Ride Festival: Jim Lauderdale featured with Buddy Miller

02 Jul Ride Festival: Jim Lauderdale featured with Buddy Miller

Buddy Miller

Telluride’s second annual Ride Festival takes place Saturday and Sunday, July 13 and July 14. The star-studded line-up includes David Byrne & St. Vincent, Big Head Todd & The Monsters, Rodrigo y Gabriella, Cake, Drive-By Truckers, Steve Earle, Son Volt, The Revivalists, Brown Bird, Brothers & Bones, The Whiskey Sisters, Matthew Curry, the Hazel Miller Gospel Brunch – and Buddy Miller with Jim Lauderdale.

Buddy Miller:

Soulful Americana songwriter, singer, and producer Buddy Miller began his career in the early 1960s as an upright bassist in high school bluegrass combos. Later, he traveled the back roads of America as an acoustic guitarist, eventually landing in New York City, where his Buddy Miller Band included a young Shawn Colvin on vocals and guitar. He also forged an enduring relationship with country-rock iconoclast Jim Lauderdale.

Miller eventually landed in Nashville, where he did session guitar and vocal work on albums by Lauderdale, Victoria Williams and Heather Myles, among others. He self-produced the criminally overlooked solo debut, Your Love and Other Lies (Hightone, 1995), and followed it with 1997’s equally superb Poison Love.

By this point Miller was lead guitarist in Emmylou Harris’ band, and she returned the favor with backing vocals throughout Poison Love.

Continue reading about Buddy Miller’s career here.

Jim Lauderdale:

In 2012, Jim Lauderdale teamed up with his longtime friend and fellow country roots singer-songwriter Buddy Miller for the 2012 release of Buddy & Jim (New West Records). The recording immediately soared to the #1 spot on the Americana Radio Chart, just prior to the duo’s tour last winter. Buddy & Jim features newly written songs and several vintage covers, inspired by Buddy and Jim’s love for traditional male duets.

Jim Lauderdale

“Stylistically I think we both wanted this record to cover those bases of duet singing, mixing together the older string band styles from the Louvin Brothers, Johnnie & Jack and Sam & Dave. I’m not a big fan of most three-part harmony. That third part bugs me. It kills the mystery. It’s usually too sweet, and most of the freedom in the singing is gone in order to please ‘the harmony god.’ Guy-girl duets can get too sappy and melodramatic. Two guys have some meat, when you sing you can dig in and mean it. And two guys singing are not polite,” said Buddy of the collaboration.

“Miller and Lauderdale’s duets has both the easy familiarity of old friends and the musicianship of old pros,” raved Mojo.

In addition to making music together, Buddy and Jim also co-host “The Buddy & Jim Show,” recently described as “…highly entertaining…” by NPR’s Fresh Air. Each week Buddy and Jim invite artists to Buddy’s home studio in Nashville, where they tape performances and in-depth interviews with a wide variety of artists and friends. The two-hour show airs on SiriusXM Outlaw Country Channel 60 Saturdays 10 p.m. ET.

Jim Lauderdale is a Grammy Award-winning performer and songwriter, with big success in both country and bluegrass music. He is on Nashville’s “A” list, with tunes recorded by artists such as Patty Loveless, Shelby Lynne, George Strait, and the Dixie Chicks. Jim contributed several songs to the successful soundtrack of the George Strait film, “Pure Country.” He has also toured with the likes of Lucinda Williams, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rhonda Vincent, and Elvis Costello, among others.

Jim Lauderdale is the subject of a documentary directed by Australian filmmaker Jeremy Dylan, “The King Of Broken Hearts,” which tells his unconventional story from his North Carolina roots to becoming immersed in the country music scenes in both New York City and Los Angeles and then breaking through in Nashville as a songwriter.

Jim is also a critically acclaimed solo artist with dozens of releases, including his latest Carolina Moonrise, written with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter.

Jim’s musical influences, including the legendary Dr. Ralph Stanley and George Jones, can be heard in his songs with his unique sense of melody and lyrical expertise. He won his first Grammy Award in 2002 with Dr. Ralph Stanley for Lost in the Lonesome Pines (Dualtone) and then for The Bluegrass Diaries (Yep Roc) in 2007.

To learn more about Jim Lauderdale, click the “play” button and listen to our chat.