Hard Bargain, the new album from Emmylou Harris, due out April 26 on Nonesuch, is now available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store bundled with an exclusive manuscript lyric sheet of the album's opening track, "The Road," a number of which will be autographed by Harris. On "The Road," Harris looks back on the formative time she spent with country/rock icon Gram Parsons at the beginning of her career.

In celebration of the album's release, Harris will embark on a series of performances including a showcase at the 2011 SXSW Music and Media Conference in Austin this month as well as special intimate shows at the El Rey in Los Angeles on April 21 and the Bowery Ballroom in New York on April 26. Additionally, on April 27, Harris will perform on the Late Show with David Letterman. For more tour information, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.

Hard Bargain follows Harris’ acclaimed 2008 release, All I Intended to Be, which received widespread acclaim—Newsweek called it an album that “shows that Harris is still the stalwart songbird at the top of the roost.” The new album, which comprises 11 new songs by Harris as well as two covers, was produced by Jay Joyce (Cage the Elephant, Patty Griffin). A deluxe edition of the album, which includes a DVD featuring six performances interspersed with interviews, will also be available and is available for pre-order.

“We did the whole record in about a month, which is quite unusual for me. But I had all the material beforehand. I’d written 11 of the 13 songs and I really wanted to include two more by other writers,” Harris explains. “One of the covers is Ron Sexsmith’s ‘Hard Bargain’ which I absolutely love. The other is by Jay Joyce, called ‘Cross Yourself.’

“We did the whole thing with just three musicians, me being one of them. Jay, the producer, and Giles Reeves play everything between them. It’s not a stripped down record though; there’s only one song that’s a little bare bones. I’m basically a slow ballad-y person, but Jay managed to really move the songs up a bit. But they still have the same emotional feel.”

In addition to "The Road," another of the album’s songs looks back on a relationships that was central to Harris’ creative life: she wrote “Darlin’ Kate” for her close friend and collaborator Kate McGarrigle, who died last year of a rare form of cancer.

A 12-time Grammy winner and Billboard Century Award recipient, Emmylou Harris’ contribution as a singer and songwriter spans 40 years. She has recorded more than 25 albums and has lent her talents to countless fellow artists’ recordings. In recognition of her remarkable career, Harris was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008.

To pre-order the Hard Bargain CD and deluxe CD/DVD along with the manuscript lyric sheet of "The Road," head to the Nonesuch Store now. All orders include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the album available on release day.