Advertisement

arts entertainmentPop Music

Austin roots rocker Jimmy LaFave died in 2017, but his ‘new’ album is a rare surprise

“Highway Angels ... Full Moon Rain” shows the growth of an artist who remains a Texas legend.

It is impossible to consider the life of Jimmy LaFave and not feel sadness. Born in Wills Point, 50 miles east of Dallas on U.S. Highway 80, he spent part of his childhood growing up in Mesquite before his family moved to the Oklahoma hills, where he connected with his musical soul. So much so that one perceptive critic once likened him to a “red-dirt Van Morrison.”

But in the end, it was a life cut short. In 2017, LaFave died of a rare, fast-growing cancer called myxofibrosarcoma. He was 61.

Advertisement

And yet, through an extraordinary mix of influences, powered by the internet and social media and LaFave’s ongoing popularity — not only in Texas but also the Netherlands and Italy — his music lives on. If anything, it appears to be entering a new chapter.

News Roundups

Catch up on the day's news you need to know.

Or with:

In the period between being diagnosed and dying from cancer, LaFave entrusted his manager and life partner Ashley Warren with maintaining what is now known as the Jimmy LaFave Intellectual Property Trust. Under the banner of the trust, Warren recently released an album of music by LaFave that no one but his inner circle had heard before.

The resulting CD, Highway Angels … Full Moon Rain, appears on a new label, Night Tribe Music, named in honor of his band, which LaFave called The Night Tribe.

Advertisement

The record underscores the value of maintaining an artist’s legacy, even in the wake of their passing. As it turns out, LaFave left behind a treasure trove of material that Warren can now repackage and share with his fans for years to come.

Aided by 21st century technology, Highway Angels … Full Moon Rain is “newly remastered” after having lingered in a vault for more than 30 years. LaFave taped it in the Austin studio of his friend Charlie Hollis between December 1987 and June 1988.

Austin roots rocker Jimmy LaFave pays tribute to Woody Guthrie in "Walking Woody's Road."
Austin roots rocker Jimmy LaFave pays tribute to Woody Guthrie in "Walking Woody's Road."
Advertisement

Despite making Austin his home since the 1980s, no one championed the legacy of Woody Guthrie more than LaFave. He was a longtime force behind the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, held each year in Guthrie’s hometown, Okemah, Okla. In 2005, Bruce Springsteen invited LaFave onstage during his concert at The Theatre at Grand Prairie to sing Guthrie’s “Oklahoma Hills.”

In 2013, LaFave joined, among others, Jackson Browne, John Mellencamp, Rosanne Cash and Judy Collins in a celebration of Guthrie’s life at The Kennedy Center in Washington.

He shared the bill (and held his own) with such celebrities, but LaFave’s appeal was largely regional, despite the fact that he was hugely popular in, of all places, Amsterdam. With his newly created trust, it is not inconceivable that LaFave’s music might find a new audience that did not exist before he died.

The cover image of Jimmy LaFave's posthumous album, "Highway Angels ... Full Moon Rain,"...
The cover image of Jimmy LaFave's posthumous album, "Highway Angels ... Full Moon Rain," released in late 2020.(Mycola and Bryan Peterson / Night Tribe Music)

LaFave remains a legend in his adopted home of Austin, where one of his biggest fans, the late Jan Reid of Texas Monthly, once wrote in an article headlined “LaFave Rave”:

“Dressed in jeans stuffed into a pair of black stovepipe boots, he wore his guitar strapped low and bantered little with the crowd. He had the look of a biker or a gladly retired street fighter; hawk nose, Vandyke beard, thinning collar-length hair with a little residue on it. Still, his hallmark is love songs, and while his voice is high, nasal, and sandy — abrasive to some ears — he bends and draws it out into a style that’s as distinctive, in its way, as that of Buddy Holly or Willie Nelson.”

LaFave was a frequent presence in Dallas, having played numerous venues, including Poor David’s Pub, Uncle Calvin’s Coffeehouse and the Granada and Kessler theaters. During the years KERA-FM (90.1) aired Lone Star Saturday Night, host Abby Goldstein championed LaFave’s music, in particular his searing cover of “Walk Away Renée,” first recorded by the Left Banke in 1966. LaFave sang it during his one appearance on the PBS show Austin City Limits. Goldstein played LaFave’s cover of of “Walk Away Renée” repeatedly, no doubt helping it become his most-requested song in concert. Another one, “Never Is a Moment,” which LaFave wrote, became a huge hit in Italy.

