Butch Hancock & Jimmie Dale Gilmore - Two Roads (1990)

Butch Hancock:
As a member of the groundbreaking Flatlanders, singer/songwriter Butch Hancock helped kick-start the progressive country movement of the '70s. As a solo artist, Hancock recorded a series of country-folk albums for his own independent Rainlight label, which showcased his literate wordplay, quirky humor, and dry, Dylan-esque vocal delivery. Going the independent route certainly cost Hancock some name recognition and wider exposure, but he did earn a devoted cult following, especially in his native Texas.
Hancock was born in the west Texas town of Lubbock in 1945 and grew up on a farm, writing his first songs while driving his father's tractor. In high school, he started playing music with friends Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Joe Ely, fellow long-haired intellectuals who shared a distaste for commercial country. Hancock entered architectural school after graduation, but eventually left to return to his family's farm in Lubbock. He reconnected with Gilmore and Ely, and in 1970 the three formed a band called the Flatlanders. In 1972, they traveled to Nashville for a recording session with Plantation Records, a low-budget offshoot of the past-its-prime Sun label. When their first single flopped, their lone album, Jimmie Dale & the Flatlanders, was barely released in extremely limited quantities in 1973, and the group members gradually went their separate ways. However, when Ely became an acclaimed solo artist in the late '70s, he drew heavily from Gilmore and Hancock's songwriting catalogs, bringing Hancock classics like "West Texas Waltz," "If I Were a Bluebird" (both covered by Emmylou Harris), "She Never Spoke Spanish to Me" (covered by the Texas Tornados), and "Boxcars" to a wider audience.
Ely's recordings helped spark interest in Hancock, but Hancock returned to music on his own terms, moving to the progressive country hotbed of Austin and starting up his own Rainlight label. In 1978, he issued his first album, West Texas Waltzes and Dust-Blown Tractor Tunes, a spare, simple collection that spotlighted his impressive lyrical abilities. The double album The Wind's Dominion followed a year later, and experimented with a broader musical palette and fuller arrangements. Released in 1980, Diamond Hill featured a full backing band, and 1981's Firewater was an informal live set; both continued to build his cult reputation on the Texas roots music scene. Hancock subsequently took a break from recording for several years, pursuing his interests in photography and video, and returned in 1985 with Yella Rose With Marce Lacoutre; Split & Slide followed in 1986.
During another break from recording, Jimmie Dale Gilmore decided to return to his solo career, and thanks to the Flatlanders' burgeoning legend, his versions of several Hancock compositions once again renewed interest in the songwriter. In 1989, the bluegrass-oriented Sugar Hill label issued Own & Own, a compilation of highlights from Hancock's early albums. Meanwhile, Hancock and Gilmore toured Australia together, which resulted in the live duo album Two Roads; Hancock also issued Cause of the Cactus on his own label in 1991. Another compilation for Sugar Hill came in 1993, this one called Own the Way Over Here, and the following year, Hancock contributed songs to Chippy, a musical theater piece about a Texas prostitute co-written by Ely.
In 1995 his first-ever non-compilation studio project for an outside label was released, the acclaimed Sugar Hill set Eats Away the Night, which was hailed as one of his most fully realized recordings. In the years that followed, Hancock re-released many of his old albums digitally, and also issued the new Rainlight set You Coulda Walked Around the World in 1999. He toured with the reunited Flatlanders in 2000, after which he moved from Austin to the small desert town of Terlingua; there he worked as a white-water rafting guide and returned to architecture, designing, and building his own home. In 2002, the Flatlanders issued the well-received reunion album Now Again. Hancock himself released the politically charged War and Peace in 2006.~Steve Huey

Jimmie Dale Gilmore:
With a warm, warbling tenor voice and folksy, personable approach to both his music and his audiences, Jimmie Dale Gilmore is the archetype of a Texas singer/songwriter, with his eye for the dusty beauty of the Southwest meshing beautifully with the Zen cowboy demeanor that informs his music and his persona. Gilmore came out of the fruitful Lubbock, Texas, music scene of the '70s, and his early work with Joe Ely and Butch Hancock as the Flatlanders was a crucial precursor to both the outlaw country and alt-country movements. The Flatlanders' 1972 debut album was barely heard in its day (it would be reissued several times, definitively in 2024 as All American Music), and Gilmore dropped out of music for a while, but when Ely recorded a pair of Gilmore's songs on his first two solo albums in the late '70s, he returned to performing in 1980, releasing his self-titled debut album in 1988. His first major-label release, 1991's After Awhile, was a superb document of his songwriting chops and sure grasp of folk, country, and pop idioms. Gilmore in many ways came to represent the Austin music scene -- its rootsy mix of country, rock, and folk music -- the way Willie Nelson once reigned as king of the town's cosmic cowboys in the 1970s. Through the '90s, Gilmore recorded at a relaxed pace, and in the 2000s he returned to the independent label community, cutting albums like One Endless Night and Come on Back that focused on his interpretations of the work of other songwriters. (He also participated in a Flatlanders reunion that resulted in three studio albums, beginning with 2002's Now Again, and a number of concert tours.) After years of keeping a low profile outside the Southwest, Gilmore set out on tour in 2017 with roots rock veteran Dave Alvin, and the collaboration led to the pair cutting two albums together, 2018's Downey to Lubbock and 2024's Texicali.
