Emmylou Harris’s groundbreaking album Wrecking Ball will be reissued next Tuesday, April 8, on Nonesuch Records. In celebration of the reissue, Harris (who also celebrated a birthday yesterday) and producer Daniel Lanois, along with Jim Wilson on guitar and Steven Nistor on drums, kick off an international tour at The Wiltern in Los Angeles tonight. The North American leg continues in the weeks ahead with stops in San Francisco, Detroit, Chicago, DC, Brooklyn, Boston, and Toronto, followed by European shows in the Netherlands, Belgium, and UK in May. See below for all the Wrecking Ball tour dates; for details and additional upcoming shows, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
In advance of tonight's concert and next week's release of the Wrecking Ball reissue, Harris spoke with the Los Angeles Times's Randy Lewis for a feature profile examining this seminal album.
"Emmylou Harris never fit any mold. From the beginning of her recording career in country music four decades ago up until today, the singer and songwriter has chosen songs without regard to boundaries or convention," writes Lewis. "That same open-minded, artistic drive is at work today as she talks about the inspiration for reissuing her watershed 1995 album, Wrecking Ball."
Lewis goes on to suggest: "In a sense, Wrecking Ball provided an ambitious and richly textured template for the coalescing Americana music movement before it took on that name. The music was rooted in country, folk, gospel and blues, but with Lanois' sonic wizardry in the mix, it also had an experimental edge that took it well beyond musical archaeology."
Read the complete article at latimes.com.
Produced by Lanois (U2, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Willie Nelson), Wrecking Ball won the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album and was highly praised by critics worldwide. The new three-disc set features the remastered original album, a bonus CD of previously unreleased material, and a DVD of the documentary Building the Wrecking Ball, which includes interviews and studio footage of Harris and Lanois as well as special guests Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Neil Young, Steve Earle, Brian Blade, and others. The album is available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store.
While on tour, Harris stops in New York City on Thursday, April 10, to perform at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, joining Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks, Carrie Underwood, and Sheryl Crow in musical tribute to inductee Linda Ronstadt. Highlights from the show will air May 31 on HBO.
EMMYLOU HARRIS’S WRECKING BALL TOUR
May 19 |
Carre |
Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS |