Dating & Relationship status

In April 2018, Lauderdale signed to Yep Roc Records.

In 2013, Lauderdale released Old Time Angels (a bluegrass album) and his first solo acoustic album, Blue Moon Junction, followed by Black Roses, with the North Mississippi All-Stars. Lauderdale appears on Laura Cantrell’s 2013 release No Way There From Here. 2014 saw the release of his album I’m A Song. Lauderdale will release his new album Time Flies on August 3, 2018, along with Jim Lauderdale and Roland White.

On August 3, 2018, Lauderdale released Jim Lauderdale and Roland White, a previously lost record made with mandolin master Roland White. The disc was recorded in Earl Scruggs’ basement in 1979, and the songs were only found recently by White’s wife.

In 2013, Lauderdale started his own record label, Sky Crunch, so that he could release his many albums on a schedule that suited him.

Lauderdale released a record called Buddy and Jim with long-time friend and collaborator Buddy Miller in 2013. Lauderdale said they recorded it in three days in Miller’s home studio. Miller did the mixing and producing.

Two 2013 releases, Black Roses and Blue Moon Junction, were co-written with Hunter. Black Roses features North Mississippi Allstars’ Cody and Luther Dickinson, whom Lauderdale met in Nashville at the Americana Music Festival, as well as Muscle Shoals musicians Spooner Oldham and David Hood. The album was recorded at their father Jim Dickinson’s studio, Zebra Ranch in Mississippi.

2013’s Blue Moon Junction features Lauderdale’s work as a singer and songwriter, some of them co-written with Hunter in a solo, acoustic format. Lauderdale produced the record. Lauderdale says that they have more material that might make a good follow-up album, and hopes they will have time to collaborate again soon.

A documentary film called Jim Lauderdale: The King of Broken Hearts, directed by Jeremy Dylan, was released in 2013. Using interviews with Elvis Costello, Buddy Miller, John Oates, Gary Allan, Tony Brown, and Jerry Douglas, the film describes Lauderdale’s successes and failures as a recording artist.

In 2011, Lauderdale toured with Hot Tuna, an ensemble act that included Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Barry Mitterhof, G.E. Smith, and, for a time, Charlie Musselwhite. He has also toured with Elvis Costello, Rhonda Vincent, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and others.

Lauderdale’s first collaboration with Hunter was Headed for the Hills and the second was Patchwork River in May 2010. The June 2011 release Reason and Rhyme was their third collaboration. Additionally, they wrote songs for a North Mississippi Allstars record that was released in the fall of 2013.

In 2007, he began a collaboration with Larry Campbell, the band Olabelle, and others in the American Beauty Project, a loose collection of musicians dedicated to reimagining in performance the Grateful Dead’s two classic 1970 albums, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty.

Lauderdale has hosted the Americana Music Awards since winning their first Artist of the Year and Song of the Year awards in 2002. He was a judge for the second, 10th and 11th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists’ careers. He is Honorary Chairperson for the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest each April at MerleFest in Wilkesboro, NC.

The term “the Jim Lauderdale Phenomenon”, coined by singer-songwriter Kim Richey and cited in an April 2000 article in The Tennessean by writer Peter Cooper, is an ironic reference to the fact that Lauderdale was nominated for a Grammy for his work with Stanley but was released from a record deal with RCA not long after. He was also released from contracts with Warner Bros., Columbia, and Atlantic Records. The article notes that many country artists that were signed to major labels in the 1990s failed to get radio airtime and had their contracts dropped after making one or two albums. The problem became endemic in Nashville during this period, when a lot of good music was being created and recorded, but the megastars dominated the airwaves.

Lauderdale’s solo debut, Planet of Love, was produced by Rodney Crowell and John Leventhal and released in 1991. Lost in the Lonesome Pines, a 2002 collaboration with Ralph Stanley, won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. The Bluegrass Diaries won the same award in 2008. In 2003, Lauderdale was joined by roots/jam band Donna the Buffalo on the album Wait ‘Til Spring. Could We Get Any Closer? was nominated for a Grammy in 2009.

Lauderdale joined the national touring production of Pump Boys & Dinettes, which eventually reached Los Angeles where he met musicians Rosie Flores, Billy Bremmer, Pete Anderson, Lucinda Williams, Dale Watson, and others. John Ciambotti became Lauderdale’s manager and Lauderdale relocated to Los Angeles in the late 1980s, recording an album for CBS (which was later released as The Point of No Return). The record was influenced by the Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens.

After graduating from college, Lauderdale lived in Nashville for five months in the summer of 1979 while he tried to get a recording or publishing deal. He hung out a lot with Roland White, an accomplished mandolin player, with whom he cut a record. But things never took off, so he decided to move to New York, where he played in Floyd Domino’s band and performed as a solo artist. In 1980 he met singer-songwriter Buddy Miller. He played in Miller’s band in the active twang music scene that was evolving at the time.

James Russell Lauderdale (born April 11, 1957) is an American country, bluegrass, and Roots singer-songwriter. Since 1986, he has released 31 studio albums, including collaborations with artists such as Dr. Ralph Stanley, Buddy Miller, and Donna the Buffalo. A “songwriter’s songwriter,” his songs have been recorded by dozens of artists, notably George Strait, Gary Allan, Elvis Costello, Blake Shelton, the Dixie Chicks, Vince Gill, and Patty Loveless.