Singing country with a rock attitude, giving folk a vocabulary of contemporary issues and ideas, and doing it all in a ragged tenor that came straight from the heart - this was
Gram Parsons. Though he burned out on drugs and alcohol at the age of 26 almost a quarter century ago, Parsons's legacy continues to unfold in the music of artists such as Lucinda Williams,
Emmylou Harris, Whiskeytown, Steve Earle, and Gillian Welch. They all appear on this album (which Harris, Parsons's duet partner at the twilight of his career and the dawn of her own, coproduced), along with less expected contributors. The Pretenders offer a blues-rock version of "She," and the Cowboy Junkies provide a spooky interpretation of "Ooh Las Vegas." Beck duets with Harris on "Sin City"; Linda Ronstadt provides backing vocals. All these tracks hail from Parsons's days with the
Flying Burrito Brothers, as part of the Byrds, and, in the case of the title track, from his fruitful period with Harris, when Parsons's frayed tenor and Harris's fragile soprano combined to create a new voice. These moving songs, and the excellent interpretations herein, impart a measure of Gram Parsons's continuing power.
