| Country
Poet |
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Despite his devil-may-care attitude, Jim Lauderdale is an extremely valuable cog in the Nashville music machine. While there’s a good chance that you haven’t heard his voice on the local country music station, that doesn’t mean that you haven’t heard one of his songs there. Since the early 1990s, Lauderdale’s compositions appear on albums recorded by country music superstars The Dixie Chicks, Patty Loveless and Vince Gill, as well as on eight albums recorded by George Strait. Yet with that songwriting success, his own recordings barely gather even the slightest of attention from the pop-hungry country music radio programmers. “I’ve kind of stopped caring about how mainstream country looks at me as a performer,” Lauderdale said in a phone interview midway between a studio session and a performance. “I just enjoy doing what I do. And I definitely am an advocate for the more traditional country music sound.” It is this advocacy that has made Lauderdale a demigod among the Americana music crowd. One can often find his warm-as-wool North Carolina voice harmonizing with Lucinda Williams and Dwight Yoakam. Spin magazine called him “the most gifted voice in alternative country.” His latest release, Headed for the Hills, is a collaboration with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. He has recorded two albums with bluegrass pioneer Ralph Stanley, with 2002’s Lost in the Lonesome Pines snagging a Grammy. Last year the Americana Music Association presented him with awards for Artist of the Year and Song of the Year (for the Lauderdale/Stanley co-write “She’s Looking at Me”). Add to his resume that he portrayed the legendary George Jones in the Nashville production of Stand By Your Man: The Tammy Wynette Story. Yes, he has a right to lay claim to James Brown’s title, “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.” Yet it is in Lauderdale’s songs that one can find undying respect for the varied country music purveyors. Any of his albums treats the audience to the entire spectrum of the genre, from Nashville countrypolitan to Bakersfield honky-tonk to high lonesome bluegrass to Texas swing. His music is blessed with catchy hooks. His lyrics are simple, yet when sung with the right amount of passion, they evoke the same reactions to love, heartache, mistrust, and loneliness that made Buck Owens, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard the country poets that they are. He cherishes the influences, yet pushes the boundaries just enough to create harmonious disturbance. Hank and Patsy would be proud. “Country has evolved into what it is today, and it is constantly evolving,” he says. “I figure that there will be a long-term return to the more traditional sound. It has always had elements of pop music. There have always been complaints like ‘What’s country coming to?’ for years. Certain artists and producers try to copy rock music sounds, so it comes out in country music one or two years later in an attempt to get more sales. It will continue to happen, there will never be one type of country music sound.” And yet, he strives for more, as if to challenge himself: “I’m way behind on doing a solo bluegrass album. I would love to do some work with Alison Krauss, as well as Beck, there are just so many people, and I would just love to collaborate with Dylan.” It is this love for new challenges that makes him so musically successful when he appears at festivals throughout the country. “I just love doing festivals,” Lauderdale says. “I sometimes appear solo, sometimes with a band. I like the eclectic feel, such as listening to world music. I always learn something from other styles of music.” As an early supporter of the Americana genre (his premiere work with Stanley predates the O Brother, Where Art Thou? phenomenon by four years) along with the recognition from the awards and the numerous projects, he hopes that the continuing interest in Americana and traditional music will be a benefit to him in the long run. “I know that I have so many things going, but in short, it’s just so much fun,” he says. Even in conversation, one can tell that Lauderdale is a skilled craftsman at what he does. He listens intensely to every word that is spoken to him, as if his next composition may come from some off-the-cuff comment. It is a trait that not many have, and fewer know how to use it and perfect it to an art form. Like Harlan Howard and Cindy Walker before him, Jim Lauderdale paints “works of heart,” using the colors and brushes that have graced only the finest canvas of traditional country music. A2P Jim
Lauderdale appears with Mary Chapin Carpenter Wednesday, July 7
at the Michgan Theatre. For ticket information, call (734) 763-
TKTS.
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INTERVIEWS COLUMNS PLUS: Art: |
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