When Jim Lauderdale signed his first major-label deal in 1989, it's fair to assume he didn't expect his career to play out the way it has. Chances are, it was dreams of country superstardom. That has yet to come. But 14 years later, the relative failure in that pursuit (a fate that was foreboded with his first album, only finally released a decade later and just overseas) was perhaps the most profound blessing in a devilish disguise.
With the release of his 11th album, Wait 'Til Spring, a collaboration with the loose and rootsy rock outfit, Donna The Buffalo, Lauderdale, 46, continues on a path of Americana eclecticism with a level of artistic freedom bound to foster envy. Among his highlights, two albums with bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, including last year's Grammy Award-winning Lost In The Lonesome Pines. Sure, paying the bills is also nice -- penning songs for George Strait and other mainstreamers surely takes care of that and more. But yes, dreams do come true in ways sometimes unfathomed.
Released on Dualtone in conjunction with his own Sky Crunch Productions, Wait 'Til Spring, combines the Lauderdale's country warmth and structure with the Donna The Buffalo's celebratory, soulful grooves and twangy accoutrements. It's country music free of its shackles; it's a freewheeling band reeled in nicely by structure. A fine meeting place, indeed.
MoMZine editor Neal Weiss caught up with Lauderdale as he worked in a Nashville studio on a collection of songs he's written with famed Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. That's but one of a seemingly unending list of projects coming down the pike for Lauderdale: there's a bluegrass album and a more traditional country effort in the works, and the idea of a second DTB collaboration currently percolating. And of course, Lauderdale remains diligent at his bread-and-butter gig -- witness "She Used To Say That To Me," the lead-off track on Strait's latest Billboard country chart-topper, Honkytonkville. And what have you done lately?
MoMZine: Why Donna The Buffalo?
Lauderdale: Because I enjoy playing with them so much. I wanted to capture that on tape. I met them several years ago. I was out touring with Lucinda Williams on the Car Wheels tour, and we played at the Newport Folk Festival I had just met them and we just hit it off so well on a personal level. I just had the best time with them, joking around and just talking. Then we were playing MerleFest in North Carolina at the same time and we jammed a little bit and they invited me to their GrassRoots festival, which is up in Ithaca. And they offered to back me up. So we did that and it just clicked. They're so excellent.
Miles Of Music: What is it about them that appeals to you?
Lauderdale: What I love about their music is everything. I just think they're all great players. They're just so much fun to watch. And we share a lot of the same influences -- traditional country, Ralph Stanley, old-timey music -- and they have exposed me to other styles, like world music and zydeco. They have kind of opened my mind in a lot of ways, through their festival and just through what they're listening to. The Campbell Brothers is a group I saw playing at their festival. It's a sacred steel group from Rochester, New York and it's just amazing. And this Native American group, Black Fire -- stuff that I probably wouldn't have heard if it wasn't for them. I'm so isolated when I'm working on my stuff all the time that I'm always far behind in listening to stuff that I want to hear. So, when I go to this festival I get a good dose of new stuff.
MoMZine: Did you write with them in mind?
Lauderdale: I'll think, "OK, we have a gig coming up, I'm gonna sit down a write something for us to do at that gig, see if it flies on stage. That's a great way to work out the song -- play it several times live before you have to go into the studio. Some of the songs I had to finish. We went in, cut the music and then I finished the lyrics later, which is kind of one of my processes.
MoMZine: Have they helped you expand your musical vocabulary?
Lauderdale: Yes. They've kind of freed me up, and I get rejuvenated by that. And just being around them as people, it's just a joy. Their group is a great kind of family. It really works and comes off on stage as infectious to the crowd. I'm a lousy dancer, like most singer-songwriters are, but when I hear them I just can't stand still. So if I'm at one of their shows I get someplace where I can blend in and loosen up a little bit with some dancing, which I normally don't do.
MoMZine: Compare working with Donna The Buffalo with your last collaborator, Ralph Stanley.
Lauderdale: They're so totally different. Ralph is such a legend in his own right, and the Clinch Mountain Boys are experts and the perfect people for Ralph's style of music. And so when I was writing for those records it really had to be specifically within a certain style. It had to fit Ralph. And this record, I could explore more, mix anything up, any particular kind of feel or whatever that I thought the band would shine on, then I could do it. So it was a broader palette.
MoMZine: Is there anything particular on Wait 'Til Spring that best exemplifies something that maybe you never imagined you'd do if it wasn't for this project?
Lauderdale: I think that the songs "Holding Back," or "Wowowo," because of that zydeco influence, I probably wouldn't have done that if it wasn't for them. I think maybe in some ways lyrically too, because this record is a no-holds-barred type thing, and because it doesn't have to be a specific genre, I probably was in some ways maybe a little more adventurous.
MoMZine: Would you call this a country album?
Lauderdale: No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't really know how to categorize it except for maybe saying it's an Americana album. Kind of that mixture of styles. It does have a little bit of country but, I'm gonna be making country record in the next few months and I'm also working on a solo bluegrass record. I like to kind of separate things so they're fairly defined. This [next] record will definitely be a country record, with a lot of pedal steel. And then the bluegrass record, it's gonna be a fairly traditional sounding bluegrass album with some experimentation, but I wouldn't call it newgrass. So, no, I wouldn't call this a country album.
I'm kind of on a cycle. I've been trying to get a bluegrass deal since I was a teenager, so finally when the record with Ralph came out it was so gratifying to me to put out a bluegrass record and then it was quadruple-y more fulfilling that I got to do it with Ralph. So, what my plan is now is to regularly put out a bluegrass record, regularly put out a country record sometimes very traditional and sometimes more progressive, and then probably regularly put out more eclectic singer-songwriter records. I'm gonna keep doing that. There's no reason for me to feel that I have to be pigeonholed. I have never had any particular label for me. Like, if I had a hit with a country ballad so now I'm the country-ballad singer. I'm free to do whatever I want which is really fun.
