Emmylou Harris, whose latest album, Hard Bargain, was released last month on Nonesuch, will serve along with Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam and First Lady Crissy Haslam as honorary co-chairs for the 73rd Annual National Folk Festival in Nashville over Labor Day weekend, September 2-4, the festival's organizers announced. Nashville was chosen to host the festival from among 44 cities across the United States in a competitive selection process. The festival is a not-for-profit event that will be free for the public.

“I am very proud to be involved with this event, because it celebrates the best of our music across many different genres,” said Harris, a Nashville resident. “Some of the nation’s best traditional artists will perform, and attendees will find themselves amazed at the variety of entertainment they will experience. It is great that Nashville and the state of Tennessee were able to bring this here for three consecutive years.”

Created by the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA) in 1934, the traveling National Folk Festival is the oldest and longest-running multicultural festival in the nation. It celebrates the roots, richness and variety of American culture through traditional music, dance, craft, storytelling and food, and is currently attracting the largest audiences in its long history.

For more information, visit nationalfolkfestival.com.

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Harris launches a European tour in Copenhagen next week that will take her and her band through Sweden, Ireland, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany before she returns to the States to begin her North American summer tour at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in mid-June. For details, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.

Before heading to Telluride, Emmylou Harris is expected to perform at Appalachia Is Rising, a five-day march against mountaintop removal mining, which ends at Blair Mountain in Logan County, West Virginia, on June 11. Participants will march 10 miles a day, and evenings will consist of workshops, cultural festivities, and music. On the final day of the march, a large rally will be held in Blair, followed by a march to the crest of Blair Mountain, where culminating activities will occur, including a speech from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For more information, visit marchonblairmountain.org.

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The Austin Chronicle gives Harris's new album three-and-a-half stars. The Boston Phoenix says Harris is "still singing and writing beautifully after all these years." Reviewer Nick A. Zaino III writes: "Hard Bargain is a gorgeous album," one that "sounds full and warm" and serves as a "tribute to faith and hope." Read the review at thephoenix.com.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, publishing a BlogCritics review by Jordan Richardson, says: "Few weave stories like Emmylou Harris. Her Hard Bargain is a collection of tales that can make us feel whole again ... Harris draws on a deceptively basic set of words, concocting songs of experience and passion that only a performer with her life could craft." Read the review at seattlepi.com.

The Australian gives Hard Bargain four-and-a-half stars. "Harris, like Joni Mitchell, writes deceptively simple narratives about people she knows that somehow turn out to be universal," says reviewer Ian Cuthbertson, who calls the new album "a beautiful, adventurous record that can wrap you up in thoughtful moods or tight rhythms ... Hard Bargain is a strong effort from a mature artist in the middle of an astonishing creative burst. Harris hasn't always written her own songs and it is to her credit that this album sounds like a new beginning." Read the complete review at theaustralian.com.au.

To pick up a copy of Hard Bargain, head to the Nonesuch Store, where orders include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the album at checkout.