Jim Lauderdale has never been known to shy away from a worthwhile collaboration, having cut some outstanding sessions with bluegrass icon
Ralph Stanley and sat in with a broad range of artists from
Lucinda Williams and
Dwight Yoakam to
Solomon Burke and
Elvis Costello. And
Patchwork River finds
Lauderdale teaming up once again with
Robert Hunter, with whom he previously collaborated on 2004's Headed for the Hills.
Patchwork River features 13 new songs
Lauderdale wrote in tandem with
Hunter, best known for his work as a lyricist with
the Grateful Dead. As one of the few men in Nashville with the courage of his country music convictions these days,
Lauderdale moves significantly closer to rock & roll than usual on this album, though this music is still strong, rootsy stuff, with a potent, bluesy undercurrent audible on "Louisville Roll," "Jawbone," and the title tune, and plenty of full-on guitar howling on "Winonna." (Don't fret, "Between Your Heart and Mine" and "Far in the Far Away" demonstrate
Lauderdale still writes a great country tune.) These songs are clearly collaborations between two writers, but
Lauderdale's melodies bend themselves to the armature of
Hunter's elliptical wordplay on
Patchwork River, and the rhythms of the tunes sometimes recall
Hunter's work with
Jerry Garcia, even though
Lauderdale's vocals are as distinctive as ever and his own melodic sense is clearly felt. Given the lyrics
Hunter has written for this project, it wouldn't have been at all difficult to turn
Patchwork River into a pseudo-
Dead album in the manner of
Workingman's Dead or
American Beauty, and to his credit that's not what
Jim Lauderdale has done, any more than he did on the previous Headed for the Hills. While it sounds and feels like a different sort of
Lauderdale album,
Patchwork River is still his own work, and on this second outing with
Hunter he's allowed the partnership to inform his music without robbing it of his individual spirit, and similarly he hasn't diluted
Hunter's poetic sensibility in the process. ~ Mark Deming