{"id":1169,"date":"2012-01-21T00:40:03","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T00:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whisnews21.wordpress.com\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2012-01-21T00:40:03","modified_gmt":"2012-01-21T00:40:03","slug":"emmylou-harris-celebrates-20-years-with-the-opry-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/2012\/01\/21\/emmylou-harris-celebrates-20-years-with-the-opry-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Emmylou Harris Celebrates 20 Years With The Opry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cI\u2019ve played a lot of different places,\u201d said Emmylou Harris<\/a>\u00a0including\u00a0a 99-year-old building, where worries about hazards, <\/span><\/strong>were such that sitting in or underneath the balcony was disallowed.<\/span><\/strong><\/h1>\n

. \u201cThis is the best.\u201d A rubbly relic, where spotlights revealed asthma-enhancing debris. \u201cIs this a great place to sort of feel the hillbilly dust?\u201d asked Harris. Sure. See it, feel it, and good luck getting it out of your hair. But thank goodness for Pollyanna. Twenty-one years ago, Harris fronted a remarkable acoustic band she called The Nash Ramblers at a no-longer-remarkable, partially condemned building, where they made a live album.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Yes, the building was called the Ryman Auditorium<\/a>. But, no, it wasn\u2019t historically cool. It was just historical. It was the former longtime home of the Grand Ole Opry<\/a>. Perhaps your grandma used to be Miss America. That was a long, long time ago.\u00a0Anyway, back to the \u201cthank goodness for Pollyanna\u201d part. The resulting album, At the Ryman<\/em>, pointed attention to a building that hadn\u2019t hosted a public performance since 1974, when the Opry left for the modern amenities (Air conditioning! Dressing rooms!) of the Grand Ole Opry House out by Briley Parkway. The album came out in January of 1992, the same month Harris became the 70th official member of the Opry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat album was the tipping point for getting the Ryman refurbished and making it a proud venue again,\u201d said Richard Bennett, who co- produced (with Allen Reynolds) At the Ryman. \u201cIt brought the name \u2018Ryman\u2019 back to the rest of America.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Downtown revival<\/span>\u00a0<\/h3>\n

At the time, much of the rest of America would have been skittish about visiting the Ryman and its Lower Broadway neighbors after dark. \u201cLower Broad was Tootsie\u2019s, a few beer joints, the Ernest Tubb Record Shop and a lot of adult bookstores,\u201d says Steve Buchanan, Gaylord Entertainment\u2019s Grand Ole Opry Group president. Back in 1991, Buchanan was in charge of marketing the Opry and the Ryman, and he was instrumental in green-lighting Harris\u2019 and the Ramblers\u2019 performance there. Buchanan\u2019s efforts to market the Ryman were emboldened by Gaylord President and CEO Bud Wendell, who was insistent that the Ryman was an essential and irreplaceable building. \u201cThe album came out in January of 1992, and we announced the renovation of the Ryman in March of 1993,\u201d Buchanan says. \u201cI think Emmylou was instrumental in multiple ways, and that album served to connect the dots and to introduce the Ryman to a whole new generation of fans.\u201d I was among those fans. And though I\u2019d heard of the Ryman, I thought of it as the place where the Opry used to be, before the show moved out to the suburbs and downtown became a wasteland. But here was Emmylou Harris, arbiter of country cool, saying this was a place of worth, of importance. Soon, folks began speaking of it as \u201cThe Mother Church of Country Music,\u201d and the Ryman became the most elegant of downtown attractions.<\/p>\n

