A sampler of the most perceptive reviews:

Austin American-Statesman
Oklahoma Gazette
Lincoln Journal-Star

Plus an Associated Press rave &
3 1/2 stars from USA Today!
____________________________


March 30, 1999

Jimmy LaFave, Trail ( 3 1/2 * out of four )


Virtually unknown outside of Texas, singer/songwriter Jimmy LaFave wouldn't seem to be in a position to release two discs of live performances and outtakes. But Trail is a revelatory surprise, a sometimes ragged collection that mixes the tenderhearted Americana of LaFave's The Open Road and Never Be Mine with astonishing covers of songs by Bruce Springsteen, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.

Of the 30 songs on Trail, 11 are Dylan's, showing LaFave to be the finest Dylan interpreter since the Byrds. He cranks I'll Be Your Baby Tonight and Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You into roadhouse blues and sings I Threw It All Away and Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues with bittersweet tenderness. LaFave's raw-throated passion pulls out all the emotion in these songs and his own, even when he uses nothing more than a couple of guitars.

-Brian Mansfield

A LaFave Rave


Jimmy LaFave upholds American musical tradition one song
at a time.

By C.J. Janovy
Westword · Denver · June 11, 1999



Electric guitars fade up from a distance and start ringing like the chimes in rock-and-roll heaven.
A moment later, a drumbeat kicks in with the force of an Oklahoma tornado while an organ blares its warning siren. Then a voice at once fragile and full of raw muscle, sweet like Southern Comfort
and gritty like the rust on a Route 66 gas pump, hollers out, "You've got a lot of nerve to say
you are my friend/When I was down, you just stood there grinnin'."
It's a familiar sentiment, but it takes almost until the middle of Jimmy LaFave's version
of "Positively 4th Street" before the connection becomes clear: Oh, yes, it's the Bob Dylan song.

LaFave has earned part of his singer-songwriter reputation by being the ultimate Dylan interpreter,
which in the case of "Positively 4th Street" means turning Dylan's caustic sneer of a song into
a pure heartland rocker. But he doesn't stop there. Of the 31 tracks on LaFave's Trail -- a two-disc collection of bootleg recordings, live performances, radio shows and studio outtakes released in
January on Denver's Bohemia Beat label -- twelve are Dylan songs. The CD, LaFave's fifth, apparently answers fans who have been clamoring for a LaFave-does-Dylan album.

"I really love his music," LaFave says. "When people think of Dylan, they think of his words -- then they have to do their quick imitation of his voice, you know. But I learned a lot about playing guitar from Dylan, and his sense of melody is amazing. Most people wouldn't put him in with the great vocalists, butI put him in with Sinatra for his vocal phrasing ability."

Though folks who discover LaFave for the first time with Trail may initially think otherwise,
LaFave says he's not a Dylan fanatic. Rather, he seems to simply be inhabiting the musical
landscape we've all inherited. After all, there's also a Springsteen song and a haunting version
of Joe Ely's ever-intriguing "Because the Wind" ("Do you know why the trees bend
on the west Texas border?.../They bend because of the wind").
But the folksinger ghost that most seems to have taken up residence in LaFave's blood
is his homeboy, Woody Guthrie. LaFave was born in Texas, but spent his formative years in
Stillwater, Oklahoma, an hour's drive from Okemah, where Guthrie was born. He moved to Austin
in 1986 and won the Austin Chronicle's Best Singer-Songwriter award in both 1995 and 1996 -- a significant accomplishment in a town full of some of the country's most acclaimed singer-songwriters. He's also won eight Kerrville Folk Festival awards, appeared on the PBS live-music show Austin City Limits and performed at the Woody Guthrie tribute at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Like Guthrie's, LaFave's songs fashion the red dirt of Oklahoma into a universal landscape
where wide-open horizons give a young heart plenty of room to dream but too much space to
ever truly get away from home. That romantic contradiction is everywhere in LaFave's music.
Trail's most obvious example is "Red Dirt Roads at Night," in which LaFave misses growing up in a county where the girls look so fine and there's always a party at the farm -- but his memory is one of speeding over "section roads" with a six-pack, trying to lose the "Oklahoma blues." It's a feeling
well-known to anyone for whom a car meant teenage freedom, whether the cruising was over
dirt roads out in the country or on freeways in some anonymous big city.

