Album Review: Buddy and Jim by Buddy Miller

Are there two more omnipresent Americana ambassadors than Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale? Their credits range from Robert Plant to Elvis Costello; Ralph Stanley to Solomon Burke – a list long enough to fill the Nashville phonebook. While they have worked together before (including many Americana Music Award shows), this is the first time that these two old pals have done an album together. Considering their long history, it’s not surprising that this collaboration has a natural, easy charm to it.

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Buddy Miller has rightly become an Americana celebrity thanks to his guitar work and adventurous, no-nonsense approach to music production, often centred around his home studio in Nashville. Richard Thompson's intriguing new album (released next month) was recorded there, and it's also from there that Miller co-hosts a weekly radio show with singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale. Working with a band that includes fiddle and pedal-steel, the duo have now recorded an eclectic, freewheeling set remarkable not just for its inter-twining guitars but for its vocals, too.

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Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale have an enduring relationship that began early in their respective musical careers. But while they’ve worked, written, and played together over the years, this is the first time they have made an album with both their names on the cover. “Buddy and Jim” is meant to be first and foremost a duets record, and that’s what separates it from the music the two make on their own.

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BUDDY MILLER AND JIM LAUDERDALE “Buddy and Jim” (New West) Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale are longtime pals and longtime pros, songwriters who have collaborated far and wide in the realm of handmade, twangy, tradition-conscious country and roots-rock: Nashville’s Americana wing. Mr. Miller, 60, is a first-rank guitarist and a producer for singers including Emmylou Harris and Robert Plant.

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The most surprising aspect of Buddy and Jim? It's the longtime friends' first album together. Like their weekly satellite radio show, the LP cuts a broad swath of Americana, the two Nashville linchpins' close harmony duets and stellar guitar work uniting the eclecticism of styles. Setting the pace with electric rocker "I Lost My Job of Loving You," the duo swings into Flatt & Scruggs' twangy "The Train That Carried My Gal From Town" and burnt-steel-swaddled ballad "That's Not Even Why I Love You," before ripping Cajun with Johnnie and Jack's "South in New Orleans.

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