"Do you have music always going on in your head?" I ask.

"No. I don't think so. You mean melodies?"

"Like a soundtrack to your life."

"No. I don't think it ever happens. I have to have a guitar sitting around. I sing in the shower. I sing around the house. The music comes secondary. The lyrics come first. The music of words. And the musicality of words that evoke images."

The waiter is back again. "What can I get you?"

I've avoided describing the restaurant because it has an innocuous, airport-bar quality about it. There are a few people milling around, caging drinks. Motown is playing on the sound system. The menu is vaguely French.

"I'm going to go with this grilled cheese sandwich," Harris says to the waiter.

Grilled cheese sandwich in a French bistro? Sounds good. I've never seen it rain so hard in the city. A grilled cheese sandwich and soup are good comfort food. "I'll have what she's having," I say.

The waiter departs. Harris continues: "'Wrecking Ball' reinvigorated me. And brought me into a new musical territory, but not terribly unfamiliar. I knew the only new thing I could bring to the table was my own material. My songwriting friend Guy Clark said, 'You need to write your next record, and I don't care if it takes you five years to do it.' Well, it did take me five years!"

"It's such an eclectic record," I say. Hypnotic guitars snaking above circus marches. It was produced by Malcolm Burn, protégé of Daniel Lanois, who in turn was a protégé of Brian Eno.

"Well, I've always been eclectic," she says. "You know, I'm a fan of Laurie Anderson. One of my favorite records is 'The Ugly One With the Jewels,' a spoken-word record. It's an extraordinary album. Brian Eno is doing all these sound things in the background and she is reading from, I think, her book 'The Nerve Bible.' It's all these songs that are eccentric but ultimately quite moving. Some of them just break your heart. It's very unusual. I never heard anything like it."

Harris lights another slender cigarette and continues, "If you're looking at an overview -- I definitely came in through the country door. It's like saying, 'Where were you born. What are your roots?' I was a folk singer who became totally over the edge with country music. I found my voice and style working with Gram Parsons. I learned how to listen to George Jones records and the Louvin Brothers. Listening to harmonies. Being enthused. I was a woman with a mission after Gram's death, trying to keep his music alive -- and bring what I liked about country music to people like me who came to it without growing up with it. Discovering the beauty and depth of it instead of the caricature." She shakes her head. "This politically incorrect music." She gives a laugh. "I really was on a crusade. Even from my very first record, I think I established a pattern of eclecticism. And I was hoping to encourage other people to go out and buy George Jones records. And discover the music that shouldn't be left behind. There was a power and beauty to it."

She sips some water. "Overseas there is no confusion. If I'm a country artist, whatever record I do is country. They don't pigeonhole it. Here the pigeonholing is rampant." She crosses her arms. "I never followed a pattern. If I had any kind of style it was no style. I could do a traditional record like 'Blue Kentucky Girl,' and people didn't understand it. So we went even further into the traditional with 'Roses in the Snow.' That's considered my 'country' record, but it's really my bluegrass record."

"As different as they are, 'Roses in the Snow' is like 'Red Dirt Girl.' They have the same hermetic feel."

"I think this was done with a small repertoire of people," Harris says. "We cut all these tracks with four musicians -- me, Daryl Johnson, Ethan Johns and Malcolm [Burn]. Except for me -- I always play rhythm guitar -- there was a revolving thing where sometimes Daryl would play bass and sometimes guitar. Ethan played drums on some things, but then would play guitar. Sometimes Malcolm would play keyboards. I love that."

"You weren't in separate booths or anything?"

"No. We recorded this album in Malcolm's house."

"Has technology gotten so you almost don't need a studio anymore?" I ask. As if on cue, Frank Sinatra begins playing in the restaurant. It sounds like something from the late 1950s.

She nods. "You don't need a studio if you've got people who know what they're doing and they're fearless." (Ha! You can bet Sinatra never recorded an album in any damn living room.) "There's bleed on everything," she continues. "We had a bit of a baffle around the bottom of the drums. We were just all sitting in the living room. We were live pretty much on everything."

"When you started working with Lanois, did you start listening to more electric things, like Laurie Anderson?" I ask.

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