"Just growing up in Oklahoma, a lot of people don't realize it has a rich musical tradition: Chet Baker, Leon Russell, J.J. Cale, Jimmy Webb," LaFave says. "And if you're into the country-music thing, in Nashville the music industry has probably the highest per capita population of Oklahomans: Garth, Vince Gill, Reba McEntire, half of Brooks and Dunn. I think there is a certain sound that comes out of that part of Oklahoma. If you live there long enough, you kind of feel it. The landscape affects your music or something -- the red dirt or the horizon, the way the light plays on the plains. A lot of people call it the
'red dirt sound.' It's produced a lot of really good music. I actually miss Oklahoma a lot."

That emotion comes through on Trail's version of Guthrie's "Oklahoma Hills." Against a spare rhythmic guitar, LaFave laments the many months that have "came and gone" since he's left his home and yearns for the blackjack trees and red-dirt breeze; his mournful voice cracks when he sings "way down yonder
in the Indian nation" on the song's chorus. There's no more powerful evocation of an adult's hard-learned reappreciation for home -- the kind that sometimes comes too late.

LaFave says he's always loved the song. "Actually, through a concert we did singing Woody's songs
in Austin a few years ago, I've formed a close friendship with Nora Guthrie [Woody's daughter].
Nora just got married a few weeks ago, and I sang at her wedding. That's really cool to me.
I felt a real connection to her dad's music, and to get to be part of the Guthrie circle of friends
has been a real blessing for me."

But that's also a reciprocal gift, since there's been a concerted effort to renew interest in Guthrie's
music, particularly with last year's Mermaid Avenue, a project initiated by Nora Guthrie in which
Billy Bragg and Wilco composed music for lyrics Guthrie had written before he died in 1967.
In the CD's liner notes, Bragg writes that "the result is not a tribute album but a collaboration
between Woody Guthrie and a new generation of songwriters who until now had only glimpsed him fleetingly, over the shoulder of Bob Dylan or somewhere in the distance of a Bruce Springsteen song."


So the connections are obvious. But LaFave's 1992 performance of Guthrie's "Oklahoma Hills," taken from a KGSR radio program in Austin, is significant because it ties together even more threads. At the beginning of the track, LaFave tells a studio bystander that she is "welcome to sing along here" -- and when she does, the youthful Lucinda Williams is almost unrecognizable on the final chorus's back-up vocals. Williams recorded her recent stunner, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, in Nashville, but her presence as another of Austin's most notable singer-songwriters on a recording made long before she earned her current recognition emphasizes just how full of sustenance those Texas fields can be.

"I think what I like about Austin is, it's such a great music city that musicians come here from all over
the country -- but definitely not your Nashville house-type songwriters," LaFave says. He was
originally drawn to Austin after hearing songs by the likes of Townes Van Zandt and Lubbock's
Butch Hancock. "These days, there's Shawn Colvin, Tish Hinojosa -- there's a diverse songwriting community," he adds. "I definitely learned a lot about music once I moved here."

That move was fortuitous for others, as well. In fact, Bohemia Beat founder Mark Shumate admits
that LaFave is basically responsible for the label's existence. Shumate had a lake house in Austin
and was spending quite a bit of time there. "I'd seen his name hosting some Dylan open mikes
and stuff like that and had made a mental note to go see him," Shumate recalls. "He just blew me away.
I loved his voice, I loved the songs he was writing and the Dylan stuff he was doing. He's one of those guys -- you know the old cliché, that he could sing the phone book..."

At the time, LaFave was constrained by his contract with Tomato Records -- an arrangement that had
just seen the completion of a record produced by Bob Johnston, who had produced seven Dylan
albums as well as projects by Paul Simon and other luminaries "all the way back to Marty Robbins'
El Paso," Shumate says. The company went under but held LaFave to his contract in the event of
a miraculous resurrection. "There were three or four years where I couldn't release any product,
and that was kind of at the height of my popularity here in Austin," says LaFave.

