Emmylou Harris's new album, Hard Bargain, is out now. She performs at Bowery Ballroom tonight and on the Late Show with David Letterman tomorrow. The Washington Post says Hard Bargain is "lovely and understated and will only further Harris’s reputation as a paragon of gentle dignity and forbearance." USA Today gives it four stars and calls it "exquisite." Paste says Harris continues to create "some of the best country-influenced music being recorded today." Country Standard Time says the album "marks another triumphant recording in a career filled with memorable work." In a new video, Harris talks about her songwriting and recording the new album; watch it here.

Emmylou Harris, whose album Hard Bargain is due out tomorrow, is the subject of a feature profile in the New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure section, which says the new album "is suffused with kindly intimacy, acknowledging sorrows and reaching past them." The AP says her new songs are "up to her high standards." Harris also spoke with The Canadian Press and with the Los Angeles Times, which cites "her unwavering compassion throughout her career for the underdog, oppressed, the voiceless." The video for the song "Six White Cadillacs" has premiered on Garden & Gun, which says the album "packs a powerful, bluesy punch"; watch the video here.

Emmylou Harris performed songs from her forthcoming album, Hard Bargain, at LA's El Rey Theatre last night, with Ryan Adams offering a surprise guest opening set. She performs at New York's Bowery Ballroom with another surprise special guest opener on Tuesday. Harris appeared on PBS's Tavis Smiley show earlier this week. "Harris is admired as much for her straightforward songwriting as for her expressive singing," says the show. "Forty years into her career, she's still doing both with ... Hard Bargain." Watch the show here.

Emmylou Harris brings the music of her forthcoming album, Hard Bargain, to LA's El Rey Theatre tonight. The Los Angeles Times says Harris, on the new album, "very firmly takes center stage with wistful, heartrending tunes." The Wall Street Journal, previewing her album release day show in NYC, says: "Her voice remains an open channel for otherworldly beauty, earthy and ethereal in equal measure, and her style retains a rootsy grounding even when she strays from the confines of country." Harris spoke with ESPN about her music and one of her other passions, baseball.

Emmylou Harris's will appear on PBS's Tavis Smiley tonight to discuss her career and her new album, Hard Bargain, out Tuesday. "Harris is admired as much for her straightforward songwriting as for her expressive singing," says the show. "Forty years into her career, she's still doing both with ... Hard Bargain." She performs on three BBC Radio shows in the coming days. The Daily Mail gives the album four stars, calling it " a wonderfully immediate collection." Billboard says she still "a still-luminous voice that can make the phone book sound like Puccini." Fans in the US can enter to win an Epiphone EJ-200 signed by Harris.

Emmylou Harris's new album, Hard Bargain, is due out on Nonesuch April 26, less than two weeks away. A deluxe edition includes a DVD featuring six performances interspersed with interviews. The video for "Goodnight Old World," from the deluxe edition of the album, received its exclusive world premiere on CMT this morning. You can watch the video, directed by Jack Spencer, here.

Emmylou Harris and Ben Folds will be among the performers at the Chicago stop on the Dave Matthew Band Caravan, a series of three-day, multi-artist festivals taking place in four US cities this summer. The event will take place July 8–10 at Lakeside, on Chicago's south shore of Lake Michigan. Today's announcement follows last month's unveiling of the first stop on the Dave Matthews Band Caravan, June 24–26, in Atlantic City, which, will feature performances from the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Punch Brothers.

There's just one month to go before the release of Emmylou Harris's Hard Bargain. The album is available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store with a manuscript lyric sheet of the song "The Road," in which she recalls the storied time she spent with her mentor Gram Parsons. And there are now two ways to take home the song today: purchase the single from iTunes and download the song for free here.

The complete lineup for the 2011 Newport Folk Festival won't be revealed till Wednesday, and tickets won't go on sale to the general public till the following day, but we can now reveal that Emmylou Harris, Wanda Jackson, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops will be performing at the Newport Folk Festival on Sunday, July 31, and fans now have access to special pre-sales and discounts starting right now through an exclusive promo code.

While at SXSW last week, Emmylou Harris performed songs from her forthcoming album, Hard Bargain, at the IFC Crossroads House. "The legendary singer's crooning countrified voice swirled over the scene like a cloud," says IFC, "entrancing everyone who heard it." The show will be broadcast soon on the IFC cable channel. In the mean time, IFC.com has posted three videos from the event, including an interview with Ted Leo and a performance of a song off Hard Bargain, all of which you can watch here.

The 2011 SXSW Music Conference, which brought more than 2,000 bands to Austin, Texas, is now a thing of the past, but its stand-out performances will continue to resonate for some time to come. Among the performers to make such lasting musical memories happen were Emmylou Harris, Jessica Lea Mayfield, and Wanda Jackson. Here, in video, photos, and reviews, we look back at some of the highlights from their time at SXSW.