Here She Comes Again - Dolly Parton Talks 'Pure & Simple' About Her Major Tour

"Dolly on the line!" boomed Dolly Parton at the onset of a recent conference call for the press to promote her first major tour in two decades. The voice is familiar, warm and immediately infectious, bringing memories of a talent who has made her niche in American pop culture for some four decades with an irresistible down-home style.

She was speaking to the press to promote her latest tour, called "Pure & Simple," which is taking her to some 60 cities in the United States and Canada between now and December. It comes to Boston on Tuesday, June 21 at the Citi Performance Arts Center, before moving onto New York, Pittsburgh, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Columbus, OH, Chicago and Toronto throughout the summer. For a full list of dates, visit Dolly Parton's website.

The tour's title comes from half - the new half - of her upcoming double CD, "Pure & Simple with Dolly's Biggest Hits" (set for release on August 26). While one disc ("Dolly's Greatest Hits") features her greatest hits, "Pure & Simple" contains a set of original Dolly Parton songs - love songs. Not that she knew it was going to be set of love songs when started writing it; at first, though, she only had an idea and some questions. "What is this album going to be about?" Parton told the press recently. "Is it going to be just pure and just simple - just plain songs?

"But I started to write and they all turned out to be songs about love - different kinds of love, not stories things, just love songs. It felt really good and got some nice lines in it. I think there's a good variety for people to enjoy it. I just took off and acted on faith and wrote what songs came to mind - what thoughts and feelings I had. I thought, what are the good subjects about love? Then I thought, love is something I know about."

All the hits

She kicks the show off with the title song, and will include a few others from the CD. But fans will also get a lot of classic Dolly - the songs she includes in the double-disc set, 'Dolly's Biggest Hits.'

"Actually you always have to do the things that your fans demand. And a lot of the songs are part of my double-CD of greatest hits. We have do the songs like 'Here We Come Again,' 'I Will Always Love You,' 'Jolene,' '9-5,' 'The Islands in the Stream.' And then, of course, people expect me to do a home section where I do songs about home like 'Coat of Many Colors,' 'Tennessee Mountain Home' and talk about home. And I think people expect a little bit of gospel stuff as well. We are doing a bit of everything. It's really hard to know what to pick, to get the dynamics that you need for the show; but I work real hard to give my best."

What's different about this show is how Parton is keeping it pure and simple: no big production values, no back-up singers and no large band - just Dolly and four musicians. "There are just four of us on stage. We just kind of swap-off different instruments. It's pretty much scaled down. Not a lot of loud music. We don't have a bunch of videos going on in the background. It's pretty much just us."

A number of factors have prompted this tour, Parton's twelfth: her well-received recent CD "Blue Smoke," a successful European tour and her recent highly-rated television movie, "Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors" that told of her hard-scrabble childhood in Tennessee. With 13-million viewers it was the highest rated made-for-television movie or mini-series of 2015. "With the success with 'Coat of Many Colors' and the Blue Smoke CD and our tour through Europe that got a lot of attention here," she said. "A lot of the fans said why don't you do it here, and I said, 'Sure. If you want me to, I will.' So actually it seemed to be a good time to do it."

She added that she's including a segment in the show centered on the film. "I always talk about the 'Coat of Many Colors' and my mom. And now after the movie did so well, I have also written a song called 'Momma.' I will just be talking about all different types of things - my grandpa and just how I was brought up and how it means a lot to me. And I will be doing a little gospel segment based on the fact I grew up in my grandpa's church."

Why perform in NC?

The success of the film has also introduced the singer to a new generation of younger fans, who include Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. Perry recently joined Parton at the 51st American Country Awards where they sang a medley of her biggest hits. Asked if either of those superstars may make guest appearances during the tour, the singer only laughed. "Not that I know of. If they show up, you bet I wouldn't refuse them because they have got a lot of fans and I am very touched when those girls act like they love me and I really appreciate what they do. We don't have anything like that planned."

Parton has long been a major gay icon, which led to questions as to whether Parton would perform in states having passed or considering anti-gay legislation, such as North Carolina and Tennessee. "I do not intend on canceling any of my shows because I am just the kind of person everybody through the years has known that i have an open, generous heart and that all people should be treated with respect and be treated according to whatever the situation calls for. I don't really like to get up in controversial issues. And I certainly don't think it is fair to the public. And I can address whatever my thoughts are, if need be, from the stage."

Earlier this week, though, she didn't shy away from addressing the Orlando Massacre. "First of all, I do have a big gay following," Parton told reporters at a press conference in Toronto. "I'm a patron saint for a lot of them guys, and it makes me feel good. All those drag queens, sometimes I see some of them look more like me than I do...As far as what happened in Orlando, that's horrible. It wouldn't matter what kind of club it was. It happened to be a gay, lesbian club. ... And it's a hate crime, it looks to me, is what they said.

"I am not God. I am no judge. I just know that God loves us all," she continued. "I work with so many and hire so many people. I have thousands of people that I employ through all of my various businesses, whether it's Dollywood or Dixie Stampede, the Lumberjack [Adventure], we hire everybody. I just think it's terrible that people kill anybody for any reason. But the fact that you just kill somebody for being something you don't agree with or don't understand or accept, that's terrible. It's just terrible period. We should just love one another a little more, don't you think?"

Dolly Parton appears at Boston's Citi Performance Arts Center on June 21, 2016. For ticket information, visit Dolly Parton's website.