Can't Steal My Fire tribute to David Olney out now via New West Records

Along with new versions of David Olney's songs by Mary Gauthier, Dave Alvin and Buddy Miller, the tribute album has a rare Townes Van Zandt live recording.

Here's the scoop from New West Records HQ...

New West Records is proud to release Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney. This album features new versions of David Olney songs recorded by Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Willis Alan Ramsey, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Mary Gauthier, Jim Lauderdale, and Buddy Miller among others. The tracklist is also highlighted by a never-before released live recording by Townes Van Zandt, and produced by Gwil Owen.

Originally from Rhode Island, Olney moved to Nashville in the early ‘70s and fell in with a group of songwriters including Townes Van Zandt, John Hiatt, Steve Earle, Guy Clark, and Rodney Crowell. With his rock band David Olney and the X-Rays he toured tirelessly. He went on to release a string of brilliant albums and his songs were recorded by Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Del McCoury, Linda Ronstadt, and many others. But the bright lights of stardom never shone on David, and he died the way he lived: onstage in a club, far from home, singing a song.

This album gathers some of David’s friends and colleagues to pay tribute to his unique vision. Many of these artists are legends in their own right; all are here because of their deep admiration and respect for the man and his Songs. Get a copy of Can't Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney via Bandcamp right here. If it's out of stock on vinyl, New West Records should have more copies available for ordering directly the week of November 18th. Check their site right here. Listen to a few songs, including Townes Van Zandt's live reading of "Illegal Cargo" following the tracklisting and endorsements. 

 

Can't Steal My Fire: The Songs Of David Olney

1. Deeper Well - Lucinda Williams 5:40

2. Sister Angelina - Steve Earle 3:17

3. Voices on the Water - The McCrary Sisters 3:27

4. Jerusalem Tomorrow - Buddy Miller 4:35

5. If My Eyes Were Blind - The Steeldrivers 3:38

6. Women Across the River - Willis Alan Ramsey 3:31

7. 1917 - Mary Gauthier 5:11

8. Always the Stranger - R.B. Morris 4:36

9. If It Wasn’t for the Wind - Jimmie Dale Gilmore 3:26

10. Running From Love - Anana Kaye 4:53

11. That’s My Story - Greg Brown 4:44

12. Sonnet #40 - David Olney 1:19

13. Titanic - Afton Wolfe 4:17

14. Steal My Thunder - Dave Alvin with the Rick Holmstrom Trio 6:09

15. Delta Blue - Jim Lauderdale 3:34

16. She’s Alone Tonight - Janis Ian 3:34

17. Illegal Cargo - Townes Van Zandt 3:10

“My father’s songs were true, they were strong, and they were enough to hold him. Death is tragic and reckless and still somehow his passing was a rare and beautiful event. A final magic trick, a sort of perfect symmetry played out. Flame snuffed out while a gentle apology was uttered into this cruel and glorious world. He was a dark eyed man, tender, comedic and profound; tapped into life in a unique and expansive way. Driven to roam, the lonely highway kind and yet incredibly empathetic. He was deeply of this world and also outside of it – observing it. His gaze was honest, seeing both darkness and light. He was angry and he was hopeful. He spoke in many voices – gentle and vicious, ashamed and joyful but always simple and beautiful, always genuine. He did not use people, he did not use stories, he lived within them. And he died the way he lived – in a song. This project shines a light on those songs. The friends and comrades on this album knew and loved my father through and because of his songs. They have come together to make this beautiful tribute to him and his words in their own voices. A song is a dream –A dream is sometimes a prayer – You hope they are heard. I hope these are heard.” – Lillian Olney

“David Olney tells marvelous stories, with characters who cling to the hope of enduring love, all the while crossing the deep divide into that long, dark night of the soul.” – Emmylou Harris

“Mr. Olney never had a hit single or won a Grammy Award, but in folk-rock and Americana circles, he is revered for his poetic sensibility and gruff-voiced storytelling, especially by his fellow songwriters, including his musical hero, Townes Van Zandt.” – The New York Times

“Anytime anyone asks me who my favorite music writers are, I say Mozart, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bob Dylan and Dave Olney. Dave Olney is one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard.” – Townes Van Zandt 

Jim Lauderdale, Nichol Robertson @ The Horseshoe, Wednesday

Singer/songwriter Jim Lauderdale makes a rare Toronto appearance at The Horseshoe tonight. Get tickets here. 

