Jimmy LaFave and Me...

I was so into Dylan when I was a kid. So, I started figuring out who Woody (Guthrie) was from there. I also knew of him from growing up in Oklahoma. I'd hear older folks talking about him. So in high school, I started listening to him. My two favorite songwriters are him and Dylan. I first heard of him in Stillwater. There was This Land Is Your Land, everyone knew that. But, even then, at that time in Oklahoma, you'd hear a lot of his songs. So Long Been Good To Know You, even Dust Pneumonia Blues and the dust bowl ballads. I got a hold of the Folkways recordings and pretty much all the Ash recordings I could find. I immersed myself in all of the Woody stuff. Sometimes, we'd take a midnight run to Okemah back then, when the walls of Woody's house were still standing and we'd go there. The town of Okemah didn't acknowledge him for a long time, like they thought of him as this communist or something. Now, today it's totally the opposite. Now they have a statue, they've embraced him. I think it was because of local politicians back then that he got swept under the rug.
Jimmy LaFave

There's so much music that's come from Oklahoma - Woody Guthrie, J.J. Cale, Chet Baker, Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Reba, Leon Russell...There's a cool music scene around Tulsa and Stillwater that has its own sound, like Memphis or New Orleans. They call it 'red dirt music.'
Jimmy LaFave

The Night Tribe is the name of my band that I have used since my early days of playing music in Oklahoma. It is also the name I use to describe all of the after-hours people who exist in my world of music. They are the Kerouac people, the all-night waitress, the 24-hour truck stop attendant, the after-midnight radio host, modern day Beatniks and poets, creative, restless insomniacs up all hours of the night searching for truth.
Jimmy LaFave
There's just more of a mood at night, just more of a groove. The night is kinda a comfort zone for me, more of a soft place to fall into. Maybe it's just the darkness itself that lends a lot to a song. Maybe it's unexplainable, and maybe that's the beauty of it.
Jimmy LaFave
Playing with Jimmy was like heads-up ball – they were extemporaneous arrangements. I never rehearsed with him once. When he was ready for a solo (from another guitarist), he would look at the player. It was up to you to figure out how to take and how to get out of a solo and then to hand it back – it was a test of musicianship. Everybody loved Jimmy. There was a sort of chemistry there. It was always fresh, live. He was the best live act I ever worked with.
John Inmon, guitarist extraordinaire and longtime accompanist

Born in Willis Point, Texas, raised in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and based in Austin, Texas for over thirty years, Jimmy LaFave was a talented singer-songwriter and a peerless interpreter of other songwriters. His music is an infectious blend of blues, country, folk, rock and cajun, especially when accompanied by the virtuoso stylings of Radoslav Lorkovic on piano and accordion. Over the years, Jimmy has released ten studio albums and produced highly acclaimed tributes to Woody Guthrie, Ribbon Of Skyway, Endless Highway, and Looking Into You: A Tribute To Jackson Browne, which features Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, Lyle Lovett, Lucinda Williams and many other artists. He has also released five albums in a series called Trail, comprised of live recordings from bootlegs and soundboards sent to him by appreciative fans.

Jimmy's main influences are Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, and he has covered Woody Guthrie tunes and more than thirty Bob Dylan songs. Part of Jimmy's genius is the way he transforms a Dylan, Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt or Neil Young song with his high, lonesome tenor and the simple, tasteful instrumentation of guitars, piano, accordion, bass, and drums. His singing is plaintive, soulful and dripping with emotion, and he changes the tempo or slightly alters the melody which results in Jimmy re-imagining their songs until they become wholly his own.

For five years, Jimmy performed a free show at the Ballard Park in Ridgefield, Connecticut through the largesse of an anonymous patron. Two of the past four years, the show has been moved indoors to the Ridgefield Playhouse because of inclement weather. It is an intimate theater with five-hundred seats, and Erin and I saw Jimmy perform there in 2016.

