On a damp November night, songstress Emmylou Harris is half-way into an intimate acoustic show at the Birchmere Music Hall, Washington D.C.’s premier music venue for veteran performers, when she recounts an incident surrounding her song, “Red Dirt Girl.”



“Red Dirt Girl,” off Harris’s Grammy-award winning album of the same name, explores the inexorable fate of “Lillian,” a fictional character who, like Harris, is Alabama-born and dreams one day of “making a joyful sound.” Like much of… Continue