Jimmie Dale Gilmore's roots go back to Tulia, a small West Texas town where his father played lead guitar in a country band. When Gilmore was in grade school the family moved to Lubbock, a Panhandle town known for being the starting point for a surprising number of musicians (including Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Terry Allen, and Gilmore's onetime singing partners Butch Hancock and Joe Ely). Growing up in Lubbock, Gilmore met Butch Hancock when they were both 12, and they remained friends and frequent musical collaborators ever since. Gilmore later met Terry Allen, who he says inspired him to write his own songs. One of the first songs Gilmore wrote, when he was around 20, was "Treat Me Like a Saturday Night," which remains one of his most enduring pieces. Later, another casual friend of Gilmore's, Joe Ely, turned him on to the music of Townes Van Zandt, which Gilmore says was a revelation for the way Van Zandt integrated the worlds of folk and country music.
Gilmore and Ely began playing music together around Lubbock as the T. Nickel House Band. Later, after a brief stint in Austin, Gilmore hooked up again back in Lubbock with Ely and Hancock and formed the Flatlanders, a now-legendary band that also included Steve Wesson, Tony Pearson, and several peripheral members. The group recorded an album in Nashville in 1972, but it was only ever released at the time on eight-track tape. (Long a collector's item, it was finally re-released by Rounder Records in 1990 under the title More a Legend Than a Band). A mix of acoustic folk, string-band country, and country blues, the album included another of Gilmore's best-known songs, "Dallas," which was actually released as a promo single at the time but generated little interest. By the end of the year the band had split up.
Gilmore moved to Denver, playing music only as a hobby. Ely, meanwhile, had won a record contract and had recorded some of Gilmore's songs. In 1980, Gilmore moved back to Austin, where he began playing regular gigs in local clubs. Finally, in 1988, Gilmore released his debut solo album, Fair and Square, on Hightone, Ely's label at the time. This and his 1989 follow-up, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, featured songs by Gilmore as well as Hancock and Ely played in a more straightforward honky tonk style than anything Gilmore had done previously or since. These two albums gained Gilmore newfound acclaim just as Austin itself was becoming a musical hot spot again. In 1990, the Flatlanders album was re-released, and Virgin Australia put out Two Roads, a duet album with Hancock that was recorded live during the pair's Australian tour. Gilmore was soon signed to Elektra, which released After Awhile in 1991 as part of the label's American Explorer series. The album retained a country feeling but was less honky tonk in nature, and it attracted Gilmore even more acclaim.
Nashville showed little interest in Gilmore's brand of country music, but he earned the praise of many critics. His next album, Spinning Around the Sun, came out in 1993 and again featured a mix of contemporary and traditional country-flavored songs and a fuller instrumental sound fronted by Gilmore's rich, warm voice. In 1996 he released Braver Newer World, produced by T-Bone Burnett, but the big news for Gilmore's fans came in 1998, when he reunited with Joe Ely and Butch Hancock to record a new Flatlanders track for the soundtrack of the motion picture The Horse Whisperer. While Gilmore stayed busy with his own music, releasing One Endless Night in early 2000, the Flatlanders began periodically touring together again, and they finally got around to cutting a second album in 2002, Now Again, with a third set, Wheels of Fortune, following in 2004. (That same year, tapes from an old Flatlanders gig were given commercial release under the title Live at the One Knite, Austin TX, June 8th 1972.) Gilmore returned to solo duties in 2005 with Come on Back, an album of classic honky tonk and folk songs Jimmie Dale recorded to honor the passing of his father; Joe Ely produced and played on the project. In 2011, Gilmore and his ad hoc band the Wronglers released the album Heirloom Music, a collection of vintage folk and country tunes performed on antique instruments.
Gilmore kept a low profile for the next few years, rarely performing outside the Southwest, but in 2017 he set out on a concert tour in tandem with roots rock stalwart Dave Alvin, in which they swapped songs and stories. The shows were successful enough that Gilmore and Alvin decided to cut an album together, and Downey to Lubbock was released in June 2018. The Flatlanders staged yet another reunion tour that led to a fresh studio album, 2021's Treasure of Love, that was dominated by covers and the trio's vocal interplay. The following year, Joe Ely released Flatland Lullaby, a collection of songs he recorded for his children in the '70s and '80s, which featured guest vocals from his friend Jimmie Dale. After the critical success of his first album with Dave Alvin, Gilmore and Alvin returned to the studio to cut a second collaborative LP, 2024's Texicali. In 2024, Omnivore Recordings issued All American Music, a collection that brought together all the surviving songs from the Flatlanders' 1972 Nashville recording sessions, including four tracks that did not appear on More a Legend Than a Band, and an alternate take of "Dallas" that surfaced on a Bear Family compilation in 2015.~Kurt Wolff & Mark Deming