Band: Jim Lauderdale
Album: From Another World
VÖ: 21.06.2019
Label: Yep Roc Records / Bertus Musikvertrieb GmbH
Website: www.jimlauderdale.com
Jim Lauderdale is a 2-time Grammy winning Americana icon, a singer-songwriter whose unmistakable rhinestone-incrusted silhouette has been a symbol for creative integrity and prolificacy for thirty-one albums over decades of recording. He’s an A-list Nashville songwriter whose songs have ruled the country charts while recording an eclectic catalogue of albums that run the gamut of American roots styles. His prolific streak of releases continues in 2019 with his new album ‘From Another World’.
The ten songs contained within, all written or co-written by Jim, are his antidote to the anger, divisiveness of today’s world, a world full of bad news and folks yelling at each other on CNN. This is music from another world, a world of empathy, love, forgiveness and humility. Where people find freedom through togetherness, where they struggle to change for the better,where country music still cries with the sound of pedal steel guitar and psychedelic-tinged lyrics flow through aching indelible melodies.
From the start of his career, Jim Lauderdale has been creating his own musical world. Too expansive, eclectic and creatively curious to fit into any prescribed genre boxes, he innovated what is now called Americana music, long before there was a term for it. Everything about the man and his music is classic and timeless, but he’s a total original. The McCartney-esque melodies sung in his aching high lonesome tenor, the fiercely authentic bluegrass songs with mind-expanding psychedelic lyrics… nothing about Jim’s music can be reduced to a single influence, and no other songwriter would fuse these classic strains of tune-craft into such unexpected but immediately satisfying combinations.
“A long time ago, I decided that with each record, I would ignore the categories people tried to put me into and just make the music that was in my heart,” Lauderdale explains. “This album is about the search for connection, love and understanding between people, about finding empathy in a world where it feels like folks are more and more at loggerheads. When the world outside your window feels too tough to bear, I hope you’ll step into the world we’ve created here.”
The scion of a preacher dad and music teacher mom in rural North Carolina, Jim’s world was turned upside as a kid when he saw the Beatles explosive debut on Ed Sullivan, rewiring his creative mind. Teaching himself a variety of instruments, Jim explored songwriting as a teenager, fueled by a musical diet that ran the gamut from George Jones to the Grateful Dead, Al Green to the Stanley Brothers.
A visit to Nashville opened Jim’s eyes to how hard he would need to work to realise his dreams of emulating his troubadour heroes – recording a bluegrass album with legendary mandolin player Roland White, but unable to find a record deal (the album was finally released last year).
In 1980, Jim headed to New York City to cut his teeth in the country clubs, making fast friends with fellow musical iconoclasts like Buddy Miller and Shawn Colvin. Jim honed his live chops and graduated to Los Angeles, where he spent the late 80s at the center of the fiery alt-country scene alongside Lucinda Williams and Dwight Yoakam, packing out the Palomino Club and catching the eyes of the local crowds and industry alike, leading to his first record deal.
While his classic 90s albums like ‘Planet of Love’ and ‘Pretty Close to the Truth’ drew him rave reviews, Lauderdale’s musical style was too eclectic to fit easily into the major label country box. There was no genre label for a left-of-center blend of country, blues, rock, soul, folk and bluegrass, so Jim had to pioneer one. These days, the identity of Americana music and Jim Lauderdale are one and the same. The first ever winner of the Americana Music Association’s Song and Artist of the Year trophies and the honorary Wagonmaster award, Jim also served as host of the awards for many years. While some people struggle to define what Americana music is, others just point to Jim’s eclectic but totally cohesive catalogue as the defining example. Although he never got to work with his idol Gram Parsons, who Jim immortalized in his classic signature song ‘The King of Broken Hearts’ (also the title of a feature documentary on Jim), Lauderdale has realized that great dream of any musician – to stand shoulder to shoulder making music with his biggest inspirations. His duet albums with bluegrass icon Dr Ralph Stanley earned Jim his first Grammy award, he’s penned albums worth of bluegrass gems with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter and he’s on a short list that includes Paul McCartney and Allen Toussaint as a writing partner of Elvis Costello.
It’s no wonder that artists from Willie Nelson to John Oates line up to collaborate with Jim, hoping to snare some of that Lauderdale magic. After all, his songs have helped sell millions of albums for artists like George Strait, the Dixie Chicks, Patty Loveless, Lee Ann Womack, Blake Shelton, Solomon Burke, Gary Allan and Vince Gill. Classic songs like ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’, ‘You Don’t Seem to Miss Me’, ‘Hole in My Head’, ‘Halfway Down’, ‘We Really Shouldn’t Be Doing This’ and many more have come from his pen.
With his new album ‘From Another World’, Jim has once again opened his heart wide and delivered a record of original songs that plays like a greatest hits set. From the opening one-two punch of hard-charging Dylanesque ‘Some Horses Run Free’ and desperation-led waltz ‘When You Can’t Have What Your Heart Wants’, it’s obvious Lauderdale is firing on all cylanders. ‘The Secrets of the Pyramids’ evokes the twangy psychedelia of the Byrds at their best, rich in harmonies from Third Man Records star Lillie Mae and her brother Frank Rische. The video is a tounge-in-cheek homage to the clip for Toto’s ‘Africa’ and features Jim and acclaimed singer- songwriter Elizabeth Cook in starring roles.
