EmmyLou Harris and Rodney Crowell Duets Album Planned (Recording Begins Nov. 14th)

 

EmmyLou Harris announced in Los Angeles today that she and former band mate, Rodney Crowell have a duets album in their plans.  She also explained that the plan was to have backing by the other members of that band, better known as the “Hot Band.”

She told Randy Lewis at the L.A. Times  “This is a duet record between me and Rodney, and that’s the main thing,” “It’s looking like we’re going to have the original [Hot] Band, at least in some form, and everybody’s excited about it,” she said. “But I don’t want to lose track of the fact that this whole idea I’ve been carrying around for so long is that for about a week, the Hot Band was me and Rodney, sitting around, with my little songbook of all the songs I’d written down in pencil in my little notebook: the George Jones songs, the Don Gibson songs, all the songs I was learning.

“It was Rodney and me with two acoustic guitars just going at it doing duets: ‘Sweet Dreams,’ wonderful stuff,” she said. “So that’s what we want to get back to. And of course the Hot Band would be the icing on the cake.”

EmmyLou Harris was signed as a solo act by Warne Brothers after Gram Parson’s death in 1973. One of the provisions of the signing was that she would have to form a “hot band”, hence the name.  They were Rodney Crowell (guitar), John Ware (drums), Emory Gordy, Jr. (bass), Hank DeVito (steel guitar), Glen D. Hardin (piano) and the legendary James Burton (guitar). Albert Lee would replace Burton on guitar do to many scheduling conflicts. He also played with a guy named Presley back them. Lee is expected to be part of this new project as well. Ricky Skaggs was a member for a short time as well.

Recording begins in November and a small tour is also being discussed.

“I think we should do at least a few shows,” she said. “It wouldn’t be a long tour, but it would be a shame not to do a few showcases. That’s way far ahead, like figuring out where you’re going to send your kid to school. We’ve gotta get this baby out first.”

(UPDATE:

Cool Album of the Day has learned that recording for this album will begin on Monday, November 14th.  Rodney claims that he and EmmyLou have been talking about doing this since 1978!)

– Larry Carta

• See Our Review of EmmyLou’s latest album Hard Bargain
• See Our Feature on EmmyLou and Mark Knopfler’s Real Live Roadrunning,.
• See Our Feature on Rodney’s The Notorious Cherry Bombs.

Here’s EmmyLou with the Hot Band in 1978.