A Texas singer/songwriter once said of Jimmy LaFave early in his career: "He's got a ton of talent and a vision, now all he needs is a personality." This was as complimentary and positive a criticism as can be made of an artist early on, when they are still honing their vision, figuring out what works, live and in the studio, and what doesn't. LaFave has been on as restless a journey as a songwriter can embark upon. He's a person who doesn't like to be produced; he likes the raw bar band stuff and demands he be true to ...
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A Texas singer/songwriter once said of Jimmy LaFave early in his career: "He's got a ton of talent and a vision, now all he needs is a personality." This was as complimentary and positive a criticism as can be made of an artist early on, when they are still honing their vision, figuring out what works, live and in the studio, and what doesn't. LaFave has been on as restless a journey as a songwriter can embark upon. He's a person who doesn't like to be produced; he likes the raw bar band stuff and demands he be true to himself both on record and on the road. He's a romantic, a true one, with wanderlust. He's not a philosopher, he's a man who is rooted deeply in the Oklahoma red dirt and its unique history, especially the dust bowl and the soil and the wide open spaces of Texas, and by what he's been, not just where , and no one would argue that the songs weren't there from the beginning: "Buffalo Return to the Plains," the title track from his 1995 album, is an excellent example. But no one can argue that on his last three recordings, 2001's Texoma, 2005's Blue Nightfall, and here, on Cimarron Manifesto, he's onto something, though just what that is is mercurial, and perhaps could use the guidance of a very sensitive and firm producer to bring it out in a different way, but it's in the songs to be sure and there is an established personality in there, a stamp that is indelible. It's tattooed on the inside, on the heart where it belongs. LaFave offers 12 cuts, three of which are covers. And speaking of covers, the ones on the CD tells you a lot about what's inside, but it doesn't give it all away. LaFave is standing to the left of a split on an empty street in the middle of the night. He's in the background almost, the forlorn street and an old hotel, whose lights are extinguished, are the real subjects here. The left side of the road, the street lights, and LaFave in the middle of the emptiness standing firm sums it up. (No major label would have ever gone for this cover, though it's utterly striking and, in its own way, intense.) The album opens with "Car Outside." With help from Kacy Crowley on backing vocals, the sum total of LaFave's "manifesto" shows up and reveals itself in full, all the while digging at the heart of every person who feels the need to just go, no matter what it costs. It's not the need to escape; it's the need to just go.In four/four rock shuffle time, LaFave is as full of simple poetic romance and the ragged weariness and restlessness as Doc Pomus (who would contain a universe in a few lines and combine all the elements within them, as in "Lonely Avenue") and LaFave can do the same in certain songs here. In a few minutes, with a refrain that repeats almost too often, he and Crowley lay out the essence of his protagonist's character. He doesn't have to go alone, he extends an offer, but seeing a highway, he needs to go, with or without her. It's then that we realize the offer is half-hearted and he's already gone. This is the other side of Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road." This isn't about hope, desperation or redemption, it's a song about what is: the lost highway of the soul and the need to stay on it, heading toward an unknown that is enough in itself because it's all passing so quickly: the nation, the daylight, the number of connections any human being can make with another. Of course it can't be reached and the singer knows that, but that's not the point. The band here supports LaFave well and includes guitarists Andrew Hardin, John Inmon, and dobro/lap steel boss Jeff Plakenhorn with B-3 player and pianist Radoslav Lorkovic. The B-3 has a central role on this album, it is its atmosphere, the place the guitars can enter and float through because it is as constant as the sky itself, the album's centerpiece and the extension of "Car Outside." This is Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath extended to the entire world and told so simply in a country song. The Woody Guthrie in LaFave isn't a...
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