This month Jimmy played before perhaps his toughest audience ever on the main stage of the North American Folk Alliance Conference. Jimmy had been chosen from hundreds of applicants to be one of 15 or 20 artists to perform in front of the entire conference. So, Friday night, in one of the most beautiful old style theatres we've seen in a long time, 500 or so booking agents, club owners, artist managers, and fellow performing artists sat eager for Jimmy's show closing slot at 11 pm. Our guy did not disappoint...

In the Folk Alliance format, each artist gets 15 minutes of fame, and Jimmy made the most of it, beginning with his greeting, "Hello Cleveland.... I've always wanted to say that...."

There were only two or three people there actually from Cleveland, but everyone got the joke.

.... after which he struck up "Buffalo Return To The Plains," "Only One Angel," and Bob Dylan's "Just Like A Woman." His closing, a moving version of Woody Guthrie's "Deportee," was absolutely perfect. Jimmy left the stage happy, to enthusiastic applause.

Among Jimmy's many other showcases was a Songwriter in the Round set in the Pentouse Suite, swapping tunes with Ray Wylie Hubbard, Michael Fracasso, and the legendary Willis Alan Ramsey,

who is once again performing. It's been twenty years since his lone (and classic) album on Leon Russell's label, and I assure you, Mr. Ramsey is still very much worth going out to hear.

Accompanying Jimmy at Folk Alliance were his keyboard man from Austin Skyline and Highway Trance,

David Webb, and Jimmy's steady guitarist for the past couple of years,