The Oxford American
March-May 1999
(Issue Number Twenty-Six)

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Emmylou Harris:  Leader Of Men

By Steve Earle

I am one of several thousand men who have been in love with Emmylou Harris since the mid-'70's.  Actually my infatuation dates back to 1972 when I first saw Emmy, then a member of Gram Parson's Fall Angels, at Liberty Hall in Houston, Texas.  Liberty Hall held about a thousand folks, and a little over half of those in attendance that night were men.  We stumbled out onto Chenevert Street when the show was over, smitten to a man.  Bam! – six hundred lifelong Emmylou Harris devotees.

That scene has been repeated literally hundreds of times since, in venues throughout the world and especially here in the South where we still like to put our women up on pedestals (or somewhere).  The Emmylou cult grows exponentially each time she steps onto a stage and sings.  No one has ever been successfully deprogrammed.  I would venture to say that loudly denouncing Emmylou Harris will get you killed in an establishment that serves liquor south of Delaware.