Boulder to Birmingham

Harris wrote it with Bill Danoff after Gram Parsons died on 19 September 1973, and it appeared on Pieces of the Sky in 1975. Birmingham is the city where she was born. She chose Boulder for the alliteration, and because it was where she had first played on the road with Parsons. Years later she said the song had been very important to her, because words can help express what otherwise cannot be said. Rolling Stone placed it at number 153 among the 200 greatest country songs in 2024 and called it her signature song.

Dolly Parton and Joan Baez both recorded it in 1976, the Hollies' version reached number ten in New Zealand, and Jessie Buckley sang it in the 2019 film Wild Rose. On the 2006 tour with Knopfler it usually sat between This Is Us and All the Roadrunning, and it is the ninth track on the Real Live Roadrunning CD. The upload in the hypersongs web is from the Real Live Roadrunning concert film, recorded at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles on 28 June 2006.