WEDNESDAY

If Emmylou Harris missed the Dixie Chicks Curse during the late unpleasantness, it’s not because she’s afraid to speak her mind. The country superstar was one of the signers of an open letter from Musicians United to Win Without War that ran in the New York Times in February. Harris, Philip Glass, Jay-Z, Sonic Youth, and more than 60 others from every corner of the Tower Records aisles agreed that “a war right now is premature and unnecessary.” But Harris has also always been fervent in her patriotism, supporting Vietnam veterans’ groups and performing”God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch of Game Two of the 2001 World Series. Chalk it up to upbringing: Major Walter Rutland “Bucky” Harris was a Marine pilot who served in World War II and the Korean War. Shot down in Korea, he was one of the last prisoners of war to be released, in 1953, when his daughter was 6 years old. (His bravery in captivity was remarkable enough that he was cited in the Marines’ published Code of Conduct.) So it was the armed forces that brought the young Harris to the D.C. club circuit, from which she graduated to Greenwich Village, joined Gram Parsons for finishing school in Los Angeles, and came back here to become a local and international legend. Thank the military-industrial complex for this activist performer, and help Harris celebrate Father’s Day a few days early at 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 11, at Wolf Trap’s Filene Center, 1551 Trap Road, Vienna. $20-$34. (703) 218-6500. (Pamela Murray Winters)