Bryan Peterson, a Dallas-based graphic designer, moonlighted for years as LaFave’s keyboard player. He traveled with LaFave to the Netherlands in October 2016, months before the singer’s death, and marveled at what a star he’d become in the land of tulips.

“I was bowled over, from start to finish, flying into Amsterdam, getting in a van and doing this circular trip around Holland,” Peterson says. “And going to these A-plus venues. At every one of them, everybody knocked themselves out to accommodate the band in every way. And the crowds were almost all standing-room-only. They hung on every word he sung. And after every song, there was this incredible uproar of applause.”

Advertisement

The enthusiasm also exists in Italy, Peterson says, where Italian superstar Zucchero Fornaciari has made his cover of LaFave’s “Never Is a Moment” a national sensation. And because of Ashley Warren’s efforts, Peterson thinks it’s possible for LaFave’s music to blossom for years to come all over the world — albeit posthumously.

On a visit to the Netherlands in 2011, LaFave even landed an appearance on a talk show hosted by Johan Derksen, whom LaFave called “the David Letterman of the Netherlands.”

“Johan was an enormous supporter of Jimmy’s music,” Warren says. “He definitely was like a David Letterman. When he came to pick us up, at the hotel, I swear to you it was like you were traveling down the highway with God.”

Advertisement

In 2007, in a partnership with Dallas energy executive Kelcy Warren, LaFave launched Music Road Records, which will continue to house his previous recordings, found on iTunes and other platforms. So is the new album, released by Ashley Warren.

“Before Jimmy passed away, he created a trust,” Ashley Warren said, “that would have all his creative work — his photography, any film footage he took over the years,” and, of course, any unrecorded or previously unreleased music. “Pretty much anything Jimmy created that qualifies as his intellectual property.”

The trust, which Warren oversees, owns the publishing rights to songs written by LaFave, with one caveat. Music Road Records retains the rights to LaFave recordings spanning the period from Austin Skyline (1992) to Peace Town (2018).

The new record is noteworthy in how it documents the early growth of an artist. One of the songs it contains, “One Angel Is You,” is the ballad LaFave sang to win the New Folk Award at the Kerrville Folk Festival during the 1980s, an honor he shares with, among others, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen and Nanci Griffith.

Advertisement

“The words that come to mind,” Warren said, “are real and authentic. True to the craft. All but one of the songs on the new record were written by Jimmy. It’s an album that Jimmy did his way, self-produced, with all his own arrangements.”

LaFave attended his own tribute concert at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, held three days before he died in 2017. Confined to a wheelchair and strapped to an oxygen tank, he still managed to eke out a few raspy lines of “Goodnight, Irene,” provoking tears from the standing-room-only crowd that came to see a who’s who of Austin musicians pay respects to LaFave by singing his songs (with one notable exception: Sarah Lee Guthrie and Cathy Guthrie — the daughters of Arlo Guthrie and the granddaughters of Woody Guthrie — sang their grandfather’s “Hobo’s Lullaby”).

Advertisement

LaFave had the rare gift of making other artist’s songs feel as though they were his. The most prominent examples involved those pulled from the Bob Dylan catalog. Warren says LaFave recorded “dozens” of Dylan songs. She puts the figure somewhere in the 70s. LaFave’s recording of Dylan’s “Not Dark Yet” — not Dylan’s version — appears on the soundtrack of the Showtime series, Californication.

LaFave’s other favorites were songs by Bruce Springsteen (“Secret Garden”) and Jackson Browne. More inclusions of the latter should end up on future LaFave records, Warren said, in particular Browne’s “These Days,” which Browne wrote when he was only 16.

Warren sees it as her mission “to follow the timeline of Jimmy’s life and career. My goal is to take people back in time and then come forward. My hope is to show over time the progression of his vocals, his band, his writing. I want to introduce and reintroduce his fans to Jimmy’s writing.

Advertisement

“I hope it continues his legacy in a way that honors his spirit and his commitment to the unknown artist, to the undiscovered and the grassroots movement. Jimmy honored the common man in every aspect. With everyone he met, he always sought the common ground. He followed his inner compass, and it never steered him wrong. He could emote in a way that not everyone can. And it always looked so flawless.”

Jimmy LaFave performs on the main stage at Klyde Warren Park in Dallas on Sunday Oct. 28,...
Jimmy LaFave performs on the main stage at Klyde Warren Park in Dallas on Sunday Oct. 28, 2012. It was the opening day of Klyde Warren Park. (Christian Randolph / Staff Photographer)