Jim Lauderdale

He’s a songwriter’s songwriter, penning tracks for George Strait, Gary Allan, Patty Loveless and The Dixie Chicks while maintaining a rigorous recording schedule. He’s released 17 albums in as many years (though his first, 1989’s Point of Return, went unreleased for a decade), wandering widely across the Americana landscape from honky-tonk and classic country to roots rock and bluegrass. The latter interest budded on 1999’s I Feel Like Singing Today with Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys and fully bloomed on last year’s Grammy-winning Bluegrass Diaries. Lauderdale’s a particularly keen-eyed chronicler of our character and times, noting how “This World Is Getting Mean” while acknowledging our charitable impulses on “Those Kinds of Things That Don’t Happen Every Day,” off his latest, Honey Songs. Recorded with an all-star backing band (James Burton, Garry Tallent) dubbed the Dream Players, Lauderdale’s reedy twang has rarely sounded better.
Wed., Oct. 15, 9 p.m., 2008