I had to bring something else to the table. It was like giving me a homework assignment. Initially I thought well, if I could write maybe half the record, get four of five really good songs. Eleven of the 12 songs carry Harris's writing credit. The Ballad of Sally Rose, her only other self-penned record, was promoted as a conceptual autobiography in 1985, but there's something even more revealing about Red Dirt Girl.
All fiction is autobiography and all autobiography is fiction.
Replete with images from her upbringing in the American south, the title track surprised even its writer. A fictional story about a childhood friend whose life comes to tragedy, it refers in one line to a telegram Harris remembers her mother receiving when her fighter pilot father was shot down over Korea in 1952. I didn't know what Missing in Action meant, but I knew it meant I might never see my father again. I wasn't thinking about that when I wrote the song but it must have been something that you just carry around. Even though it was a made-up story, it was still a part of my experience in a way.