Reunion: a Portrait of Jim Lauderdale at Exit/In on the Venue's 43Rd

Burr / Reunion / !1 Reunion For Versatile Veteran, Heart’s Where the Home Is Jim Lauderdale sidles onto the stage at Exit/In, his broad smile and spangled garb shimmering alike as the sparse crowd gathered at his feet whistles and hoots. Their ogling of the long-haired, guitar-wielding man before them invites a half-baked comparison to traveling salesmen settling in for a highway-exit lap dance and the subsequent allaying of the day’s harsh impotence, an inchoate inkling which is put on ice after one peripheral glance at the milieu and Jim’s lack of nipple pasties. For a 43rd anniversary concert — the venue’s, not the performer’s, though Jim has swum circles around the clubs and back-alleys of New York’s and Nashville’s music scenes for near as long — the turnout is scant, a reality only partially shrouded by the effusive reception showered on Jim by the group of loyalists in attendance. “How are y’all doing?” Lauderdale asks the crowd. Helen of Troy he is not — his hair girds a visage which, especially around his glinting eyes, betrays the passage of time like a just- overripe peach — but tonight, he is the one who launches a storied conduit into the future’s belligerent uncertainty. “Glad you could make it out tonight,” said Lauderdale. “It’s good to be back for the birthday celebration.” From here, Jim knows the drill. * * * Exit/In was opened in 1971 by Owsley Manier and Brugh Reynolds; as noted by the venue’s website, it is “one old, dark, loud piece of Nashville rock stuck right in the middle of the Burr / Reunion / !2 Music City,” a history-steeped mainstay amidst a countrified minefield of melodic glories and discordant despairs. Indeed, Exit/In has preserved — if unintentionally — its reputation as a wild-partying place where stars are set afire and set free, to return only upon their fuel being burned or their glimmer going unnoticed after a run across a galaxy replete with suns and low- lumen lookalikes. The club’s impressive gig history is recalled by the tapestry of albums and photographs and artifacts plastered, perhaps with metaphoric intent, over the kaleidoscopic collection of bottles behind the bar. Steve Martin’s after-show escapades in 1976 underscore the venue’s unparalleled flair — following the third of his Exit/In shows that year, Martin, the “white suited pied piper,” per Rick Beziat of the Nashville Scene, led a pride of hungry fans up the road to the nearest fast-food burger joint: “Yes, I’d like…317 Krystals,” Martin told the cashier. Martin’s post-‘76 career arc, however, illustrate the latter half of the Exit/In stigma: appearances on Cher gave way to Hollywood Squares spots, shifted to accommodate televised versions of his stand-up acts — A Wild and Crazy Guy aired in 1978 — led to perhaps his most famous role, that of Navin R. Johnson in the self-written comedy, The Jerk (1979). Exit/In, though hardly left salivating for attention-grabbing gigs (the late ‘70s also drew early incarnations of John Prine and Jimmy Buffett to Elliston Place), would host Martin no more. The Martin-esque trajectory repeated, came to define not a trend, but the place itself. A 2012 Scene article lauds Exit/In’s versatility (rock, indie, pop — name it, and Exit/In’s had it) and stability — though its title, “Nashville’s Exit/In Club No Revolving Door,” says all one needs to know about the purveyance of the venue’s catch-and-release reputation. Burr / Reunion / !3 Yet what for the dwindled? What for the beacon that launched, but sputtered in its ascent? What for the one who returns? * * * The florid patterning of Lauderdale’s splayed-collar shirt dances in the breeze created by his quick-picking fingers as he slides through his set. The fans are force-fed a steady diet of scything solos and lilting riffs, each with a side of North Carolina inflection.“I Feel Like Singing Today” (1999) melts into “Doing Time in Bakersfield” (2014) as the man of the moment begins to perspire under the dim lights. In the brief ticks of time Jim leaves twangless, he leans into the microphone to praise the efforts of frequent songwriting collaborators — Harlan Howard is mentioned more than once, and the daughter of the deceased Country Music Hall of Famer, who stands at the foot of the stage next to a self-invested couple, smiles up at Jim, hanging on his every word. He also thanks a mentally-handicapped Irish boy, whom he met some years ago while on tour in the Emerald Isle, for crossing an ocean to attend the show. And he salutes the night’s opening act, the young Neo-Outlaw Nikki Lane, who’s been dubbed by the powers-that- be as One to Watch, a headliner in the making. Ms. Lane, who shook the rafters with a 45-minute set in promotion of her new album, All or Nothin’, stands at the back of the room — near the bar, underneath the black-and-white placards of those Exit/In acts washed ashore by the tide and hurried out on a swell of popularity — drinking and tapping her feet along with the catchy background noise.