It will be no big surprise to anyone who listens to, or watches, the show that once again I’ve gravitated to the optimistic anthems of hope during this month’s tapings. My guests, both with very diverse songwriting catalogs, gave me hits of inspiration alongside songs of love, loss, and other stops along the highway of the human experience.
I’ve known Jack Ingram for over a decade and have been a huge fan of his music since the SMU, Adair’s days. His recent induction into the Texas Songwriters Hall of Fame made the evening at The Stella Hotel in Bryan, TX a taping of historic significance that we’re honored to now have in our archives. Given the recent invitation to join the likes of Guy Clark, Willie Nelson, Rodney Crowell, and other stalwarts, it seemed appropriate to pause on one of my long time favorites “Keep On Keeping On”. My favorite version is from Live at Gruene Hall when Jack turns from singer/songwriter to sidewalk preacher and delivers a little extra to the honky-tonk congregation. And for the season ticket holders at The Stella Sessions that night the moral of the story couldn’t have been more clear. Don’t quit. Good things can happen. “Ain’t it funny how the truth sounds so cliche?”
Later the same week we posted up at The Dosey Doe Big Barn in The Woodlands TX. I’m always nervous before shows, but more so when it’s my first time to sit down with an artist. I’d met Jeff Crosby in a one-minute exchange in the lobby of The Steamboat Grand at MusicFest in January but walked into the taping, as I often do, wondering how he would respond to me and the whole RLRM experience. It didn’t take five minutes with Jeff after soundcheck to realize this would be another amazing opportunity to dive into the song-crafting conversation and explore the backroads that connect an amazing community of songwriters in Idaho to the Texas / Red Dirt scene. Somewhere between influences and his musical history I brought up one of my favorites, the single “Silver Linings”. We got the backstory and an amazing performance of the tune.
As with Ingram’s “Keep on, keep on keeping on, still got a ways to go”, Crosby’s “Keep on mining for the silver lining” delivered the inspirational goose-bumps on cue. So we’re mashing them up for this month’s mantra…
Keep on, keep on mining…