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| Date |
City |
Venue |
| Fri 7/11/08 |
Bethlehem, PA |
Godfrey Daniels |
| Sat 7/12/08 |
Camden, NJ |
XPoNential Music Festival |
| Thu 7/17/08 |
Nashville, TN |
Ryman Auditorium |
| Fri 7/18/08 |
Trumansburg, NY |
GrassRoots Festival of Music & Dance |
| Sat 8/2/08 |
Comstock Park, MI |
Silver Maple Music Festival |
| Sun 8/10/08 |
Alta, WY |
Grand Targhee Resort |
| Sun 9/7/08 |
Fall River, MA |
Narrows Center for the Arts |
| Fri 9/26/08 |
Cumberland, MD |
Harvest Time Festival |
|
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Even
in Nashville, a city teeming with talent, Jim Lauderdale is
unique.
He came to Music City, for example, not as a kid off the Greyhound
with stars in his eyes, but as a singer and songwriter who had
already begun a promising career.
Once arrived, he became a high-profile performer while at the
same time building his reputation as a “writer’s
writer,” a reliable source of hit material for George
Strait, George Jones, Vince Gill, Patty Loveless, the Dixie
Chicks, and other headliners. By 2002, Lauderdale’s collaboration
with Ralph Stanley, Lost in the Lonesome Pines, garnered him
a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album of the Year, and he was presented
with both the Americana Music Association’s Artist of
the Year Award and Song of the Year.
Pundits in the know took note early on of Lauderdale’s
appeal. Jim Macnie suggests – correctly – on allmusic.com
that “if every Nashville singing star had to cut at least
one Lauderdale song, country wouldn’t be the Chumpville
that it is these days.” The Nashville Scene classifies
him as “a hip country chameleon.” And Entertainment
Weekly lauds his ability to make his songs “ache, bend,
snort, and moan in a way no one else does.”
All of this suggests that Lauderdale isn’t an artist you
can file easily into any one category.
And now, with his simultaneous release of two new albums, different
in style yet equal in their excellence, this point is made clearer
than ever.
On Bluegrass, a collection of tunes written alone or with co-writers
like Buddy Miller, John Leventhal, Joe Henry, and Leslie Satcher,
Lauderdale assembles an all-star lineup of musicians who know
their way around the banjo and fiddle, and invests this traditional
music with the creative chops that have made him a fixture along
Music Row.
And on Country Super Hits Volume 1, he pairs with another respected
writer, Odie Blackmon (also his co-producer on this project),
to create a selection of tunes that capture the essence of classic
honky-tonk and mainstream country, right down to the jukebox
glow and the last-call bouquet of whiskey and beer.
As with all of Lauderdale’s work, from Planet of Love,
his critic-dazzling debut in 1991, through Headed for the Hills,
his epic collaboration in 2004 with Grateful Dead lyrical wizard
Robert Hunter, Bluegrass and Country Super Hits Volume 1 make
a strong initial impression and grow richer with repetition.
The point is that, as compelling as this music is when heard
for the first time, there’s plenty going on below the
surface too.
Ask Lauderdale about this, and his answer is unexpected yet
right on the button: “I think there are more similarities
than differences between these two albums,” he says. “These
songs could go either way. The bluegrass stuff could be cut
by a country artist, and vice versa. To me, a good song is a
good song, no matter how you do it.”
We respect Lauderdale’s opinion – after all, who
knows more about the magic behind the bleary epiphany of “I
Met Jesus in a Bar” on the country CD, or the topsy-turvy
confusion, offset by some burnin’ fiddle, dobro, and banjo,
on the bluegrass track, “Who’s Leavin’ Who”?
Yet suspicion persists that there is some difference in the
work; after all, it’s hard to imagine a song with a deeper
bluegrass feel than “Mighty Lonesome” or a more
perfect saloon lament than “Honky Tonk Mood Again.”
The truth is that Lauderdale has always had that ability of
writing music that reflects his originality as well as a sense
of total authenticity. Because his mission is to write songs
that excel on their own, rather than shape them to the standards
of any one genre, he has been able to come up with material
that can be adapted to almost any kind of interpretation.
Arguably, though, the best interpretations are Lauderdale’s.
That pain in his phrasing in “Love in the Ruins”
and “Forever Ends Today,” from Bluegrass, came partly
through the influence of Buck Owens but mostly through his own
gift for channeling life’s lessons through a melody and
lacing it with a sharp, unforgettable hook. That transformation
of the nimble fiddle/guitar line on “Don’t Blame
the Wrong Guy” into a counter-melody on the chorus shows
his interest in going beyond the conventions of the idiom. And
on Country Super Hits Volume 1 the rumba groove that adds dimension
to the barroom beat of “Two More Wishes,” and the
decision to build the emotional peak of a ballad on the word
“Cautious” – and make it work – testifies
as well to his accessible unorthodoxy.
But for all the variety within these tracks, Bluegrass and Country
Super Hits Volume 1 pay tribute, in the end, to two great strains
of American music, whose spirits are enhanced rather than distracted
by Lauderdale’s innovations.
“I recognize that my diversity can create a challenge
for those that need to categorize me,” he admits, “where
even though I might have Ralph Stanley singing with me, there’s
also some singer/songwriter stuff and some country stuff –
so which bin does it belong in at the record store? I think
Bluegrass and Country Super Hits Volume 1 are a little more
straightforward.”
Maybe so, but coming from an artist who has opened for both
George Clinton and Johnny Cash, cut his teeth onstage while
sandwiched between rock and blues bands in L.A., and won a Grammy
Award for an album whose title song he composed while driving
home from a Ralph Stanley session and recorded after rushing
back to the studio to cut “Lost in the Lonesome Pines,”
his straightforward path usually hides unexpected turns.
That’s Jim Lauderdale: predictably unpredictable, surprising
and satisfying, transforming American music once again. |
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The Bluegrass Diaries
Yep Roc
2007 |
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