Biography

While performing in a Washington D.C. coffeehouse, she was discovered by former The Byrds member Chris Hillman, who recommended her to Gram Parsons for his first solo album, 'GP'. Harris toured as a member of Parsons' band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, in 1973, and recorded on their album 'Grievous Angel'. After Parsons died of an overdose, Harris was devastated and wrote her most well-known song, 'Boulder to Birmingham'. Three more of their duets were included on another posthumous Parsons album, 'Sleepless Nights', in 1976.

Has collaborated on the albums of Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Neil Young, Bob Dylan (her vocals are prominently featured on his 1975 album Desire), Roy Orbison, Ryan Adams, Elvis Costello, Bright Eyes, Mark Knopfler, Anne Murray, and Willie Nelson. Performed duets on a Gram Parsons tribute album with Beck, Sheryl Crow, and The Pretenders.

Was high school class valedictorian and won a drama scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Ranked #22 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll.

Has won 12 Grammy® awards.

Animals have a much better attitude to life and death than we do. They know when their time has come. We are the ones that suffer when they pass, but it's a healing kind of grief that enables us to deal with other griefs that are not so easy to grab hold of.

On her one-sided conversations with her pets: "If I'm crazy, I'm blissfully so!"

"[I'm] an excellent ex-wife [with] a wonderful relationship with my two husbands. Paul [Kennerly] and Brian [Brian Ahern] are probably my two best friends".

[What she loves about singing country is] "its restraint, which intensifies the emotion in the music".

[The next two years were] a very black period". [Her daughter, Hallie, was being looked after most of the time by her parents.] "I didn't have any money. I had a sense of terrible loss. But what I also had was a fire in my belly. I wasn't going to go back to waiting table. I felt I had to be better at fronting a band.