Jim Lauderdale returns to The Spinning Jenny with Donna the Buffalo

By DAN ARMONAITIS

A couple of weeks ago, Americana music stalwart Jim Lauderdale was aboard an airplane, enduring a long, 15-hour flight from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles, where he’d eventually transfer to another plane headed to his current home of Nashville.

“There was a fellow sitting a couple of seats away from me — there wasn’t anybody in between us — and so I asked the guy where he was from, and he said, ‘Greenville, South Carolina,'” Lauderdale recalled. “And I said, ‘really? I’m playing near there on Sunday, the 3rd (of November) in a place called Greer.’ And he said, ‘well, that’s actually where I live.’

“Oddly enough, he had not heard of The Spinning Jenny, so I described where it was, and he said he was going to come out to the show.”

If the man Lauderdale met on the flight does indeed make it out to The Spinning Jenny in Greer on Sunday, Nov. 3, he’s in for a real treat.

Lauderdale will not only play a brief solo set but he’ll remain on stage for a collaborative performance with Donna the Buffalo, a wildly eclectic roots music band that hails from Upstate New York.

“I’m so excited about that show,” Lauderdale said. “Any chance I get to do a show with them, I do it. They’re one of my favorite bands in the world, and I just love playing with them. Gosh, it’s always just an incredible experience.”

Lauderdale and Donna the Buffalo first played together in the early 2000s when they were paired up at MerleFest in Wilkesboro, N.C.

“We started jamming together there and then we became friends,” Lauderdale said. “They invited me to their festival up in Upstate New York, and I then started writing melodies with them in mind.”

In 2003, Lauderdale and Donna the Buffalo released a critically-acclaimed collaborative album called “Wait ‘Til Spring.”

“Musically, they’re so diverse,” Lauderdale said before noting Donna the Buffalo’s rabid fan base, which is affectionately known as The Herd. “They have a community around them who just love them so much, and it’s kind of like the Grateful Dead.

“I think when you find a live band you love so much, there’s just this connection, and you go see them over and over because you just love their music. And it’s this kind of this belonging to something bigger than yourself.”

Another frequent Lauderdale collaborator was legendary Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, who died Sept. 23 at age 78. The two co-wrote songs for multiple Lauderdale albums released during the past decade.

“We started writing together when I was getting ready to do my first bluegrass record with Ralph Stanley, and, oh boy, it was something,” Lauderdale said. “I couldn’t believe I was writing with him because I started listening to the Grateful Dead when I was a teenager and was just so blown away by them. Robert Hunter’s lyrics, along with Jerry Garcia’s melodies, they just created a lot of magic and so many important, vital songs.

“Robert was just a genius. He was the smartest guy I had ever met. He read all the time and was always learning. He was always listening to something — not listening necessarily to today’s music so much, but a lot of old stuff and a lot of international stuff. He was just a really deep guy, and I’m so very fortunate that I got to know him and to work with him.”

Lauderdale’s latest single, meanwhile, was co-written with John Oates of Hall & Oates fame. The official video for the bluegrass-tinged “When Carolina Comes Home Again” was filmed at Echo Mountain Recording in Asheville, N.C., and premiered on Sept. 17 via the blog for Come Hear North Carolina, a music campaign initiated by the N.C. Dept. of Natural and Cultural Resources and the North Carolina Arts Council.

Lauderdale is a North Carolina native who spent part of his childhood in Charlotte before moving with his family to rural South Carolina as a teenager. During those years, he lived in Due West but would spend summers in Flat Rock, N.C., where he worked at the Flat Rock Playhouse.

“Whenever I’d come back and visit and then leave home again, I’d drive away and my dad would be standing out in the driveway, watching as the car drove off,” said Lauderdale, who lived in New York and Los Angeles before settling in Nashville.

“And it would just about break my heart to leave. So, that song is a romantic song in a lot of ways (in that) it’s dealing with a loved one romantically, but, at the same time, it kind of represents a bigger picture about that area.”

Although Lauderdale is deeply immersed in the Nashville music community, there’s something about the Carolinas that still resonates with him in a deep way.

“As my folks got older and couldn’t leave Due West anymore, I’d come back to visit and try to look after them as much as I could,” he said. “And I just kind of really fell in love with Due West all over again. I could live there, I really could. … It’s just such a sweet place, and it’s always really good to go back to the area.”

It certainly doesn’t hurt that Lauderdale has plenty of fond memories of his formative years in Due West, where he served as a disc jockey at the Erskine College radio station when he was still in high school.

“I got my own show once a week, and then I’d fill in for somebody if they couldn’t do their show,” Lauderdale said. “And I would get all these free albums in a real wide assortment, from bluegrass stuff to Frank Zappa to Carlos Santana to John McLaughlin. It was an eclectic station, and now looking back, it was what you would call Americana music.”

Lauderdale said it was a “cool time for me musically” and that, in those days, he began playing bluegrass banjo and blues harmonica.

“Erskine College also had some great shows,” he said. “I remember when this rock group called Badfinger came. Paul McCartney had produced them and they were on Apple Records, and here they were doing a tour of the U.S., and they came by Erskine College for a show. And, so, I walked backstage, which was a music classroom in Lesesne Auditorium, and I just kind of hung out. I looked at them wide-eyed, and they were very nice, and it was a great show.

“And then Jonathan Edwards was just starting to get a hit with this song called ‘Sunshine,’ and he came and played, and I talked with him. It really impacted me that these guys who I really looked up to were just regular people. They were really friendly, and that kind of lit a fire in me.”

Lauderdale added that a 1970s performance at Erskine by a Charlotte-based bluegrass group called Chicken Hot Rod also had a big impact on him.

These days, Lauderdale has taken quite a liking to The Spinning Jenny in Greer. He’s performed there multiple times, including, most recently, a gig with Chuck Mead and Jason Ringenberg in July that was billed the Cosmic Honky Tonk Revue.

The Spinning Jenny “has become my go-to place in the area,” Lauderdale said. “I just love the feel of it, and it sounds so good in there. It’s a great place to interact with the audience, and that’s real important to me — to be able to kind of look out there and be able to have this energy exchange with the audience. I just adore that place.”