"I suggested he should put out a live demo and shop it to record companies," Shumate says.
"I didn't know anything about the record business. I lent him the money and said we could sell it
in town and sell it through catalogues, and he could keep the profit. He never really did too much
about sending it out to other labels, but it became the number-two seller at [Austin's] Waterloo Records,
which is one of best record stores in the country and a barometer in Austin."

That first CD was Austin Skyline, and through its success, Bohemia Beat secured distribution
for the album through Rounder Records. "That led me to take one little step further into the record business and do a studio album, which we called Highway Trance," says Shumate. "Then we
ended up getting involved with Abra Moore, Michael Fracasso and Wyckham Porteous in Canada,
and we did three more records with Jimmy." Shumate says he doesn't consider himself to have
"both feet into the record business," but his tendency to take on projects he's fond of has produced considerable results, particularly when Moore signed with Arista Records and was nominated for a
Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 1997.

"I started out trying to lend a hand and finance a recording project and ended up
being a small record label -- small but quality," Shumate says, laughing.

That works just fine for LaFave. "I've talked to major labels, had them fly me to New York and L.A.
and court me, but the deals never really made sense to me in the end," LaFave says. He cites
comments made by his old colleague Williams, who in her keynote speech at this year's South by Southwest convention reminded the assembled musicians, writers and other industry types of the
importance of never selling one's soul -- and Austin is the perfect place to live by that philosophy.


"It's so cool, because it's the live-music capital of the country," LaFave says, "but there aren't so many publishing houses or record labels that they can mess up the music. People can do what they want.
And it's close enough to Mexican tejano, there's the Gulf Coast zydeco influence. There are a lot of musical styles here, but they're very true to their original roots. Rockabilly stays true to the rockabilly tradition -- same with the folk here. A lot of people from Europe come here to listen to music,
and Austin bands are successful in Europe, because Europeans are tuned onto the purity of the music."

That's obvious on Trail, which includes several tracks recorded in Europe. The audience at 1994's Frutigen Festival in Switzerland applauds so enthusiastically after "Positively 4th Street" that the spent LaFave responds with a humble "Oh, mercy." And LaFave's "The Perfect Combination"
(about a girl who is "a little bit sugar, a little bit spice") is so thoroughly raucous, so full of Chuck Berry
guitars and Jerry Lee Lewis piano, that the crowd gathered one night at the Renfe Club in Ferrara, Italy, must have thought they were in Cleveland.

But the majority of the performances on the album come from closer to LaFave's cherished home.
There's an anguished version of Jimmy Cox's blues classic "Nobody Knows You When You're Down
and Out," wherein LaFave's gravelly voice -- a perfect companion for the song's "champagne,
cocaine and wine" -- echoes off the walls of Nick's Club in Stillwater sometime back in 1984.
Many of the cuts, including most of the album's Dylan tunes, were recorded at Austin's Cactus Cafe.
And while it's intriguing to hear "Going Home," LaFave's reassuring love song to a woman who sleeps while he drives across a long prairie highway, recorded off of an Amsterdam radio show, some of the
compilation's most moving moments are from various hometown recording sessions and radio broadcasts. "How It Must Remain," an aching, keyboard-laced admonition to a woman he loves but can't change himself for, was recorded in 1992 at what one affectionate Austin writer called LaFave's "Austin launching pad, the long-defunct Chicago House." In a rough 1985 recording of his complicated "Loved You Like Rainbows," as LaFave tries to express his feelings to a woman who "never could understand" how
his love was like bright colors, his bandmates' lonely fiddle and mandolin reverberate along with a
low-level hiss in a Stillwater studio. After "Burden to Bear," his meditation on loss and regret,
in which he's helped out by a plaintive harmonica and bass line by Randy Glines, host Abby Goldstein introduces LaFave with a warm familiarity and calls Glines "Mr. Consistency." And in a live radio set
recorded on Austin's KUT last year, LaFave is joined by Bohemia Beat labelmates Fracasso and Moore and a rousing chorus of other singers for a semi-ad-libbed, rollicking rendition of the traditional gospel "Hold On." At one point LaFave laughs that he can't read the lyrics, and later he has to yell out that
they're coming up on the chorus -- but the song more than accomplishes its inspirational mission.
In all of these settings, LaFave is clearly among friends -- musicians radio hosts, writers, audiences --
and it's a testament to the communal nature of music-making.

