It may be time for the Flatlanders to give Rob Gjersoe a bolo and make his membership in the group official. In the early going at Chicago’s Old Town School Of Folk Music, before a characteristically sedate crowd, the band sounded a bit tired. When a tune as catchy as “Julia” doesn’t click, you know there’s something missing. Then Gjersoe, a longtime sideman with the band, put a bluesy charge into “Midnight Train” with his searing slide guitar. From that moment on, the Flatlanders raised their energy and their game, lighting up the songs from their great new album, Hills And Valleys. Gjersoe, a Chicago product who studied at the Old Town, made his presence felt on every tune.
More importantly, so did the Flatlanders, as a band. With no less than eight songs written in collaboration by Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, Hills And Valleys is a breakthrough for the lifelong friends from Lubbock, Texas, in presenting them as a cohesive unit rather than a coming-together of gifted individuals (however intimately acquainted). In concert, too, they projected a deeper, more unified vision, in large part thanks to the emergence of Ely as their emotional center. In the past, he has frequently been the provider of barbed comic relief and funky novelty moments with songs such as “Pay The Alligator” and “I Thought The Wreck Was Over”. Breathing powerful emotion into new songs including “Homeland Refugee” and “Love’s Own Chains”, he deepened the themes of struggle and loss, altered circumstances and redefined dreams, with which the Flatlanders address the times we’re going through.
The Flatlanders play “Borderless Love” in Fall River, MA, 4-10-09
It’s a reflection of the Flatlanders’ resilience that their music always finds a way to transcend bad news. There was no resisting Gilmore’s finely aged, wide-eyed masterpiece, “Dallas”, with its expansive beat, dual lead guitars and casually swapped vocals, or the brisk, exuberant “The Way We Are”, a country-rocker written by Jimmie’s son, Colin Gilmore. Simulating a hard-driving accordion on harmonica, Hancock brought unexpected heft to “No Way I’ll Never Need You”.
Encoring with Woody Guthrie’s “Sowing On The Mountain” and the Terry Allen-written Ely staple “Gimme A Ride To Heaven”, the Flatlanders were joined by violinist and singer Jenny Scheinman (who opened the concert with Gjersoe’s impeccable support) and a white-T-shirted local player named Joe Pug, whose look of almost befuddled joy at singing and playing with the Flatlanders perfectly captured the moment for adoring followers of Joe, Jimmie, Butch and Rob who will never get the chance to to follow suit.
