Trio 2 (album)

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Trio II

Studio album by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris
Released	November 17, 1998
Genre	Country
Length	41:13
Label	Asylum Records
Producer(s)	George Massenburg
All Music Guide link
Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris chronology
Trio (1987)	Trio II (1998)

A dozen years after the release of their original Trio album, the country music supergroup returned with another in the same vein. Any Linda Ronstadt fans listening to this album might have encountered a sense of déjà vu, however, since five of the ten tracks on this album first appeared with almost identical arrangements on Ronstadt's 1995 album, Feels Like Home. These five tracks were "Lover's Return," "High Sierra," a cover of Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush," "The Blue Train," and the title song to the Ronstadt album, the Randy Newman-composed "Feels Like Home." The album peaked at #4 on the Billboard country albums chart, while its predecessor had risen all the way to #1.

The songs were actually recorded in 1994 by Parton, Ronstad and Harris, but label disputes and conflicting schedules of the three women prefvented its release at the time. Eventually, Ronstadt remixed the five above-mentioned tracks (sans Parton's vocals) to incluide in Feels Like Home. In 1999 (after Parton and Harris had parted ways with their respective labels), they decided to finally release the album as originally recorded. Though it yielded no hit singes (mainstream U.S. country radio had long since dropped nearly all artists approaching or over 50 from their playlists by the late 1990s), Trio 2 sold more copies than any of the three women's recent solo releases, and was nominated for a Grammy.

Childhood photos of Harris, Parton and Ronstadt were used for the album's cover, when a photo shoot proved impossible (due to the three artists' busy schedules), though they did manage to assemble for a short promotional tour in early 1999, and to film a video for "After the Gold Rush".