The renovation of the Ryman, the building of the Arena Formerly Known as Several Things and Currently Known as Bridgestone, and the Convention Center Currently Known as the One We\u2019re Replacing became cornerstones of a new downtown. In conjunction with the street-level musical revival spearheaded by BR-549<\/a>,Greg Garing<\/a>, Tim Carroll<\/a> and others, those buildings gave us a remixed, remastered city, where you\u2019ll need either good running shoes, a car or cab fare to get to an adult bookstore from the corner of Fifth and Broadway. And one where it made perfect sense to build new-century jewels like the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum<\/a> and Schermerhorn Symphony Center<\/a>. \u201cWe were looking at different places to do a live album that would feature songs I hadn\u2019t recorded before, and (music executive) Bonnie Garner suggested the Ryman,\u201d Harris says. \u201cIt was a great chance to perform in a building that was so steeped in history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Family reunion <\/span>By the early 1990s, Harris had already done much to honor that history, and to alter it. She had recordedLouvin Brothers<\/a> songs at a time when the Louvin catalog was out-of-print, and she had honored Kitty Wells<\/a>,Loretta Lynn<\/a> and others with heartfelt covers. She\u2019d also shone a mainstream light on Rodney Crowell<\/a>, Vince Gill<\/a>, Tony Brown<\/a>, Barry Tashian<\/a>, Steve Fishell<\/a> and many others who are now Nashville mainstays. During her early solo career, she was based in California, but she\u2019d moved to Nashville in 1982, and a decade later she was ready to commit to regular Opry appearances. On Jan. 25, 1992, she joined the Opry. \u201cI wish I could remember more about it,\u201d she says, though she remembers practically nothing. Significant emotion tends to make folks either recall the detailed entirety of an occasion or lump the whole thing into mush. With Harris, it\u2019s mush. Beloved mush, but mush nonetheless. Fortunately, these things are preserved for posterity. The night of her induction, Harris was interviewed backstage by Bill Anderson<\/a> (they\u2019re both Country Music Hall of Famers<\/a> now). \u201cMusically and philosophically, I feel like you\u2019ve been here for years,\u201d Anderson said, whereupon Harris credited her musical path to the guidance of Gram Parsons<\/a>, who helped immerse her in country music in the early 1970s. Then, Anderson asked her about \u201chillbilly dust.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a way of describing the feeling you get when you walk into the old Ryman building,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt comes from those many, many nights of all those waltzes and shuffles being played, and all those people having their hearts touched by the music.\u201d These days, the Opry is held at the Ryman during winter months. And the Ryman is a favorite venue of Neil Young<\/a>, Elvis Costello<\/a>, Gillian Welch<\/a>, Coldplay <\/a>and many others. All that is thanks in no small part to Harris, who championed the Ryman at a time when others scuffled past on their way to the bookstore. \u201cMeet me at the wrecking ball,\u201d she sang on a 1995 album that helped her to a place as the godmother of what we now call \u201cAmericana\u201d music. But in 1991, Harris did all she could to save the Ryman from what seemed like an inevitable wrecking ball. And a year later, just before she sang bluegrass classic \u201cWalls of Time\u201d and Loretta Lynn\u2019s 1965 hit, \u201cBlue Kentucky Girl,\u201d King of Country Music Roy Acuff<\/a> introduced her as a member of the Grand Ole Opry. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve come home to a family I didn\u2019t even know I was a part of,\u201d she said upon her induction. In the ensuing years, she\u2019s come to understand that she\u2019s an integral part of that family. Saturday night, she\u2019ll be back at the Opry, back on the Ryman stage, for another reunion. The audience will applaud her, and she\u2019ll likely reply, \u201cThank you.\u201d Really, she should be saying, \u201cYou\u2019re welcome.\u201d\u00a0<\/h3>\n
Reach Peter Cooper at 615-259-8220 or <\/strong>pcooper@tennessean.com<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/h6>\n

If You Go to The<\/span>:<\/strong> <\/strong>Celebration of Emmylou Harris\u2019 20th anniversary as a Grand Ole Opry member, with Harris, Vince Gill, Rodney Crowell, Shawn Colvin and many more.
\n
\nWhen:<\/strong> <\/strong>7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21 Where:<\/strong> <\/strong>Ryman Auditorum<\/a>, 116 Fifth Ave. N. Tickets:<\/strong> <\/strong>$34-$55, www.opry.com<\/a> or 615-889-3060\u00a0<\/h3>\n

This article supplied by Marty Martel<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ve played a lot of different places,\u201d said Emmylou Harris\u00a0including\u00a0a 99-year-old building, where worries about hazards, were such that sitting in or underneath the balcony was disallowed. . \u201cThis is the best.\u201d A rubbly relic, where spotlights revealed asthma-enhancing debris. \u201cIs this a great place to sort of feel the hillbilly dust?\u201d asked Harris. Sure. See it, feel it, and good luck getting it out of your hair. But thank goodness for Pollyanna. Twenty-one years ago, Harris fronted a remarkable acoustic band she called The Nash Ramblers at a no-longer-remarkable,<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}