Jimmy always had great musicians as accompanists: John Inmon, longtime guitarist with Jerry Jeff Walker's Lost Gonzo Band, Glenn Schuetz on upright bass, Bobby Kallus on drums, and as a special guest, Richard Feridun on second electric guitar, "All the way from Hoboken," said Jimmy by way of Richard's introduction. The set opened with an obscure Neil Young composition, "Journey Through The Past", took a detour through the blues with Ray Charles' "I'm Gonna Move To The Outskirts Of Town" and Big Bill Broonzy's "Key To The Highway", a rocking treatment of Fats Domino's "I'm Ready," and of course,Bob Dylan: "Simple Twist Of Fate" which Jimmy introduced as, "John (Inmon) makes we do this song because it makes him cry. I guess it's because I'm singing" he added with a self-deprecating laugh, a rollicking "Queen Jane Approximately" and a twin guitar-fueled jam on "All Along The Watchtower" as Inmon and Feridun traded furious licks. Jimmy told me after the show, "I usually don't play that song, but with two guitars, I knew I needed something to push them." Jimmy also played some of his originals: "Never Is A Moment", "River Road" and "Hideaway Girl", songs he and his band delivered with great gusto.

After the show, Jimmy came to the merchandise table to visit with fans. Erin and I were waiting. We thanked him for his performance and I handed him a couple of CDs to sign. We implored him to release his work on vinyl, as it is a much better medium, especially with his distinctive artwork. "Yes, I guess I should, it seems all the kids these days are listening to vinyl", he admitted. I handed him a Woody Guthrie album signed by Pete Seeger, "You should have been on this album." He smiled and signed the album, "You know, I have a postcard signed by Pete, but it's a long story." "I'd love to hear it", I beckoned. "Well I was playing a Woody tribute show and Pete was there and Nora (Woody's daughter). Nora asked me to play "Deportee." She liked the way I played it, really mournful, not a sing-song chantey like Pete's version. So I finish the song, Nora's happy, the audience is happy, and a couple of days later, I get a postcard from Pete Seeger. It says 'Jimmy, it is important to maintain the integrity of songs like "Deportee". The tempo and melody should not vary.....' I was blown away. I mean, Pete took liberties with everyone else's songs and did what he wanted. It just didn't make any sense. So that postcard is displayed prominently in my home..." As it should be!

"Deportee" is one of Woody Guthrie's most haunting songs, written after Woody saw a New York Times' account of a plane crash with migrant workers in the Los Gatos Canyon on January 28, 1948. The pilot and crew were identified by name but not the twenty-eight migrant workers, they were just "deportees." Woody thought it was racist and his lyrics tell the heart wrenching tale:

“The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees?”

With all due respect to Pete, there's nothing jaunty or "sing songy" about "Deportee", and at a slower tempo, Jimmy reveals the intensity of this rueful ballad and he performs it beautifully. Nora and the Guthrie Family have been so impressed with Jimmy that they have asked him to put some unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics to music, which Jimmy has been working on for the past ten years. Hopefully, new music will surface similar to the Jeff Tweedy/Billy Bragg 1998 Mermaid Avenue project which yielded the later Wilco concert staples "California Stars" and "Hesitating Beauty", Woody lyrics augmented by Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett music. After all, Woody only recorded seventy songs or so in his career which was curtailed by the ravages of Huntington's disease, and there are hundreds and hundreds of songs and lyrics which remain unreleased and unfinished.

The last words belong to Jimmy:

"As Woody Guthrie says, 'Left wing, right wing, chicken wing.'

I keep my mind open. Whatever you believe, it’s all a mystery in the end."

Thanks, Woody. Thanks Jimmy.

Choice Jimmy LaFave Cuts (per BK's request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGD1qanImq4

"Deportee" Live at WoodyFest Okemah, OK 2010

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcZjDuJQmQ0

"Red River Shore" Jimmy sings Dylan Depending On The Distance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_OSQqutYxY

"Walk Away Renee" Jimmy sings The Left Banke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky-NbkW-wBo