The maestro herself sits at a tiny table in the basement bar of Rue 57 restaurant in midtown. She is dressed in black slacks and a purple top, with a dark Pashmina shawl wrapped around her shoulders -- it's cold down here, and outside it's storming rain.

Harris is diminutive in body, and her hair is silver, gray and white. She is smoking a skinny brown cigarette. She doesn't lip the thing seductively, Dietrich style. Instead, she smokes like a woman on the run. This is the second time I've interviewed Emmylou Harris. The first time was five years ago in the lobby of Hollywood's iconic Chateau Marmont. She was sucking on some of those curious slender smokes then, too. She told me they were "herbal cigarettes." Five years later, when I ask her, "What are you smoking?" she says, "They're Indian. Bidis [pronounced Bee-deez]. I have a little tobacconist around the corner from me in Nashville."

A collegiate-looking waiter steps up. "You pay $3 a pack for those things," he says to Harris. "I used to get those all the time and they were only 99 cents. Now all of a sudden ..."

"I know," the singer says sadly. "But there are 25 in a pack."

"Is it hard keeping them lit?" the waiter mutters. He obviously recognizes the greatest country singer since Patsy Cline and wants to play out this moment as long as possible. "Mine go down all the time," he adds.

"I have a tornado lighter," Harris says with a devilish smile. "It will light in a tornado ... or a convertible."

I imagine streaking through the Tennessee countryside in a convertible with Harris, puffing on Turkish cigarettes. The nature of her cigarettes is not important, of course. I'm having lunch with her, not trying to do an exposé. After lunch, she's going to meet the New York Times' Daniel Menaker. Little does she know that he will write a hatchet job on her, calling her "the Queen of Remorse." She might as well be smoking her last cigarette before facing a firing squad.

Before I turn on my tape recorder, she complains about another hatchet job -- the one Bill Buford did on her colleague Lucinda Williams in a recent New Yorker.

"Even if Buford was telling the truth, he didn't have to write certain things," Harris says softly but emphatically. "He took license. He drew certain conclusions that were very one-sided. Hurtful to Lucinda. Detrimental to her person."

"What's the most extensive interview someone has done with you?" I ask.

She thinks a moment and tells me that she let a writer hole up on the bus with her for a tour of Europe. "During that tour I was sick and I had a terrible cold," she tells me. "He was writing a book. I came off as if my career was over and I was at death's door. I'd sunk so low in my life that I was living with my mother. It was a work of fiction." She pauses. "Do you know the book?" I nod. "What was it called?" I tell her. She frowns. "Don't give the title in the interview," she says, grabbing my arm. "Don't give him any publicity. Promise?"

I assure her I won't. When I first interviewed Harris, she seemed understandably aloof, like Greta Garbo playing the reluctant sovereign in "Queen Christina." Five years later, Harris seems vulnerable. "It's probably too soon to say this," I say, "but I think the new record is a masterpiece."

"Oh, I like this man," she says to the waiter, who is still lingering around the table. "I liked him when I first met him, but I like him even better now."

I ask for menus to get rid of the guy, then say, "'Wrecking Ball' was a collection of songs, but 'Red Dirt Girl' really feels like a complete album." I say, "Not to pigeonhole you -- for years you've been this ambassador for country music -- but 'Red Dirt Girl' is like a Lou Reed record."

"Thank you!" Harris says with enthusiasm. "This one is my own songs, so I suppose that's the biggest difference." She thinks a moment. "You know, being a songwriter is still kind of a new thing for me."

"How do you write a song?" I ask. (Dumb question.)

She shrugs. "It's a mystery." (The answer I deserve.)

"You've always had superb taste in the songs that you choose to cover," I say. "Does writing songs come from the same aesthetic place?"

"No. Totally different," she answers, "because all the work is done for you when you're singing someone else's song. All you have to do is find a key. Believe me, the looking is a whole lot easier than writing."

"Can you hear whether a song you wrote yourself is any good?"

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