The project was one Shumate had wanted to do for a while. "Back in the early days, I used to carry my portable DAT recorder around, and with the cooperation of the sound man, I would hook up to the board and see what I could get," he says. "Some of it was wonderful, and other people gave me tapes, and Jimmy had tapes he had made. I'd play these for people, and everybody agreed that it's so spontaneous
it just ought to be put out. We ended up putting together eight CDs' worth of potential-candidate songs and sent them off to Jimmy and a couple of other people, and everybody who heard it was blown away. Jimmy got really excited when he heard the wealth of stuff, and he pulled out the kind of stuff that's somewhere in the basement, which was wonderful, and added another half-dozen real gems on the record. Eventually we paired it down to 31 cuts and came out with it. It's been received every bit as well
as any of the studio records we've done, despite its obvious bootleggy quality. That adds to its charm."

"We went through a lot of tapes to put those songs on there," LaFave says. "We listened to hundreds of songs, and by the end, there were about fifty or sixty we liked a lot." For LaFave, the songs chronicle the privilege of living a life playing music. "They bring back the memory of where I was," he says. "That first song ['Positively 4th Street'] was our first trip to Switzerland, so it's a good memory, because I remember the crowd was really into it. That particular festival had the Subdudes and a lot of bands from all around the U.S.A., and it was a real fun concert.

"Most of the songs are like that -- even some of the ones from the radio
stations," he says. "They bring back good memories of places you've traveled
with your music."

Woody Guthrie would know the feeling.




DEEP ROOTED GENEROSITY
On Jimmy LaFave's Trail

By Chris Riemenschneider · Austin American-Statesman
Published: Feb. 11 1999




What is Austin's favorite red-dirt tunesmith doing releasing his own,
two-CD bootleg series, Dylan covers and all?
And how can I get a copy?

Thank God I had a hard time getting a copy of Jimmy LaFave's latest release. I tried my best, calling the people I thought might help, preparing myself for groveling, if I needed to. Finally, though, I just called Jimmy himself, reaching the ultimate journalist low of asking an artist for a (free) review copy of his art.

In this case, though, it worked out for the best. "Trail," LaFave's new 31-song album that was released on Tuesday, is the kind of set that already feels like it's being handed to you straight by the musician.

Call it LaFave's "Bootleg Series" or his "Basement Tapes," and not just because it includes 12 Dylan covers. The two discs of "Trail" include outtakes from his studio albums, on-air radio performances and live recordings from clubs as far away as the Netherlands and as close as the Cactus Cafe. That a couple of the songs were recorded at LaFave's Austin launching pad, the long-defunct Chicago House, is a sure sign the material isn't all current. Two songs go back to 1984 and 1985, when the native Texas singer (from Wills Point, near Dallas) was still cutting his teeth as a "red-dirt" songwriter in Stillwater, Okla.
On paper, the album doesn't make much sense. Here's Jimmy LaFave, a gifted singer-songwriter who has never had a problem in the proficiency department, releasing versions of some of his older songs while doing all kinds of covers. In addition to the batch of Dylan tracks (the CD-opening "Positively 4th Street," an acoustic "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," etc.), he offers Woody Guthrie's "Oklahoma Hills," Bruce Springsteen's "Valentine's Day," Joe Ely's "Because of the Wind" and Clapton-ized blues standards like "Key to the Highway" and "Have You Ever Loved a Woman."

After talking to LaFave about it, though, during my groveling expedition, "Trail" made better sense. "It's really sort of a supply-and-demand thing," he explained. "I've always had a good response to playing Dylan songs, so (Bohemia Beat Records founder) Mark Shumate came up with the idea of doing an album with just some of these Dylan recordings. I had toyed with the idea of putting out an album of these outtakes and radio shows and whatnot, because some of the fans have expressed interest in all that, too. Finally, we just decided to kill two birds with one stone and release it as one package."

