Trio II

Trio II is the Grammy Award-winning, Gold-certified second collaborative album of American singer/songwriters Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Dolly Parton.

A dozen years after the release of their Platinum, Grammy-winning Trio album, the country music supergroup returned with another in the same vein. Five of the ten tracks on this album first appeared on Linda 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" (with Valerie Carter and string arrangements by David Campbell), "The Blue Train" (a Top 40 solo hit for Ronstadt), and the title song to the Ronstadt album, the Randy Newman-composed "Feels Like Home". The album reached the Top Five on Billboard's Country Albums chart as well as #62 on Billboard's main album listing.

The songs were actually recorded in 1994 by Parton, Ronstadt and Harris, but label disputes and conflicting schedules of the three women prevented its release at the time. Eventually, Ronstadt remixed the five above-mentioned tracks (sans Parton's vocals) to include 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 singles (mainstream U.S. country radio had long since dropped most artists approaching or over 50 from their playlists by the late 1990s), Trio 2 was certified Gold by the RIAA, signifying U. S. sales of over 500,000 copies and won the trio another Grammy Award in 2000.

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 popular music video for "After the Gold Rush" which was filmed inside a synagogue in New York City that January.

Though scheduling conflicts would not allow for an extended concert tour, the three did do a short promotional tour to support the album, including performances on CBS This Morning, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Today Show, and The Late Show with David Letterman.

"Softly & Tenderly" was recorded for the album but was cut. It was included on the 2007 Emmylou Harris boxset, Songbird: Rare Tracks and Forgotten Gems.