Can you feel it already? It’s going to be a good year, filled with music, friends and good times!

Tin Lily, Jeff Black’s most recent recording, is one that mirrors the metaphor of “a thin piece of metal shaped in the petals of a delicate flower, designed to take a soft glow…a hard element that does what it can to spread something as ethereal yet as essential as light.”

Tin Lily is Black’s fourth CD of powerful and insightful songs which shine a light on the experiences and relationships of life’s journey. The disc opens with “Easy On Me”, a rolling, blues-inflected warning of sorts whose narrator makes an unapologetic plea, “Hey, I know what you want from me/but I’ve given all that I can give/you believe what you believe/but I think I need my soul to live.” Black knows the way of the heart when it’s filled with love.

Black is “ a burly, blue-collar son of the Missouri plains with dark Irish blood who digs into tough topics with a gentle heart.”

I enjoyed interviewing Jeff at Charles and Myrtle’s Coffee House. The impresario of the place, Andrew, (thanks for the warm cookies), described his music as "country-pop with a folk slant", but Black describes himself as a "social romantic" who wrote his first song, The Sunshine Train, after reading Woody Guthrie’s Bound for Glory in Kansas City, though he hails from the infamous town of Liberty, home of the first successful daylight bank robbery!

Some of his songs are drawn from his childhood and upbringing, such as Birmingham Road, and, Cake Walk, written for his mother. He says it’s hard to push familiar things away in lyrics like “I’m a tired old romantic for the good old days.”

Black loves performing live even though the studio is a different world entirely, a different mindset for creating his complex, genuine, and carefully crafted songs. “You can follow the songs around” in the studio.

I appreciated his songs This Could Be Heaven and There’s No One Now To Share My Dreams.

Black is a versatile musician playing guitar, keys and harmonica. His banjo playing on Gold Heart Locket was amazing. In fact, some of Jeff’s banjo music can be heard in the recent Indie film, Steel City.

Desperado’s Waiting for a Train by his friend, Guy Clark, was also good listening to my ears. His Americana music incorporates influences of country, folk and rock and have been covered by Waylon Jennings, Iris Dement, Sam Bush, Jo-El Sonnier, Blackhawk, Wilco, Shawn Colvin, John Hammond and many others. In fact, mandolinist Sam Bush named his last album after his cover of Black’s song King of the World. Another Bush rendition of Black’s Same Old River should be heard.

It was Dement who coaxed Black down to Nashville in 1989 where he’s been living and recording since. He admits that people in the business are operating on different levels in Nashville. He contends that his music goes back to the tradition of letting stories and shared thoughts dominate his songs; the lyrics are more important than any accompanying cultural style. He told me that “as soon as we realize how powerful words are, especially in the sense of poetry with music, the power of that vibrates to a higher level”. This indeed is when music can make important changes, individually and in the collective.

Black has a beautiful voice; a warm and smooth baritone with substance. His songs shine a light on the experiences and relationships of life’s journey; the trials and tribulations of everyday life.

There’s nothing predictable, however, about his lyrics other than they will be sung robustly and head towards hope rather than despair.

As usual, Black found an inspired collection of musicians to collaborate with him on Tin Lily. Sam Bush joins former Johnny Cash bassist Dave Roe, former Steve Earle drummer Craig Wright and guitarists Will Kimbrough, who’s recently been working with Rodney Crowell and Jimmy Buffet, and Kenny Vaughan, who performs with the likes of Kim Richey and Lucinda Williams. Engineered and mixed by Billy Sherrill, the song cycle on Tin Lily exemplifies the duality that make Jeff Black such a compelling, vital and important performing songwriter.

Hopefully, we’ll be seeing more of Jeff Black here in Chattanooga in 2007. His moving, funny and unpredictable concerts respond to the moment and whatever voodoo is floating through the air shared by the collection of people on any given night with stories and songs that transcend the role of a singer/songwriter and his instrument.

Melinda Whiteman
Mindiwhiteman@aol.com