Stars come out for salute to NRBQ's Joey Spampinato

Party For Joey, a Sweet Relief tribute album celebrating the work of NRBQ's Joey Spampinato, is out now via True North.

Here's the scoop from True North...

True North Records has just released Party For Joey: A Sweet Relief Tribute to Joey Spampinato, which features a lengthy list of friends and fans of the NRBQ founding member/bassist saluting him with 14 versions of their own previously unreleased versions of Spampinato-penned songs.

A Sweet Relief Tribute to Joey Spampinato is an inspired album recorded by an astounding group of musicians including Los Lobos, Bonnie Raitt, Peter Case, Ben Harper, The Minus 5, Buddy Miller & Jim Lauderdale, Chris Spedding, Robbie Fulks, Deer Tick, She & Him, Steve Forbert and Al Anderson who are all generously donating their proceeds from these recordings to the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund to support Joey with his current health issues. The Sweet Relief Musicians Fund provides financial assistance to all types of career musicians and music industry workers who are struggling to make ends meet while facing illness, disability or age-related problems.

Joey Spampinato, a singer, songwriter and bassist, was co-founder of the legendary NRBQ, a rock quartet whose genre-defying music continues to inspire generations of music fans and fellow musicians. Many of those musicians answered the call from Joey’s wife Kami Lyle and producer Sheldon Gomberg when they contacted them about recording one of Joey’s songs for an album to help raise funds for Joey when it was revealed he was battling cancer.

Check out the contributions from Peter Case, Ben Harper (with Keith Richards, Charlie Musselwhite, Don Heffington & Benmont Tench), Buddy Miller & Jim Lauderdale, The Minus 5 and Al Anderson following the complete track listing below. 

Party For Joey: A Sweet Relief Tribute to Joey Spampinato 

Al Anderson – “You Can't Hide” - Original Release: 1980 on Tiddlywinks 

Los Lobos – “Every Boy, Every Girl” - Original Release: 1987 on God Bless Us All

Deer Tick – “That I Get Back Home” - Original Release: 1980 on Tiddlywinks

Ben Harper with Keith Richards, Charlie Musselwhite, Benmont Tench, Don Was & Don Heffington – “Like a Locomotive” - Original Release: 1989 on Wild Weekend

Peter Case – “Don't Knock At My Door” - Original Release: 1972 on Scraps

She & Him – “How Can I Make You Love Me” - Original Release: 1983 on Grooves in Orbit

The Minus 5 – “Don't She Look Good” - Original Release: 1979 on Kick Me Hard

Steve Forbert – “Beverly” - Original Release: 1986 on Uncommon Denominators

Buddy Miller & Jim Lauderdale – “How Will I Know” - Original Release: 2013 on Smiles

Bonnie Raitt & NRBQ – “Green Lights” - Original Release: 1978 on At Yankee Stadium

Robbie Fulks – “Chores” - Original Release: 1979 on Kick Me Hard

Penn And Teller – “Plenty of Somethin’” - Original Release: 1997 on You’re Nice People You Are

The Nils & Chris Spedding – “That's Alright” Original Release: 1977 on All Hopped Up

Kami Lyle with Joey – “First Crush”

Jim Lauderdale @ Hugh's Room Live, Wednesday

Along with his new album Time Flies, Jim Lauderdale is also releasing his 1979 bluegrass recording with Roland White. 

This just in from Yep Roc Records...
Jim Lauderdale’s story is a complicated triumph, with a glorious soundtrack. Here are the first and last chapters of the newly revised edition: His initial recording, with bluegrass innovator Roland White of the Kentucky Colonels, and his newest effort, the expansive Time Flies which are being released simultaneously by Yep Roc Records on August 3rd.

Lauderdale is the son of a preacher, and of a mother who taught public school and played the organ at church. He was raised in the Carolinas, schooled in bluegrass and the Beatles and worshipful of brothers Everly and Stanley. In the hot summer of 1979, at age 22, Jim hit Nashville, possessed of prodigious talent, indistinct musical ambitions, and nothing in the way of gold or silver. While country radio stations played pop-leaning hits, Lauderdale sought something other than what was in then-contemporary fashion.