“If I can have 700,000 redneck fans,” she yelled at the outset of her act, “I’ll be happy.” One man, enamored, Burr / Reunion / !4 approaches Lane to ask if she’ll be playing D.C. in the near future. Not a redneck — he wears a sweater and loafers with his jeans – but a fan, nonetheless. Lauderdale includes his band members in the laudatory roll call, too. There’s Craig Smith, guitarist; Scott Trayer on the bass; Gary Morse behind the pedal steel; and drummer John McTigue. “I couldn’t do it without these guys,” Lauderdale says. He slides in beside Smith on numerous occasions, nodding in tune with the guitarist’s euphonic accompaniment, lost in the ether. * * * Perhaps it’s this unflinching symbiosis with fans and musicians alike — and thus the resultant foreignness to stepping on toes — which has prevented Jim from hauling himself and his myriad talents into the Music City spotlight. That, or his dogged eclecticism. Indeed, Contemporary Musicians, the songster’s equivalent of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, notes: “Many point to the fact that [Lauderdale’s] most admirable virtue…may also be his curse — his ability to mine from a wide range of musical influences.” Lauderdale’s own website communicates much the same in the way of eclecticism, calling him “one of the most respected artists working the Americana, Bluegrass, and Country music communities today.” Lauderdale’s career eschews definition — he has an album named “Bluegrass,” as well as a song entitled “Honkytonk Haze.” The titles reference two distinct, if not rival, factions under the “Country” umbrella — the Scruggsian, pick-driven nature of the former being as close to segregated from the Lefty Frizzell/ Hank Jr. bootstamping of the latter as could be in a town defined by mutuality and collaboration. Having penned songs for George Strait and Vince Gill, though, one would think the 57-year-old’s Burr / Reunion / !5 industry reputation, regardless of identity or apparent lack thereof, would carry him at least as far as country radio — if not vault him, however marginally, into the national consciousness. One could opine Lauderdale’s career went the way of the Studebaker — that is, if one did not know of the Studebaker’s wide, if brief, appeal on the US auto market in the 1950s and ’60s. He was slashed from record deals at Warner Bros., Columbia, Atlantic, and RCA, though as reviewer James Kelly avowed in 2001, “[This] ha[d] nothing to do with the quality of his work.” In a 2000 interview with former Tennessean music columnist (now the Museum Editor at the Country Music Hall of Fame and an Opry veteran guitarist) Peter Cooper, RCA Labels Group President Joe Galante stated that “[he had] no evidence that country radio [would] open up to the fringes.” Cooper pointed out that as his voice is reminiscent of Buck Owens’, and as his resume includes writing credits on myriad country hits, Lauderdale “would not initially appear to be a ‘fringe’ artist.” Pressed, Galante told Cooper that “[RCA doesn’t] claim to be in the business of selling 25,000 units.” Thus Lauderdale, his name anathema to profit, was shepherded from the broad public eye and routed back to Exit/In, a place he told the Scene “added extra credence to what [he] was doing” when he first played there in the 1980s, when he was not yet thirty. Lauderdale is no George Jones — he was forced to re-recorded his 1991 hit, a tribute to Jones entitled “King of Broken Hearts,” as the album on which it was released had gone out of circulation — but neither, by comparison, is Exit/In Bridgestone Arena. While this relative diminution allows both man and venue to stay true to their roots, it comes at the price of numbers. Would 20,000-plus appreciate tradition for tradition’s sake? Three hundred sure do. Burr / Reunion / !6 A venue which itself lies more than a few stones’ throws from the dobro echoes of Printer’s Alley — bordering more on Vanderbubbled than Rymanesque — playing host to a performer like Jim. Or is it Jim who plays host to it? Like Lauderdale, Exit/In is versatile and, in a sense, undefinable, in need of action alone to perpetuate in its current, multifarious image. Days after tonight’s show, it will welcome “Take Me to Church” sensation Hosier, and has served nobly for Ben Harper and Bassnectar.

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