It was a modest explanation to what might seem like a less than modest release. LaFave even said the disc was meant "mostly for the hardcore fans." I'd have to argue with that assessment, though, and say "Trail" is as much for the passive LaFave watcher as it is his devotees. As renowned music journalist and LaFave's pal Dave Marsh wrote in the album's liner notes, "Jimmy LaFave has one of America's greatest voices, and this album is the story of what he has learned to do with it."

Indeed, there is something telling about "Trail" that just a greatest-hits album or a new live CD wouldn't have revealed. For one thing, the random locations of the recordings show just how well-travelled and hard-working LaFave has been since he moved to Austin in 1985. The diversity of the arrangements and styles, too -- with musicians like Mitch Watkins, Gurf Morlix, David Sanger, Larry Wilson, Randy Glines and Mike Hardwick helping out -- shows the multifaceted talent of this Austin fixture, whose versatility many non-Austinites see as synonymous with our city.

And despite all the variety on the disc, there's that voice tying it all together, that weepy-yet-strong, gravely-yet-soft, beautiful singing voice that is a constant throughout the disc, no matter the genre, country or setting of a particular recording.

In a more reasonable world, where LaFave's following would be more mainstream and less
cult-like, "Trail" might have even been a larger package. "We could have done at least three or four more of these," said Shumate, whose Colorado-based Bohemia Beat Records has supported LaFave since his first CD, 1992's "Austin Skyline" (the label has also worked with Michael Fracasso and Abra Moore). Instead, the compilation wound up being just two discs, plump-full and priced almost as one.

"I hope the fans really dig it," LaFave said. "A lot of this is just from my own personal collection of tapes. Some of the songs were taken straight from the board at the Cactus Cafe, you know, and stuff like that -- never meant to be heard. But going through it all, there was a lot I was happy with, that I thought people might enjoy."

Enjoy they will, no matter how they get the disc. Now that it's past the album release date, "Trail" should be readily available in most record stores. You may not be able to get it straight from Jimmy, but the effect of the CD is much the same.

Jimmy LaFave's Trail

Associated Press News Service
by Eric Fidler


Jimmy LaFave's voice is honey-smooth and whiskey-rough, weepy but manly, armor-piercing and heat-seeking, and, though he can make it swoop, soar and turn somersaults, he always uses it for the sake of the song. "Trail," a two-CD collection culled from outtakes, concerts, radio appearances and living room jams showcases that great voice in a variety of settings, from supercharged roadhouse rockers to sweet acoustic ballads. It also answers the calls for an album of Bob Dylan covers by
including a dozen of them among its two-plus hours of music.

From the kicking version of "Positively 4th Street" that opens the album through the intimate and beautiful "One Too Many Mornings" near the end, LaFave shows that he is the preeminent Dylan interpreter because he makes the songs his own. He does the same with songs by other great writers on "Trail," including Joe Ely, Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen, as well as offering up interesting versions of some mighty fine Jimmy LaFave tunes.

All in all, "Trail" is the most satisfying work yet from a rock 'n' roll road warrior with the best voice in the business.


LaFave's winding, dusty "Trail"

by Greg Johnson
Oklahoma Gazette February 10, 1999


In many ways Jimmy LaFave is more the quintessential American rocker than any of his peers, including many of his more famous influences. His music was born in the bars of Stillwater, Oklahoma, and LaFave has continued to keep that spirit alive through the clubs, coffeehouses, and festivals at which he performs, mixing his dusty, Okie, red dirt rock with soulful, melodic ballads and a few great Bob Dylan songs.

Oklahoma's most enthusiastic music ambassador returns Friday to the Blue Door to celebrate the release of "Trail," his double disc memoir that covers two decades of music recorded in Oklahoma, Texas and around the world. Culled from live shows, radio broadcasts, studio out-takes, and very early efforts, "Trail" is the story of this talented, down-to earth music lover who took to Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and returned their spirit with his own songs and passionate covers of many of theirs.

His naturally soulful vocals are more immediate than ever on this organic document of 31 songs, which includes a dozen Dylan tunes, Joe Ely's great "Because The Wind," Guthrie's "Oklahoma Hills" (with friend Lucinda Williams softly singing along), a few blues covers and other gems from his great career.

