Hear It First: Jimmy LaFave, ‘The Night Tribe’

Music Road Records (Austin, TX) – Even before he named his first band back in Oklahoma, Austin singer-songwriter Jimmy LaFave knew he belonged to that special fraternity of shadowy creatures who move to rhythms dictated by darkness: the 24-hour diner waitress, the graveyard-shift radio DJs, the cops, the taxi drivers – the musicians. His night tribe. A few versions of Jimmy LaFave & the Night Tribe have existed over the years, but he’d never reflected life “in the neon glow of perpetual sin” via song until now, with ‘The Night Tribe,’ his new album, releasing May 12th on Music Road Records.

Explaining the term’s origin, LaFave says, “In Oklahoma, you hear the word tribe a lot because of all the different Indian tribes, and I thought, ‘What tribe of people am I part of?’ It was always the night people.” After reactivating the Night Tribe name for a recent European tour, he decided he wanted to do something thematic with it. “And that is when I write most of my songs,” he adds. “Almost all the songs on the record were written at nighttime, driving.”

While hardly dark in texture, LaFave’s self-produced album captures the varied moods and musings of an accomplished folk/Americana artist known for possessing what critic Dave Marsh has called “one of America’s greatest voices.” LaFave is also known for his ability to draw musical lines from Oklahoma native son Woody Guthrie to Dylan, Neil Young and other influences in ways that feel completely organic. As most of LaFave’s albums do, The Night Tribe contains a Dylan cover: his elegantly rendered “Queen Jane Approximately”; it also contains his gorgeously spare, yet majestic version of Young’s “Journey Through the Past.”

As for Guthrie, the folk icon’s spirit directly inhabits the rockabilly-tinged “Dust Bowl Okies,” and it certainly imbues the title tune, a bluesy noir that paints every shade of the “shadow world” where passion, promise, danger and loneliness all lurk. But it’s safe to say it hovers throughout ‘The Night Tribe,’ from the mid-tempo opener “The Beauty of You” to the closing benediction, a prayer of sorts for fellow travelers, “The Roads of the Earth.”

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‘The Night Tribe’ will be released on May 12 via Music Road Records and you can stream the album in its entirety until then in the player below. Order the album – HERE.