Nothing evokes the ghosts of George Jones like instantly classic country love songs ‘For Keeps’ (released this year on Valentine’s Day), ‘Like People From Another World’ and ‘I’ll Forgive You If You Don’t’. The expansive, questioning ‘One Away’ leads into the empathetic finger-picked ‘Listen’. ‘Slow Turn In The Road’ is a bluesy chug lead by stinging guitars and a deeply soulful lead vocal, ‘Ever Living Loving Day’ is the kind of clever-but-playful lyric Jim can write like no other and the album culminates in the wild rave-up ‘Are You Trying To Make A Song out of Us?’.
“When I write or play or get into the studio, it feels like it’s all coming together for me - that this is what I’m here to do. No matter what is going on in the rest of my life, how hard things sometimes get, I can leave behind this three and a half minute song and that makes it all worthwhile.”
Infos zur vorherigen VÖ:
Band: Jim Lauderdale
Album: Time Flies
VÖ: 03.08.2018
und: Jim Lauderdale And Roland White (bisher unveröffentlichtes, älteres Album)
Label: Yep Roc Records / H’Art
Website: www.jimlauderdale.com/
Yep Roc Records is proud to announce the simultaneous release of two records from Nashville legend Jim Lauderdale on Friday, August 3 -- TIME FLIES and JIM LAUDERDALE AND ROLAND WHITE. Both are “new,” but only TIME FLIES was recently recorded.
Lauderdale’s 30th and 31st studio albums respectively, TIME FLIES and JIM LAUDERDALE AND ROLAND WHITE mark the 2x GRAMMY® Award-winner’s long awaited return to the Yep Roc roster after a decade apart. TIME FLIES and JIM LAUDERDALE AND ROLAND WHITE are heralded by today’s Rolling Stone premiere of the former collection’s title track, “Time Flies,” streaming now at XX. In addition, Lauderdale has unveiled a Monty Python’s Flying Circus-inspired animated trailer announcing both TIME FLIES and JIM LAUDERDALE AND ROLAND WHITE, streaming now at the official Yep Roc YouTube channel.
Lauderdale will mark the arrival of TIME FLIES and JIM LAUDERDALE AND ROLAND WHITE with an assortment of upcoming live dates, including headline shows and festival performances such as this Saturday’s Appalachia Rising event at the Carter Family Fold in Hiltons, VA (May 19). Additional live dates will be announced soon – please see www.jimlauderdale.com for updates and more.
TIME FLIES sees Lauderdale doing what he does best, writing and performing classic Americana distinctively infused with striking notes of country and soul. Produced by Lauderdale and Jay Weaver at Nashville’s Blackbird Studio and House of Blues Studios, the album is among the most striking works of this one-of-a-kind artist’s three decade career, once again demonstrating his remarkable lyrical gifts and genre-agnostic musical approach. Songs like the stirring title track offer able evidence that Lauderdale’s creative mission continues unabated, his ability to rejuvenate his sound indomitable.
JIM LAUDERDALE AND ROLAND WHITE is Lauderdale’s previously unreleased first full-length record, a collection of classic bluegrass recorded in the basement of Earl and Louise Scruggs’ Nashville home in the summer of 1979 and then lost for nearly four decades. Lauderdale was new to town at the time, while White was already a true bluegrass legend, known for his mastery of the mandolin and foundation of such iconic groups as The Kentucky Colonels and Country Gazette. Sadly the master tapes went missing for 38 years and were only recently rediscovered at the bottom of a box by White’s wife. As remarkable, energetic, and original today as it was when initially recorded, JIM LAUDERDALE AND ROLAND WHITE provides an intimate look into the nascent beginnings of a truly extraordinary American artist.
Two-time GRAMMY® Award-winning singer and master songwriter Jim Lauderdale has created a truly unique body of work spanning more than 30 albums of imaginative roots music, encompassing country, bluegrass, soul, R&B and rock, as such helping pave the way for the current Americana movement.
Lauderdale – who has released at least one, and sometimes as many as three, records every year since 1998 – is a true songwriter's songwriter, the second most recorded writer in George Strait’s canon as well as the writer or co-writer of country hits by Patty Loveless, George Jones, Mark Chesnutt, Dixie Chicks, Blake Shelton and others. Also known as an intuitive sideman, Lauderdale has enhanced the music of countless iconic artists, including Dr. Ralph Stanley, the North Mississippi Allstars, Donna the Buffalo, Elvis Costello, Buddy Miller and Lucinda Williams. Other collaborations include six collections co-written with legendary Grateful Dead collaborator Robert Hunter. As if all that weren’t enough, Lauderdale is also co-host – with Buddy Miller – of SiriusXM’s weekly "The Buddy & Jim Radio Show,” as well as co-host of “Music City Roots,” Nashville’s long-running roots and Americana variety show.
