State Of The Art

IN 1971, somewhere in the dusty flatlands of West Texas, free-spirited hippies Butch Hancock, Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore formed a band called the Flatlanders.

Drawing equally from country, blues and folk music, they remained together long enough to record an LP More A Legend Than A Band (available here as One Road More). It remains the single most haunting country album ever made, more anguished than Gram Parsons, more restless than Hank Williams, beautifully capturing both the romance and the danger of those well-travelled lost highways. Set against Butch Hancock’s reflective lyrics and Steve Wesson’s spine-chilling musical saw, was the unique high ’n lonesome voice of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, a poignant, plaintive instrument equally suited to belt-it-out rockabilly and maudlin balladry. Once heard, never forgotten.

Now, since the mid-80’s New Country explosion, Jimmie Dale has achieved belated recognition, rock-stardom of sorts. He has won the Rolling Stone critics’ poll for Country Artist of the Year three years running, which came as a complete surprise: “I was amazed,” he smiles. “I had nothing on the charts, and I hadn’t expected that sort of attention. And the Rolling Stone has become very supportive in lots of little way, y’know, they throw out a little titbit every now an’ then about what I’m doing.”

With his long, silvery hair and noble, chiselled features, Jimmie Dale looks more like a Cherokee Indian than a ramblin’ cowboy. He is, in fact, part Indian and part Irish. He’s just finished a four-night stint at the Point Depot with old friend Nanci Griffith, and he’s enjoyed the trip immensely. He is deeply aware of the rich Irish musical heritage and its massive influence on American music.

“Scotch and Irish folk ballads have had so much of an influence on all the Appalachian music, bluegrass, mountain folk – and I became aware at a certain point that all through my life there’s been some kind of current Irish music that’s been among my favourites, whether it’s Van Morrison, the Clancy Brothers or the Pogues. Actually, my son turned me on to the Pogues, and the Cramps, just when I was losing touch with new music. He kept me aware of what was good.”

Gilmore’s spiritual influence on a generation of cowpunks was reflected last year in a collaboration with grunge band Mudhoney, who covered his wistful ‘Tonight I Think I’m Gonna Go Downtown’ as well as ‘Buckskin Stallion Blues’, written by another great West Texas troubadour, Townes Van Zandt. Probably Gilmore’s strongest LP, 1988’s Fair & Square, features interpretations of Van Zandt’s ‘White Freight Liner Blues’ and Hancock’s heart-tearing ‘Just A Wave’, which we both agree is “one of the best love songs ever written.”

He retains a deep affection for his soul brothers: “I put Townes, Butch Hancock and Bob Dylan up there, y’know, the greatest songwriters, with Bob Dylan being the master, just beyond everybody. I don’t think Butch really cares, but I think Townes is disappointed, is bothered by the fact that he’s not well known. It’s just part of his character. A lot of musicians hold this same opinion of Townes being truly great, but a lot of the general public have never heard of him. It’s sad. And Butch and I are almost like brothers – we’ve been friends for so long and there’s such a deep relationship. Every now an’ then I’m listening to one of his tapes, and all of a sudden it’ll hit me – this guy, that’s my best friend, is also one of the geniuses of songwriting, of America, of the world.”

Jimmie Dale’s latest LP, Spinning Around The Sun, contains a few of the tender ballads for which he will be best remembered, but there are also uptempo numbers that echo the raw power of early rockabilly. He regards country and rock ’n’ roll as the same thing, and has spent much of his career trying to break down barriers between the two genres.

“When Elvis came out, that was just another kind of country music to us. I mean, Sun Records, such a small group of people, they inspired all the rest of it, just about. They set a standard that I thought couldn’t be bettered, until Dylan came along.”

This precipitates an enthusiastic discussion about the Zim. Inevitably, I follow up with a question I’m constantly asking relative strangers: what’s your favourite Dylan album? (Agonised look) “Man, I’d have trouble with that. I’d say one and then five minutes later I’d change my mind . . .I guess . . . er . . . Bringing It All Back Home.”

Jimmie scored a hit last year with his just-perfect rendition of Hank Williams’ ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’. Was Hank a seminal influence on the young Jimmie? “That would be an understatement. I was born into a country ’n’ western family, my daddy was a guitar player. I guess Hank Williams had his influence on me when I was three years old, y’know? I was hearing his songs down in my little psyche.”

In the mid-70s, Gilmore went through a period of disenchantment with the music business.

“Particularly the unfairness of it,” he says. “Townes Van Zandt should be at least as big a star as Bruce Springsteen. It saddens me that there are some people who are, in effect, excluded, not that there’s a conspiracy or anything. There are greats in any field, and they know who they are. How famous you are has nothing to do with it. Van Gogh never made a penny from his painting, but he still was just driven to do the paintings for beauty. He had some kind of drive that was oblivious to commercialism. Although he wanted to sell the stuff, he didn’t want to starve, but that wasn’t what was driving him. And now his paintings are worth as much as anybody else’s on the planet.

“There are flukes of the marketplace, flukes of timing that can catapult somebody into stardom, that don’t have anything to do with the comparative quality between that person and whoever else was around.”

Along with Butch Hancock and Joe Ely, Jimmie was born in Lubbock, a sleepy West Texas town, before moving to the state capital Austin, a bohemian centre-of-culture paradise and easily my favourite city in the whole wild world. Was Lubbock the boring small-town kip I imagine it to be?

“It’s boring,” Jimmie agrees, “but it’s not really a small town – it’s a very typical normal middle-class American city. Size-wise, it’s quite huge, just lots of suburbs everywhere. It could’ve been anywhere else in middle America.”

Is the attraction for Austin still there?

“Oh yeah! Practically every Austinite I know, they all have this wonderful quality to them, this real sweet nature, this intelligence. I was telling Nanci that a lot of what happened with the hippy, the ’60s thing, through the San Francisco scene – a huge disproportionate number of those people came from Austin. There’s just something special going on there – musicians, writers, artists . . . There’s some kind of unique attitude, the audiences are very supportive of tradition, and of innovation. It sounds like I’m trying to promote my home, but I’m not . . . I’m not an Austin native. I moved to Austin because I love it.”

It is, however, a rotten place to leave. My own departure from Austin triggered a prolonged period of mourning, which was best alleviated by listening to the man himself. All his songs seem to be driven by a profound sorrow, an almost unbearable sense of pain that’s also the source of his inspiration. If he could chase some of that pain away, even though it could cost him creatively, would he do it?

“Well, I believe that the true nature of human existence is bliss,” he reflects. ‘Total happiness. We have illusions and delusions and worries and misconceptions that sometimes add up to a great sorrow. But if you write a song about it, and somebody loves it, it’s a positive thing. Sorrow only exists as a springboard to happiness.”

When this guy hits form, you can forget the ‘country’ label. To pigeonhole Gilmore as a country artist is like calling Bob Dylan a folksinger, or Nick Cave a Goth. He is, quite simple, a true original. For an introduction to the wonderful world of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, any of his albums will do, and no experience in country is required. His music should strike a chord in anybody who’s ever longed to wander off into the sunset, anybody who’s ever thrilled to the melancholy twang of a steel guitar, anybody who loves songs about living and loving and learning and winning and losing and moving on down the track.

Do yourself a favour. Buy a Jimmie Dale Gilmore album. It might just change your life.