Jimmy Meets Bruce

Well, it was bound to happen someday, and it made us so happy when it did. Seems that when we parted with Lafave after the Munich Records anniversary show in Holland, we definitely should have joined him for his little side trip to Cleveland. Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Week-long Woody Guthrie Tribute. Should have known.....

Jimmy blew away the Saturday night audience at The Odean, along with Joe Ely, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Alejandro Escovedo, Paul Metza, and I believe Country Joe and Phoebe Snow. Headlining the show the next night at Severance Hall was the Bruce-ish one himself, joined by Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, The Indigo Girls, Billy Bragg, and Ani DiFranco. After the rehearsal for Sunday's big finale of Woody's "I've Got To Know," top rock critic and Springsteen seer Dave Marsh told Lafave, "Maybe I shouldn't say this with all these great singers around, but your part was absolutely the coolest thing I heard." That night, standing between Bruce and Arlo for the finale, Jimmy delivered his part, and Springsteen turned Jimmy's way, smiled, and rasped "Yeahhh!" It was just one of many kudos Jimmy got that night, but it's definitely the one he'll remember. Congrats, well deserved!



		Jimmy Meets Bruce (Finally found a good picture, thanks to Paul Metsa...) `September 29, 1996` Well, it was bound to happen someday, and it made us so happy when it did. Seems that when we parted with Lafave after the Munich Records anniversary show in Holland, we definitely should have joined him for his little side trip to Cleveland. Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Week-long Woody Guthrie Tribute. Should have known..... Jimmy blew away the Saturday night audience at The Odean, along with Joe Ely, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Alejandro Escovedo, Paul Metza, and I believe Country Joe and Phoebe Snow. Headlining the show the next night at Severance Hall was the Bruce-ish one himself, joined by Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, The Indigo Girls, Billy Bragg, and Ani DiFranco. After the rehearsal for Sunday's big finale of Woody's "I've Got To Know," top rock critic and Springsteen seer Dave Marsh told Lafave, "Maybe I shouldn't say this with all these great singers around, but your part was absolutely the coolest thing I heard." That night, standing between Bruce and Arlo for the finale, Jimmy delivered his part, and Springsteen turned Jimmy's way, smiled, and rasped "Yeahhh!" It was just one of many kudos Jimmy got that night, but it's definitely the one he'll remember. Congrats, well deserved! From Dave Marsh's (co-founder of Creem, long-time Rolling Stone writer, author of Born To Run) review of the Woody week: "The most provocative and informative musical event I attended in 1996 was the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's Woody Guthrie conference, held in Cleveland the last weekend in September.... At the Saturday evening club show (billed as a "hootenanny"), Alejandro Escovedo, Jimmy LaFave, John Wesley Harding, Billy Bragg, Jorma Kaukonen and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, among others, made a singer-songwriter revival seem less a possibility than a reality. As members of a community, they played together and played off one another, without sacrificing any sense of the personal. It's that kind of intimacy broadcast to a large audience that lies at the heart of folk's appeal, and of what it has to offer a pop music world festering with alienation. So for me, the finest moment of the entire weekend came at a singer-songwriter workshop Saturday afternoon. LaFave used his startling high tenor, wry and ribald humor and Okie accent to put across "Woody's Road," by Bob Childers ('a modern day Woody Guthrie living in Oklahoma in a trailer back in the woods')."

Jimmy Meets Bruce

From Dave Marsh's (co-founder of Creem, long-time Rolling Stone writer, author of Born To Run) review of the Woody week: