Carrie Rodriguez / Jim Lauderdale

Thursday, May 13 • Doors 7pm • Show 8pm • $15 Advance • $17 Day of Show • Over 21 Only

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Pigeonhole Carrie Rodriguez at your peril. Sure, she’s done a lot of duets. She plays a fiddle. (a mean one at that.) She’s recorded songs with a pleasing, folksy twang.

But don’t think you know what you’re getting. Not yet 30, and with a critically-acclaimed solo record and several well-received duet records in her wake, the classically trained singer/songwriter has just begun flexing her artistic muscles, still figuring out how far her talents will take her. If you’re looking for someone playing it safe and sticking to tried-and-true ways of music making, as the title of Rodriguez’s daring new album aptly states, SHE AIN’T ME.

“Because I took some chances, wrote with some new people and actually co-wrote most of the songs on the album, it’s very different,” Rodriguez notes.

Jim Lauderdale

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Jim Lauderdale is something of an enigma. He makes modern country music that comes disguised as bluegrass, but it has little in common with what used to be called “newgrass.” Newgrass bands like the Country Gentlemen, the Seldom Scene,, and the New Grass Revival expanded bluegrass’ boundaries by covering rock and pop tunes, or by dressing like hippies and adding drums and electric instruments to the mix.

What Lauderdale does is fundamentally different: he adds complexity to the traditional bluegrass formula, infuses it with a decidedly honky tonk spirit, and thereby creates something new that neither condescends to bluegrass tradition nor waters down its essential elements. Consider “I Took a Liking to You,” the track that opens this album: over what sounds at first like a head-long, straight-up bluegrass backing, Lauderdale sings an almost laconic lyric in half time while banjo wizard Scott Vestal veers slyly from Earl Scruggs banjo clichés to flowery chromaticism and back again. The slow-burning Calico sounds something like a Ralph Stanley tribute, while “That’s Why I’m Here with You” is a lovely, lilting acoustic Western swing number. “Lead Me” is a gospel number with a slightly sardonic edge (“Are you up there laughing at my plans?”), while the title track is simply a breathtakingly perfect country song.

Lauderdale is in the process of creating something entirely new using elements that are entirely traditional and familiar – it’s a thrilling process to watch, and it results in songs that are a joy to listen to.

- Rick Anderson, All Music Guide

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