It’s only natural if not destiny that Colin Gilmore sings and writes songs. He grew up surrounded by music, which also runs in his blood. But what counts more than his given talent and legacy is what he does with it.
And that would be building a fine burgeoning body of recorded work as well as playing delightfully dynamic live performances that mark him as “a West Texas Nick Lowe,” as Mojo’s Sylvie Simmons describes Gilmore. And writing songs like “The Way We Are,” the keystone cut on Hills and Valleys, the latest album by The Flatlanders — the noted roots music threesome of Colin’s father Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock — and the disc’s best selling track on iTunes plus a frequent rousing show closer for the group. Plus fostering a growing following from tours across America and to Japan as well as radio spins nationwide and at other various points on the globe and consistent accolades from critics since he first took the stage.
So instead of just having a surname long associated with music of quality, heart and soul, Colin Gilmore is rapidly making his own name playing what the Austin Chronicle calls “a combination of energetic guitar pop and melodic twang [that] leaves the listener wanting more.” Sure, he’s obviously his father’s son in vocal timbre and a number of shared points of inspiration. But as All Music Guide points out, he creates music “strong enough and different enough from his dad’s body of work that the vocal comparison becomes beside the point.”
That distinctive musical signature of Colin Gilmore brims throughout Goodnight Lane, his second full album with nine of its 10 tracks produced by Grammy winner Lloyd Maines (Dixie Chicks, The Flatlanders and many other notables) and Eric McKinney. The disc canters out of the gate with the brisk rocking pop rumination on the twists of existence, “Circles in the Yard,” produced by Scott Matthews, Gilmore’s collaborator on his Black Wine EP (whose musical credits include work with such true notables as The Beach Boys, Bowie, Clapton, Neil Young, a couple of Beatles and Rolling Stones as well as both Johnny and Rosanne Cash, to name but a few). Then it trots off down the country road of its title track that stresses the honey in a tale of bittersweet departure.
And then with its stylistic breadth laid out, the set splashes Celtic musical strains onto the tear-touched devotional “Abigail” (co-written with Matthews), rave on rocks through a cosmic emotional travelogue on “Laughing Hard or Crying,” pays a snippet of lyrical homage to fellow West Texan Buddy Holly on the poetic kiss of empathy of “Essene Eyes,” and even surfs a twangy wave on the sprightly instrumental “Teeth, Hair and Eyeballs.” Propulsive guitars drive the devotional “Hand Close To Mine,” Gilmore fashions melodic uplift from dark times on “Black Vines” and visits a place of peace on the modernist folk of “Llano.” And then he wraps it all up with the tearful grace note on “Raindrops in July,” which he started writing when his dear uncle Alan died on the same day as Johnny Cash, and finished up with producer and songwriter Jon Tiven (who has written hits for Robert Cray and Buddy Guy and helmed albums for B.B. King, Wilson Pickett and a host of others).
The tracks brim with a live show immediacy thanks to stage testing the songs with his road band that plays on the album: drummer Tim Bennett and his guitarist twin brother Jay Bennett (who have also worked with The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash and Joe Pug), and bassist Billy Crompton, plus Jared Hall on keyboards and accordion and singer Sally Allen adding harmony vocals on “Llano.” Maines adds his famed trademark pedal steel filigrees to the instrumental tapestry as well as touches of other musical things with strings. And at the core of it all is Gilmore’s gifts for delectable wordplay melded with inviting and indelible melodies, as well as a Zen-like worldview and preternatural wisdom that reminds one of, well, his famed father.
“There was no outside pressure for me to do music,” notes Gilmore, who as a child pondered brain surgery as a profession and in college considered anthropology as his life’s pursuit. But with music as an intrinsic part of his milieu since his childhood in Lubbock and during his teen years in Austin, where he now resides — both locales where music is all but in the water — what else could a poor boy do but play in his own rock’n’roll band?
Gilmore boasts not just a musical father but stepfather as well, noted fiddler Richard Bowden, plus a mother who weaned him on superior songwriting by singing Lucinda Williams and Warren Zevon songs when Colin was a little one. From the first points of his memory, backyard music parties were an integral part of his life along with visits in his youth to venues like the original Stubb’s Bar-B-Q, the legendary Cotton Club and the Texas Spoon as well as the annual Tornado Jam festival. “I thought music was fascinating,” Gilmore recalls.
