Jim Lauderdale

He was born on 11 April 1957 in Troutman, North Carolina, and moved with his family to South Carolina when he was young, growing up in Due West. He got his first Stanley Brothers record at about thirteen, and Ralph Stanley’s voice coming in on the chorus of “Rank Stranger” stayed with him; by fifteen he was playing the banjo and, though he also listened to Earl Scruggs, modeled himself on Stanley. As a teenager he played in a duo whose repertoire took in bluegrass, George Jones, old folk songs and the Grateful Dead, and while studying theater at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem he played in country and bluegrass bands.

After graduating he went to Nashville in the summer of 1979 in search of a recording or publishing deal. There he fell in with the mandolinist Roland White, and that October the two recorded an album in the basement studio of Earl Scruggs’s home; no label took it, and after about five months Lauderdale moved to New York. He played in the band of Floyd Domino, the former Asleep at the Wheel pianist, fronted his own act, sat in with Buddy Miller’s band and worked for a time in the mailroom of Rolling Stone. A part in the road company of the musical Pump Boys and Dinettes took him through Cleveland, Houston and Chicago to Los Angeles, where he met Rosie Flores, Billy Bremner and the producer Pete Anderson. John Ciambotti became his manager, and Anderson got him a deal with CBS, but the Bakersfield-flavoured album they made was shelved when his A&R man was transferred; it finally came out in 2001 as Point of No Return: The Unreleased 1989 Recordings.

His first released album, Planet of Love, came out on Reprise in 1991, co-produced by Rodney Crowell and John Leventhal. More major-label records followed, Pretty Close to the Truth (Atlantic, 1994), Every Second Counts (Atlantic, 1995), Whisper (BNA, 1998) and Onward Through It All (RCA, 1999), but none broke through on country radio. His songs did better in other singers’ hands. By 1999 George Strait had recorded ten of them, among them “Where the Sidewalk Ends” in the film Pure Country, the 1998 hit “We Really Shouldn’t Be Doing This” and “What Do You Say to That.” Patty Loveless recorded “Halfway Down” and, as a duet with George Jones, “You Don’t Seem to Miss Me”; Mark Chesnutt recorded “Gonna Get a Life”; and “Hole in My Head,” written with Buddy Miller, went onto the Dixie Chicks’ Fly in 1999. Lauderdale named “The King of Broken Hearts,” his tribute to George Jones and Gram Parsons, as one of his own favorites. In the late 1990s he also toured with Lucinda Williams, singing harmony and playing rhythm guitar.

The bluegrass record he had wanted to make since he was a teenager came in 1999. I Feel Like Singing Today, made with Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys and issued by Rebel, set nine songs he wrote for it, two of them with the Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, beside Stanley Brothers songs, and it was nominated for the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. That November he played the Grand Ole Opry for the first time, as Stanley’s guest. Lost in the Lonesome Pines (Dualtone, 2002), almost all of it written or co-written by Lauderdale, won the Grammy, and its “She’s Looking at Me” was the Americana Music Association’s first Song of the Year. He later co-produced Stanley’s last album, Man of Constant Sorrow (2015).

Hunter became a regular writing partner, on Headed for the Hills (2004), Patchwork River (2010), the bluegrass albums Reason and Rhyme (Sugar Hill, 2011) and Carolina Moonrise (Compass, 2012), and Black Roses and Blue Moon Junction (2013). Lauderdale’s own bluegrass records include Bluegrass (Yep Roc, 2006), The Bluegrass Diaries (Yep Roc, 2007), produced by Randy Kohrs, Could We Get Any Closer? (2009) and Old Time Angels (2013). Besides the Diaries, three of these bluegrass albums were nominated for the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album: Bluegrass, Could We Get Any Closer? and Reason and Rhyme. Along the way he made Wait ’Til Spring (2003) with Donna the Buffalo and Buddy and Jim (2012) with Buddy Miller, and recorded London Southern (2017) in London.

He signed with Yep Roc in April 2018, and on 3 August that year the label released both his new album Time Flies and the long-lost 1979 record with Roland White. Game Changer (2022), recorded at Blackbird Studios in Nashville and co-produced with Jay Weaver, came out on his own label, Sky Crunch. He then made two albums with the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys: The Long and Lonesome Letting Go (2023), a dozen new songs he co-wrote, half of them with the band’s guitarist Josh Rinkel, with Del McCoury trading lines with him on the title track, and The Birds Know, released on 24 April 2026.

Lauderdale hosted the Americana Music Honors & Awards from the first ceremony in 2002 through 2017. With Buddy Miller he co-hosts The Buddy & Jim Show on SiriusXM, and he has been a co-host of the live Nashville series Music City Roots. His career is the subject of the documentary Jim Lauderdale: The King of Broken Hearts. He received SESAC’s Inspiration Award in 2010, and in 2016 he was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame and given the Americana Music Association’s WagonMaster Award.