He found a mentor and collaborator in Roland White, whose mandolin work with Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt and the Kentucky Colonels helped revitalize and reimagine acoustic roots music. The elder and junior musicians paired to make an album of close harmony and vivacious beauty, recorded in the basement of banjo master Earl Scruggs.

“Earl would come down and serve us coffee from a silver tray, and he’d be wearing an apron,” Lauderdale says. “He wasn’t doing that to be funny, it’s just what he did. I made cassettes and sent them to bluegrass labels with a handwritten note, and got turned down by everybody.”

That album should have, in some hypothetical, just and righteous world, taken its place in bluegrass history with tradition-drenched, progressive-minded classics by J.D. Crowe and the New South, The Seldom Scene, and, come to think of it, the Kentucky Colonels. Instead, the thing went unreleased, and then the master tapes got lost for 39 years. It was the first bummer in an epic series for Lauderdale. Looking back, it all seems like sweet serendipity. At the time, it just felt like heartache.

More serendipitous heartache and heartening growth would follow. There was a stint in New York, and there were music-making friendships with unknowns who would become well-knowns, like Shawn Colvin and Buddy Miller. There was time in California, where he was a key figure in the burgeoning L.A. country music scene that gave rise to Dwight Yoakam, Lucinda Williams, and many more, and that was foundational in what we now call “Americana” music.

There was a late 1980s album produced by Pete Anderson for Columbia Records. Like the Roland White album, that one didn’t come out for decades: Lauderdale was dropped by the label in the weeks before his works’ intended release. Anderson, who had already produced Yoakam’s initial recordings, said he thought Lauderdale’s was the best project with which he’d been involved. No matter. Corporate politics. Bottom-lines. Lauderdale was good at finding something other than what was in then-contemporary fashion.

Jim returned to Nashville, at first on occasion and later for what looks like perpetuity, and wound up with a second major label recording contract, this one with Warner Bros. He made an album called Planet of Love, released in 1991 and produced by Rodney Crowell and John Leventhal. That one was deemed commercially unsatisfactory, though it held songs that would be famously recorded by George Strait, Lee Ann Womack, and other heroes of country music. Then it was on to Atlantic Records, to make a country-rock masterpiece called Pretty Close to the Truth (1994). Then another Atlantic album, and then on to RCA, with every album meriting fist-pump critical reactions that weren’t always met with accompanying sales.

“I don’t fit anywhere,” he said at the time. But he was wrong. He fits everywhere, he just fits differently than others.

George Strait began recording Lauderdale’s songs, and featuring them on top-selling albums and a hit movie. Strait has now recorded 14 Lauderdale compositions, all of them fitting in fine and contemporary fashion. The money was good, and soon Lauderdale’s parents — the preacher and the teacher — had a lovely mountain home in North Carolina. And Jim Lauderdale became the rarest of commodities: A beloved and respected roots music force whose songs were in country radio favor, recorded by Strait, the Dixie Chicks, Solomon Burke, Patty Loveless, Vince Gill, Blake Shelton and many others.

He won Grammy awards, on his own (Bluegrass Diaries, in 2009) and with Ralph Stanley for Lost in the Lonesome Pines, in 2004). He won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association, and became known as “Mr. Americana.” He released an astoundingly varied catalog of albums exploring bluegrass, soul, rock and country while finding time to collaborate with Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, The North Mississippi All-Stars, and George Jones (about whom he wrote the ballad “The King of Broken Hearts).

Recently, Lauderdale was at the Station Inn, the world’s most storied bluegrass tavern. Roland White came to see him, and casually mentioned, “I think my wife found the tapes to our album, in a box in the basement.” Indeed, she had. Quarter-inch, reel-to-reel. A journey’s beginning. “February Snow” and “Nashville Blues.”

Meanwhile, Lauderdale was working on new songs, with new-century music heroes like Chris Scruggs, Kenny Vaughan, Jay Weaver, and John McTigue. Those songs became an album called Time Flies. And time does fly, though it often seems to creep. And heartache can be serendipitous. And a life well-lived is a complicated triumph.

Jim Lauderdale is an American music-master, and the author of a soundtrack both glorious and expansive. We’d be sort of dumb not to listen. And, so, let’s listen. Time flies. Music sustains. Pre-order Yep Roc's limited-edition Time Flies bundle right here.

Watch Jim perform "Forgive and Forget" off the previously unreleased 1979 session Jim Lauderdale & Roland White following the clip for "Where The Cars Go By Fast".