled with concert dates in Australia and New Zealand. January is booked with concerts in the the Midwest.

    As personal an album as “Hard Bargain” is for Harris, anyone can relate to it. It’s about all those things we look back on at a certain point in our lives — the things that stay with us even after they’re gone — certain people, places, emotions, and other things.

    “Hopefully if it’s true for yourself, it’s true for other people,” she says of her writing.

    Today she says she looks back with gratitude to Gram Parsons and the universe for the amazing life she lives.

    “When one door closes another road opens,” she said. “And all the other people I’ve known on that road were because of Gram.”