Jimmie Dale Gilmore is a man blessed with a beautiful voice and infinite patience. "If I can't see where to go/I'll stay lost in silence till I know," he sings with tender determination in "Where Is Love Now?" And although Gilmore didn't write the song – it was composed by the singer/songwriter Sam Phillips – he invests it with a naked, serene honesty that characterizes not only the rest of the exquisite Braver Newer World but the whole of his small but rich catalog. At 51, Gilmore is still waiting for the world at large to discover the joys of his high-plains caroling and Zen-like driftin' blues. But the way he elevates "Come Fly Away" with a touch of rhapsodic falsetto in
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the chorus suggests that Gilmore savors the anticipation as much as the achievement.
Producer T-Bone Burnett wisely frames most of the open-heart optimism in Braver Newer's songs and Gilmore's singing with delicate strokes of pure-country guitar and Memphis-soul brass. In "Sally," Gilmore's shimmering tenor seems to hang in the air, suspended over a liquid-mercury pool of guitar. The stoic mix of courage and calm that he brings to the title song is heightened by the tempered sting of fuzz-tone riffing and the warm lowing of the horns.
Not much actually happens in these songs, more than half of which were written or co-written by Gilmore. His preferred subject is contemplation, the tension of decision as you stand at a crossroads. What catalyzes the words and music – in performances as disparate as the gorgeous "Because of the Wind" or Gilmore's rattling Sun Studios take on Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Black Snake Moan" – is the selfless spirit of sharing in his voice. Even when he reaches back to his '60s Texas garage-rock roots in "Outside the Lines," with its weedy organ and sideswiping guitar distortion, Gilmore evokes the Sir Douglas Quintet and the Tao Te Ching in equal measure: "Looking back into the darkness/Will only/Blind your mind and heart and feed you the same old line/Come and we will cross/The great divine." When Jimmie Dale Gilmore turns on his love light, we all shine on. (RS 738/739)
DAVID FRICKE