At a young age, one of his many musical family friends showed Colin the Buddy Holly song “Oh Boy!” The song “just hit me, completely blew me away. It sounded so different than anything I ever heard before. I didn’t even know he was from Lubbock at first.” Then along came MTV. “I thought it was the coolest thing in the whole world. I would have watched it around the clock if I could.” In his teen years he fell under the sway of classic punk rock and its offshoots like The Clash (“first and foremost”), The Sex Pistols, The Pogues (“my favorite band”), They Might Be Giants, Fear and more.
At age 12 Gilmore took his first guitar lesson, and a natural aptitude was obvious. “After my lesson I came home and plugged into the amp and started playing rhythm guitar. Everybody like my friends and mom and stepdad said it sounded like something coming out of the radio. So I just went with it, and from that point on music has stayed in my life.”
His teen punk band played Austin clubs while at the same time Gilmore sang in his school choir. In college, classical guitar studies sharpened his skills — “I learned how to make a melody and how a song is structured” — and after an initial major in audio recording with which “I couldn’t wrap my head around the technology,” he concentrated in anthropology, reflecting an interest in understanding people and culture that found creative expression when he started to seriously apply himself to the art and craft of writing songs following graduation.
Over the summer after college two trips to Europe nearly a month in India proved to be eye opening if not life changing. “The sights I saw and sounds I heard had a huge impact on my music,” he explains, attributing it to “getting away from your view of yourself or the daily grind into, a new environment, and going off and seeing what your thoughts are without having to put it into the context of how to make your day unfold. A lot of people say of making music, well, you’re either talented or not. But there’s also your life experience.”
On his return Gilmore toured as a roadie with his father, who, after hearing Colin’s songs and being duly impressed, got his son up to perform with his band and sometimes open shows. A 2002 debut EP, 4 Of No Kind, immediately marked him as an artist who “goes his own way,” as the Austin Chronicle observed. His first album two years later, The Day the World Stopped and Spun the Other Way, was praised by the Round Rock Leader as “exactly what the record business needs.” Produced by Mark Hallman, known for his work with Eliza Gilkyson, Tom Russell, Carole King and many others, the disc made it clear that Colin “has found his own voice as a songwriter and it’s an impressive one,” the Round Rock Leader added. It also reflected his diverse inspirations with covers of “The Beautiful Waitress” by Lubbock scene songwriting icon Terry Allen and The Clash’s “White Man in Hammersmith Palais.” An inspired session of co-writing and recording with Matthews in 2007 yielded another EP, Black Wine, that further broadened Gilmore’s sound and won him more rave reviews and international airplay.
All told, “Colin proves that it takes more than just a name to be a successful musician,” notes AOL’s Spinner.com. While his upbringing and associations imbue Gilmore’s music with deep roots, he builds on that foundation to create a sound that takes it all somewhere new, not unlike his seminal musical touchstone Holly. “His music was cutting edge yet was really based on roots music. What he was doing at the time was very radical: based on and combining, blues, country music and also a bit of Mexican influence.”
Gilmore holds a similar ambition to make the music he creates dynamic, fresh and all embracing. “I want to keep the pressure on myself within to keep moving and keep make it happening. But not to catch one particular wave; I’d rather make my one waves,” he says. And he’s now closing in on a decade of doing just that with an approach that transcends any particular stylistic rubric, and he describes as “West Texas rock’n’roll, basically, but with flavors of rockabilly, punk, folk and a little bit of psychedelic.
“All my life, music has been something that makes people feel like they’re not alone and connected with other people and the whole world. That’s what I want to do,” Gilmore explains. “To me, the way to do that is to keep playing it and hope that it happens. And use music as a way to connect with community and people all over the world.
“I want to use music as a means to rediscover the earth and bring as many people along with me as I can,” he concludes. “What I hope this album does is brighten things in one way or another, even the dark stuff within it. I hope it turns on a light for some people.” And given how Gilmore’s talents shine on Goodnight Lane, that result is sure to be just another manifestation of his musical destiny.
