Considerations: "After Awhile" by Jimmie Dale Gilmore

I bought Jimmie Dale Gilmore's "After Awhile" back when it first came out, in 1991, and keep going back to it.

At the time, I was just sorta getting into the various albums by musicians who had been in the Lubbock mob known as the Flatlanders. Had purchased Joe Ely's "Live from Liberty Lunch" with its great rollicking acoustic version of "Me and Billy the Kid" in college and had seen Joe open for Little Feat some time that year. He was larger-than-life on stage, a Texas gunslinger who had to make do with a guitar. So when I heard he had a bunch of confreres, and that Elektra was issuing a bunch of "American Explorer" roots albums featuring mavericks such as Charlie Feathers and Jimmie Dale, I immediately picked it up.

What a great album - from a new version of the meditative Austin classics, "Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown" and "Treat Me Like A Saturday Night" to a cover of Butch Hancock's wordy "My Mind's Got A Mind Of Its Own" to the Western-swing stylings of "Go To Sleep Alone" and the lovely "Story Of You" and "Don't Be A Stranger To Your Heart," this is just song for song, a beautfiul album.

Where Ely utilizes a crack rock band to spin yarns of Western desperadoes, and fellow Flatlander Butch Hancock relies heavily on Dylanesqe wordplay, Gilmore tells simple contemplative tales in a high lonesome voice that helps carry the day. Like Guy Clark, Gilmore is not a prolific writer, but you can tell that just like Guy, Gilmore seems to really hone his lyrics making sure that each word counts. He has put out lots of other discs, but "After Awhile," I'd suggest, feature more of Gilmore's own writing, rather than depending more on covers of songs by contemporaries or classics. It's well worth seeking out.