LaFave said the album is offered in the spirit of the great bootlegs, and it certainly lives up to that claim in its spacious, capture-the-moment feel. Opening with a rockin' version of "Positively 4th Street," and ending with a "hidden" living room recording of Jackson Browne's "Rosie," this is the portrait of an American original, a true son of the Southwest.

As the band thunders through "Positively 4th Street," LaFave sings Dylan like no other singer before him. Instead of the usual near-reverential performance most artists bring to a Dylan song, LaFave takes them and recasts them as his own. "Positively 4th Street" isn't even the best Dylan song here, it's just the first one to grab your attention. More interesting are "Simple Twist of Fate," "Oh Sister," "Forever Young," "If Not For You," and "One Too Many Mornings," for their unique arrangements alone. But it's LaFave's unique instrument weaving through these songs that is the real star here.

These slices of life as a bar band leader and song-smart troubadour were not recorded to be released, but the result is LaFave's best record ever, combining all the passion, immediacy and down-to-earth charm of his live shows. From the roadhouse rock to the quiet singer-songwriter moments, this is a great album for many reasons.

The stripped-down versions of many of his best songs such as "The Open Road," "Burden To Bear," "How It Must Remain," and "Never Be Mine" are presents for his old fans, as are such surprises as the never-released "Ellie's Song" and "Loved You Like Rainbows." There is also a nod to friend and mentor Bob Childers on "The Lone Wolf" and Bruce Springsteen's achingly beautiful "Valentine's Day," which LaFave sings as if they were his words falling from the notes.

For 20 years now, LaFave's trail has been straight and true. He has delivered night after night, taking listeners on a rock 'n' roll ride that is deep in history and tradition, combining that uninhibited spirit with an ear for great songs -- both his and others, and knowing all the time that he is also an entertainer.

There is no argument that LaFave is one of the most important voices in music today and also one of the most entertaining stage performers ever. Some singer-songwriters like to have their audience sit in rapt attention, but LaFave would prefer his to slow dance to the ballads, and tear it up on the rockers. That is the difference between a rocker and a folkie, and no matter how much attention LaFave gets in folk circles, he remains a great American rocker occupying the same space as Springsteen, Tom Petty, John Fogerty, and The Band.

Jimmy Lafave, Trail ****1/2 (out of five)

Lincoln Journal Star
by Daniel R. Moser


Bruce Springsteen has his "Tracks." Jimmy Lafave has "Trail." Both are entertaining, often enlightening archival projects that wander down assorted byways and sideroads of their respective artists' careers.

Surprise: Lafave's set is better, by a lot. Partly that's because it's more modest in both size (two CD's instead of four) and purpose (Lafave is out to have fun, while the Boss' collection had a strong whiff of corporate cash-in).

A dozen of the 30 songs on "Trail" (Bohemia Beat) are Dylan covers. Amazingly, that doesn't seem at all excessive as Lafave always has been a brilliant interpreter of the Great One. He doesn't let himself off easy, either; if "Forever Young" is a fairly obvious choice, "Positively 4th Street" sure isn't.

Beyond Dylan, though, Lafave also delves into blues standards ("Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out," an acoustic "Key to the Highway"); other songwriters' material (Springsteen's "Valentine's Day," Joe Ely's "Because the Wind," Bob Childers' "The Lone Wolf" and, maybe best of all, Woody Guthrie's "Oklahoma Hills," with Lucinda Williams chipping in); and his own songs, ranging from such rave-ups as "The Perfect Combination" to heartfelt ballads like "Going Home" and "How it Must Remain." Whatever he tackles, Lafave remains one of the most powerful singers in rock.

Some of these songs are recorded live, others are from radio performances. They date from 1984 to a year ago. On a record packed with great moments, one of the best comes at the end, with a terrifically
scruffy, raucous take on the gospel tune "Hold On" that segues into a lo-fi (recorded on a videocamera!) take on Jackson Browne's "Rosie." Together, they capture Lafave's spirit perfectly.

This long and winding "Trail" is a fascinating, and fun, journey indeed.

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