Singer-songwriter Bonoff takes the stage in Tucson

Singer-songwriter Karla Bonoff never imagined anyone would be interested in recording her song “Home” 40-plus years after she wrote it.

But sometime soon, country superstar Trisha Yearwood will record the song, which Bonoff wrote in the 1970s when she was in her 20s.

“It was the first one of mine that was recorded by anybody. It was recorded by Bonnie Raitt in 1976,” said Bonoff, 66. “It’s really cool to have Trisha Yearwood do it that many years later.”

“Home” is not the biggest hit Bonoff scored off other artists covering her songs. Tucson’s own Linda Ronstadt recorded several of Bonoff’s songs in the 1970s and ’80s, including “Someone to Lay Down Beside Me,” “Lose Again,” “All My Life,” which she recorded as a duet with Aaron Neville, and “Tell Me Why,” which country singer Wynonna Judd recorded on an album of the same name in 1993. Judd’s version went to No. 3 on the Billboard country charts.

“Home” and “All My Life” will likely be on the set list when Bonoff takes the stage at the Gregory School Performing Arts Center Saturday, Nov. 17, with guitarist Nina Gerber.

We snagged a phone interview with her last week to talk about the show and her 40-plus-year music career. Here’s some of what she had to say.

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A little demo and a lot of faith: “I hadn’t really had any success of any kind and I wasn’t signed to a label. I had been writing for seven or eight years. We threw together a little demo and sent it over to her and she said yeah. I was like, ‘Oh my God, that was too easy.’ But it wasn’t easy. It was 14 years of writing not great stuff.”

Yes, people, she did write that song: “I remember in the early ’70s, I was opening for Jackson Browne and I was playing these songs that Linda had already recorded and I just assumed that the people would know I wrote them. After the first couple of days I went, ‘Wait a minute, people just think, why is this girl covering Linda Ronstadt songs?’ Then I had to explain. And once I explained that, people were really on my side. But it was kind of mind-blowing to me. I went oh, my God, people don’t know. They don’t look at credits on albums. That’s depressing.”

Writing for herself: “I was always writing for myself and other artists picked up those songs. I don’t know how to write for somebody else. My hope is to just write more great, classical pop songs that other people can sing forever.”

Friends with Linda Ronstadt: ”(The pair met) around the time when my friend Kenny Edwards was playing in her band. He had been in the original Stone Poneys with her. We go way back in terms of that. I just saw her a few weeks ago. I saw her show she’s doing, which is really cool.”

Bonoff’s new album revisits her greatest hits: Recording “Carry Me Home” “makes me sentimental, looking back on my life or being on a certain tour. It just really makes me appreciative of the life music has given me and the opportunity to have this kind of lifestyle. I was just grateful I was able to do it.” The album is available through her website karlabonoff.com