Emmylou Harris - Spyboy - [Clear 2 LP]

“A good song can survive and shine in different ways in the hands of different musicians,” says Emmylou Harris. “It can have different meanings at different times in your life. A good song can travel with you anywhere.” It’s that philosophy which has guided her fifty-year career in music, where she has covered countless songs across countless genres and put her own indelible stamp on each one. The same philosophy animates both Spyboy, her touring band in the late 1990s, and Spyboy, the 1998 live album that demonstrates how these musicians made her songs shine. Sequencing old songs alongside new ones, the album tests the tensile strength of each one, pushing them into wilder and more psychedelic territory while remaining grounded in earthy country music. It’s completely unique in her catalog, a crucial document of an important chapter in her career, and it’s finally getting reissued after years of being unavailable. “It’s such a special record,” she says. “Well, they all are, but this one is really, really special. That was such a fantastic band and such an amazing time.”

Spyboy grew out of Wrecking Ball, Harris’ groundbreaking 1995 collaboration with producer Daniel Lanois. That album, among her best and most celebrated, offers a very different idea of what country music could be, how it might sound and move. In 1996 and 1997 together with Buddy Miller, Brady Blade and Daryl Johnson - the band, also named Spyboy, toured America and Europe together, never playing a song the same way twice. Buddy Miller brought along his recording gear to record nearly every show on the tour. When their time on the road ended, Miller and Harris sat down together and they culled through hundreds of tracks to choose the ones that best represented the Spyboy ethos of endless possibility. They whittled the original release down to 14 tracks and in 1998 Eminent Records released Spyboy on CD.

New West Records is proud to put Spyboy back in print after 27 years. The CD features four unreleased bonus tracks from the original show recordings. The LP is being pressed for the second time (RSD ‘25) and is available on clear vinyl and features five unreleased bonus tracks from the original show recordings.