Jimmy LaFave
Depending on the Distance (Music Road Records)These proliferation end-times – call it post-music – dictate that 13 tracks and an hour run time of singer-songwriter soul-searching weigh way too heavy in this multitasked millennium. Not for Jimmy LaFave. Austin’s honorary Okie doesn’t reach full saturation of his lavish, lady-killing nasal whine with anything less. Thus CD No. 10, Depending on the Distance, travels a Zen balladic road trip of perfectly sequenced originals and covers working off one another like wood and glue. Uncanny fit, a cover of John Waite’s “Missing You” cements the singer’s God-given gift of interpretation, particularly as segued into an epic, nine-minute rumination on Bob Dylan’s “Red River Shore.” LaFave’s first/last/always musical love green lit three covers here among the local’s eight originals, with Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams” making lucky 13. The Bard’s patient “I’ll Remember You” comes sandwiched between prime patches of Guthrie soil – LaFave’s “Red Dirt Night” and LaFave’s “Bring Back the Trains” – the latter featuring fellow Woody acolyte Eliza Gilkyson. Likewise, LaFave’s haunting “Vanished” and “It Just Is Not Right” box in the Boss tune exquisitely. High Plains closer “A Place I Have Left Behind” says see ya. No false steps from Depending on the Distance. (CD release: Threadgill’s World HQ, Sunday, Sept. 23)
This article appears in September 21 • 2012.
