Sometimes a walk in the park can clear the mind and is good for the soul.
And when you live in Nashville, you never know who you’re going to meet. For Jim Lauderdale, a random stroll he ran into Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars.
Lauderdale struck up a conversation with Dickinson, who had been a former guest on the radio show he co-hosts weekly with Buddy Miller on Sirius XM Outlaw Country. Lauderdale mentioned he was doing a session at the historic RCA Studio A. Soon Dickinson was in the studio with Lauderdale cutting seven tracks and coming back to do another six. But it was Dickinson’s encouragement go to Royal Studios in Memphis that inspired him to write a bunch of songs for the sessions. That became another album and the result is a two-CD set called Soul Searching, available as a double-album or individually. To borrow from Tom T. Hall, that’s how Jim Lauderdale got to Memphis.
On the day Lauderdale calls me to discuss the new album, the music is so new that he talks about how it was finished “last Tuesday or Wednesday.” Soul Searching is split into two sets: ‘Volume 1 Memphis’ and ‘Volume 2 Nashville.’
Lauderdale is pleased, saying he’s never written a series of songs in such a short time. As we speak, Lauderdale is getting ready for the Americana Music Awards where he has hosted so many years he’s forgotten how many. This year is the 14th for the program, which began in a hotel ballroom and is now an institution at the Ryman (the show, streamed by NPR, will be edited for a one-hour program on PBS’ Austin City Limits in November).
It’s hard for Lauderdale to name his biggest thrills as emcee but cites a few: seeing former Led Zeppelin front man Robert Plant and his Band of Joy perform and being there the night lyricist Robert Hunter received a lifetime achievement award. Hunter, best known for his writing with the Grateful Dead, is one of Lauderdale’s frequent collaborators. Together they’ve written over 100 songs.
Lauderdale’s desire to do soul songs, which on the surface might seem unexpected, but Lauderdale has never been conventional. He’s full of history and a musical chameleon, moving back and forth between genres in country, bluegrass, and whatever strikes his creative fancy at the moment. He talks of his love of records recorded at Stax Studios and Royal in Memphis. The funky rhythmic lines and scorching horn arrangements and all-girl background vocals sound as at home on the record as they might as part of Quentin Tarantino’s soundtrack of Jackie Brown. They’re that authentic. The studio, which celebrates its sixtieth anniversary next year, has been home to the greats like Al Green, Ike & Tina Turner, Chuck Berry and others. Lauderdale comes out of Royal as the unlikely funk soul brother you have to check out now.
Lauderdale confesses to being a music history geek and laments the loss of historic places that have bulldozed to make way for condominiums and other buildings. That was the presumed fate of RCA Studio A until it was saved. “There’s not many places left,” he says. “There are vibrations from music that’s been made and still exists in those studios.”
In Jeremy Dylan’s documentary Jim Lauderdale: King of Broken Hearts, you can see Lauderdale walking through the hallowed halls of RCA Studio A in the middle of the night as he is trying to finish a song so his band can record it. That was done several years ago, and Lauderdale came back to the hallowed ground once again where records were made by Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings and George Jones.
When Lauderdale talks about his companion CD cut in Nashville, he can’t really define what country music is. Over the past four decades, Lauderdale has quietly recorded 28 albums and is one of the most covered country artists. Widely revered as the face of Americana music, Lauderdale is a songwriter’s songwriter, first made popular as a writer by Vince Gill who covered “Sparkle” on his breakthrough album Pocketful of Gold. George Strait sang both “Where The Sidewalk Ends” and “The King of Broken Hearts” on the “Pure Country” album. Strait has covered fifteen of his songs and Lauderdale is hoping he’ll do more.
Lauderdale has also written for the television show “Nashville,” the ABC television drama that his longtime friend and collaborator Buddy Miller oversees as the show’s music producer. His songs “Tough All Over,” “Tears So Strong” and “Storms Are Coming” have appeared successively in the first three seasons. Lauderdale also played banjo in one episode when Scarlett made her Opry debut.
When Lauderdale stepped onstage at the Ryman, it was the same place where he once portrayed George Jones in a musical play about Tammy Wynette called “Stand By Your Man.” “He played such a big role in her life so it was a pretty major role,” the theater major from the North Carolina School of Arts says. “I felt hopefully I could portray his essence and get his mannerisms in the way he talked and moved.”
Jones once dueted with singer Patty Loveless on one of Lauderdale’s signature songs, “You Don’t Seem To Miss Me.” Thirty years ago when Lauderdale had his first record deal with Epic, he and Jones recorded “Tavern Choir” by Dennis Knutson. But it never made to the public until a few years ago when a posthumous album was released called Burn Your Playhouse Down: The Unreleased Duets. Lauderdale did get to sing “The King of Broken Hearts” at the Ryman for the legend they called “The Possum.”
When Jeremy Dylan shot the documentary The King of Broken Hearts, the documentary surfaced the kind of creative chaos he likes to work with. Lauderdale seemed to stay stayed true to form. For the Memphis sessions, he took a red eye from Los Angeles where he had been playing only to go into Royal and work into the night. He walked into the control room and worked all day and into the nights “so I’d have something.” He ended up cutting six or seven tracks in one day.
On the night of the Americana Music Awards, Lauderdale is like the convener of the faithful. The show, which clocks in just under four hours, still has the feel of a small community event adapting to live television. When artists are not quite ready to perform on cue, Lauderdale draws on his theater background and propensity for shtick and humor that is so dry and unsuspecting you might first think Lauderdale was being serious. It’s the same persona he seems to revert to on The Buddy & Jim Show when he and Miller surface musical historical details and great anecdotes weekly from renowned guests. At the Ryman, Lauderdale took center stage to play “You Were Here,” the lead track from ‘Volume 2: Nashville.’
Soul Searching reunites Lauderdale with Dickinson and Muscle Shoals greats Spooner Oldham and David Hood, with whom he was first paired in 2013 on his albums Black Roses and Blue Moon Junction. Lauderdale once again has issued the new album on his own Sky Crunch Records.
While Lauderdale was not quite ready to admit he was thinking about his next project, Lauderdale said he still has finished work that he wants to release. There’s an album he did in London with Nick Lowe’s band that’s ready. There is also another album he has in the can recorded with the musicians he assembled for his “Honey Songs” album, including the great guitarist James Burton who played with Elvis Presley and Gram Parsons. Lauderdale also says he wants to write more country and bluegrass songs and make acoustic music.
Lauderdale, who says he earns most of his income playing live on the road, says his approach to self-funding comes at a cost. “I don’t beg or steal but I borrow.” Lauderdale admits he’s accumulated debt and had to sell some of his guitars on occasion. There can be some stressful times.
“But in the end if the songs get on disc, further on it’ll work out. Someday something will happen. The main thing is to be creative.”
Originally posted here.