MoMZine: Are you beyond the idea of mainstream success?
Lauderdale: We're really fortunate that there's these Americana stations out there and Triple A radio that have a varied format. But it's kind of more of a growing process with that type of radio and it's not like having a hit record at rock or country radio. I am realistic at this stage in the game that if on one of my country records I had a hit on my own, that would be a real fluke. But I'm not ruling it out. On all my country records I feel like there are songs that have that potential but I don't hold my breath for it the happen just because of the nature of country music. There are so many other acts vying for that radio space and I would just be one of the many people that are vying for that. But I always try to write songs that I put on those records that I think, "Wow, I really love this song. Sure, I could hear it on the radio." But, like I say, it would just have to be a fluke.
MoMZine: You're interested in working with Donna The Buffalo again?
Lauderdale: I sure would. We haven't talked about it yet but they're open to it. They've been really working hard on their record so I don't want to burden them with already thinking about a next one. But I've already taken down some ideas and there were some ideas that I just didn't get a chance to finish on this record. I intended to do some co-writing with Tara Nevins and Jeb Puryear, who are their main writers. At some point we're gonna do some touring together, if they're ready in the fall, and I'm hoping that during that time that I'll be able to sit down in an un-pressurized situation and write with them.
MoMZine: And then there's this collaboration with Robert Hunter.
Lauderdale: I started writing with Robert Hunter when I did the first Ralph Stanley record, but that was just through fax. And then he came to Nashville a few years ago and we sat down and wrote about 34 songs, whittling it down for this record to 11 or 12. I'm really enjoying that. I doing it at the same time as this bluegrass record. Luckily the songs with Robert are finished. The slowest thing and the slowest thing with the Donna The Buffalo record was me finishing lyrics. The music comes out quickly but I have to labor over that more. But on this Robert Hunter record, Donna The Buffalo is on a cut, Buddy Miller's gonna sing harmony, Emmylou's singing harmony on one, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are on a cut, and Tim O'Brien and Darrell Scott are on several songs picking, and Byron House is the bass player on everything. I just feel real lucky and privileged to work with people like Ralph and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Donna The Buffalo, to write with people like Robert Hunter and to work with all those musicians. It is a great feeling.
MoMZine: A Grateful Dead connection with Hunter, I assume?
Lauderdale: Yes. When I was in high school in Chapel Hill, my roommate was a teacher who had Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. I was real into bluegrass and country at the time and that really touched a chord with me. I could see this thread with what I was listening to. That's where my first awareness of Robert was.
MoMZine: So, you're working on a bluegrass album, a country album and this one with Hunter. Meanwhile, you're also writing songs for others?
Lauderdale: Yes, at the same time I do all the other stuff, I get calls from producers through my publishing company, Bluewater Music, which is an independent company I've been with for 13 years. If George Strait's going in I'll get a call that he's looking. He has recorded the most songs of anybody, he's done 13 and I've got the first track on his new album that I co-wrote with John Scott Fitzgerald, "She Used To Say That To Me." For him and Patty Loveless, who's done four of my songs and had a hit with a couple of them, and some others, I will specifically map out this amount of time to go in and write, co-write, and demo the songs to pitch. Ironically, it seems like if I do specifically try to write for somebody else, even when I think, "Man, this just sound perfect for them, it's gonna be a hit," usually they don't cut 'em. It's the songs that I kind of didn't expect them to or maybe were last-ditch efforts to get to them after they'd turned down everything else [that are chosen]. The songs that I feel so sure about usually don't make it. It just goes to show you that I might think something sounds like a hit but the artist or producer might not agree.
MoMZine: Is there a recipe for a hit song?
Lauderdale: I do hear songs on the radio that are hits that I can't believe sometimes they ever made it. I don't understand if the song is not a great song, or, it has a catchiness to it but it's annoying. I have real high standards as far as my choices, but it's a personal thing. I might not like something, [but] there might be millions of people that are buying a certain album because of a song. I'm just not a good judge of that. But my personal philosophy for a hit song is, if it's one of my songs that I'm gonna pitch to somebody, it's hard to put your finger on it but there's just a certain feeling that song gives you or it's got some kind of a magic to it or some kind of quality that makes you want to hear it or sing it over and over. And to me that's a hit. Of course, for the radio, there are certain parameters. Songs are usually between two and three-and-a-half minutes. There could be some song I think is great but it could be eight minutes long. That doesn't work.
MoMZine: I guess George Strait's career has been good to you?
Lauderdale: Oh man, it's been a real blessing. Before I got the cuts with him, the producers in Nashville thought I was too left-of-center. And then, [Strait, with producer] Tony Brown, cut those two songs, "Where The Sidewalk Ends," that I wrote with John Leventhal, and "The King Of Broken Hearts," which was a tribute song I wrote to Gram Parsons and George Jones. I didn't even know he was gonna record them. I found out about it the next day and then they made it on the Pure Country soundtrack. That kicked open the doors for me. It kinda gave me some credibility.
MoMZine: So, for those keeping score at home, the Robert Hunter album is next?
Lauderdale: I kinda hate to speculate on this, so maybe I shouldn't say anything until these things are done. I'd better not start any arguments. I'm always wanting to put out multiple releases and by some way or another I'm gonna keep doing it until I need to put out one a year or skip a year or something. It took me so long to get a record deal, and then with the stops and starts once you do get a record deal, I feel like I've got a lot of catching up to do. Since I'm on a roll I just want to keep doing it. I would like for this bluegrass album and this Robert Hunter album to come out on the same day but I'd better not say yet. So stay tuned.
