Recorded at Jack's Tracks Recording Studio, Nashville, Tennessee.

Personnel: Emmylou Harris (acoustic guitar); Richard Bennett (guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mandocello, tambourine, percussion); Kieran Kane (guitar, gut-string guitar); Chris Leuzinger (acoustic guitar, electric guitar); Al Perkins (steel guitar); Connie Heard (violin); Sam Bush (fiddle); Kris Wilkinson (viola); Grace Bahng (cello); Sam Levine (flute, clarinet); Jay Spell (accordion, piano); Bobby Wood (piano, electric piano, organ); David Hoffner (organ, keyboards); Roy M. "Junior" Husky (acoustic bass); Edgar Meyer (double bass); Larry Atamanuik, Milton Sledge (drums, percussion); Kathy Chiavola, Ashley Cleveland, Trisha Yearwood (hand claps); Sam Bacco (percussion); Alison Krauss, Suzanne Cox (background vocals).

Audio Mixer: Mark Miller .

Recording information: Jack's Tracks Recording Studio, Nashville, TN.

Photographer: Tim White .

Cowgirl's Prayer, recorded in 1993, was the last album Emmylou Harris recorded before beginning a long association with producer and songwriter Daniel Lanois, creating her band Spyboy, and recording her exit from Elektra with Wrecking Ball. In other words, it was the last "traditional" Emmylou Harris record. Produced by Allen Reynolds and Richard Bennett, it features 11 stellar cuts by songwriters such as Lucinda Williams ("Crescent City"), Leonard Cohen ("Ballad of a Runaway Horse"), David Olney ("Jerusalem Tomorrow"), Kieran Kane ("The Light"), Eddy Arnold (the classic "You Don't Know Me"), and, in a welcome change, Harris herself ("Prayer in Open D"). This is also filled with Nashville session aces as well as Kane; backing vocalists who include Trisha Yearwood, Alison Krauss, and Ashley Cleveland; and famed bassist Edgar Meyer. The Arnold track, Harris' own composition, and her reading of Williams' "Crescent City" are standouts to be sure, in that Harris allows her voice to move deeper into the lyric than the arrangements would normally allow. But it is on Olney's "Jerusalem Tomorrow" that the weight of the album rests, with Al Perkins' whining pedal steel and Sam Levine's clarinet winding their way through the mix. The story involves a charlatan who heals the sick and makes a mute speak, a false prophet who feels his game is being eclipsed by a strange, wandering Galilean who doesn't charge for his works of wonder. When the false prophet encounters Jesus, he decides to go along with his game as long as his way is paid, and prepares to go into Jerusalem the next day. Given that it is spoken and not sung, Harris dislocates her way of conveying emotion in a song; that she becomes convincing as a male figure is another shapeshift, and finally that there is no overly moral tone in her delivery, but strictly one of empathy, opens up not only the song, but Harris and the rest of the album to an entirely different set of critical criteria. Cowgirl's Prayer is one of Harris' most emotionally honest and musically satisfying recordings that matches the intensity, diversity, and musical ambition of her earliest works. ~ Thom Jurek

You've got to know an album that opens with the line "I hear the clock a-tickin'" is going to demonstrate more than a passing interest in the process by which we grow older and, hopefully, wiser. COWGIRL'S PRAYER, Emmylou Harris' 17th studio album, presents its somber meditations on life and love in an appropriately lovely, quiet acoustic setting. The overall mood of this record is adult and reflective, but not melancholy. On the contrary, as she declares on the opening track, Harris adamantly and optimistically believes she still has "A Ways to Go." The album that follows amply supports her claim.

As usual, Harris exploits her encyclopedic knowledge of American music to come up with 11 great numbers, including songs by Tony Joe White ("High Powered Love"), Lucinda Williams ("Crescent City," an homage to New Orleans), Leonard Cohen ("Ballad of a Runaway Horse") and Jesse Winchester ("Thanks to You"). Two standout tracks are among the disc's quietest: David Olney's "Jerusalem Tomorrow," a gospel narrative with a nifty twist, and "Prayer in Open D," a rare Harris original. Alison Krauss, Trisha Yearwood, Al Perkins, and Sam Bush are among the luminaries lending instrumental and vocal support.