Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Live Friday Night At Milwaukee’s Shank Hall: A Review

I first became aware of Jimmie Dale’s music ten or maybe even fifteen years ago on the PBS program Austin City Limits. At that time, probably in his mid 40's, Gilmore looked tall and lean, skinny even, with sharp, clearly defined facial features, and he wore a three quarter length black coat, white shirt and a black string tie. My first impression of him called to mind the 60's and 70's country singer Sonny James, the Southern Gentleman, who always dressed in black and wore a three-quarter length coat along with the white shirt and string tie. In sharp contrast though, the Southern Gentlemen’s black, wavy hair style and river boat gambler’s demeanor, was not the Jimmie Dale Gilmore persona.

No, not with Jimmie’s Indian looking straight, dark, shoulder length hair and plain spoken relaxed manner. He did, however, look rather distinctive, if not distinguished. But beyond the fashion notes, Jimmie Dale’s beautiful tenor voice and artfully crafted songs, songs that defy easy classification, combined country, folk , rhythm and blues sounds; sounds produced by electrified acoustic guitars. I quickly became a fan.

As a concert venue, Shank Hall was new to me. Located on Milwaukee’s Northeast side on Farwell Street, Shank Hall appears as a rather ordinary looking tavern or small club. There is a small parking lot across the street not far to the north, and there is some on street parking in the neighborhood. The Shank Hall web site indicates a capacity of 300 hundred, but I would have guessed, wrongly apparently, that the actual capacity was closer to 30 than the three hundred. As we entered the Hall, we could see a performance stage at one end of the room and a bar at the other, with a large sound, light, mixing board near the bar end of the room. The hall itself, filled with small cocktail size tabes and chairs, provided what turned out to be a very intimate environment that afforded the audiences an exceptional view of the performance area. The walls on each side of the room featured 8x11 photos of performs who’d graced the Shank hall stage over the years. Jimmie Dale Gilmore seemed right at home in photo company that included artists ranging from the likes of Leo Kotke to the Violent Fems.


In this non smoking atmosphere, to my surprise, the house rules did permit concert goers to come with food from home, even pizzas if you were so inclined, and from start to finish, waitresses were conveniently available with drinks from the bar.

This Shank Hall concert did feature an opening act performer about whom little will be said. If you can imagine Leonard Cohen, with an extremely bad case of laryngitis, singing dark, morose song lyrics from which some mean soul had ripped out all the poetry; well, then you know what we suffered though to get to Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Judging from the non-reaction from the audience, they were polite, I don’t know that this cat’s picture will hang on the Shank’s walls anytime soon.

After ten or fifteen minutes of casually watching a couple roadies make a few transitional changes on the stage-- placing a couple acoustic guitars on stands, positioning mikes and running a sound check-- there stood Jimmie Dale Gilmore in the flesh. “Hi,” he said, in a relaxed, easy manner, a manner that seemed to characterize his demeanor throughout the concert. In some ways he appeared to me as kind of a San Francisco hippy version of Fred Rogers from PBS’s, “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.,” complete with the same innocent, genuine smile and unassuming personal style, with a certain gentle deferential quality about it; the Mr. Rogers quality. An auspicious start I thought, Mr. Rogers has long been one of the two or three heros of my life.

This latter day Jimmie Dale, still wore what looked like a three-quarter length charcoal-grey black coat but one with kinda faded looking grey one inch pin stripes. And the white shirt, well, it was gone along with the black string tie, and in its place hung a leather string necklace with a stone amulet of some kind bordered in silver attached. There he stood, complete with his acoustic guitar and the cowboy boots you’d expect to see on someone reared in Lubbock, Tx. Still lanky and lean looking with the sharp, pointed facial features, the marks of passing time were very much in evidence and the once straight dark shoulder length hair is now grey with only the slightest suggestion that it might have once reflected color. And though his manner and style still suggest some of the naivety or exuberance of the young, he looks closer to seventy than the sixty-one he is.

Then I noticed one of the roadies, still on stage, as he plucked the other acoustic guitar from it’s stand, strap it on and stood, just off to one side, intently watching Jimmie Dale. Nameless at this point, he looked like someone from out of my youthful days back in the hill country of northeastern Montana, a guy from one of the neighboring farms or ranches who just happened to stop in for a little neighborly socializing. Attired in worn blue jeans, a plain flannel shirt with the tails hanging out and the sleeves none too stylistically rolled about midway up on his forearms. His hair, if he had time to run a comb through it, certainly hadn’t been treated with any of the modern spray nets to keep it neatly in place. About 50, or there abouts, there was no attempt at a social facade here.

Without much further ado Jimmie kicked of with one of his signature songs,”One Endless Night.” It was immediately apparent that, though his body reflects passing time, his beautiful tenor voice remains as clear and pure as that which came from the much younger singer I’d see years before on Austin City Limits. Indeed, in the intimacy of Shank Hall, the sounds were beyond anything I’ve head on the numerous Gilmore Cd’s in my collection. The Shank Hall sound system beautifully balances the vocal and instrument levels providing a sound mix that clearly highlights the voice. And the farm boy guitar player accompanying Jimmie on the other guitar, well, he may not have been up on the latest social facades and all the practiced manners, but oh how he could play that guitar. During the next two hours or so he would occasionally alternate between the acoustic and an electrified dobro displaying mastery of each.

After a three or four selections, Jimmie Dale paused briefly and, almost as an after thought, kinda introduced his nameless guitar playin’ sidekick, noting as he did so, that there was a story attached to their relationship that he’d get to later. For the time being, we now knew that we were listening to the incredible guitar artistry of one Robi Gjersoe. By whatever name, any thoughts I’d had of this artists lack of social sophistication had been pushed aside by his obvious musical virtuosity. Damn, I thought! If A. Einstein could run around the campus at Princeton, sockless, in batter old shoes, I guess R. Gjersoe can play guitars at the Shank dressed any damned why he pleases, and I’ll bet nobody’d notice.

Indeed, if I may digress for a moment, whether it’s Jimmie Dale Gilmore with Robi Gjersoe, Leonard Cohen, Townes Van Zandt, Mickey Newbury, or any of the peripatetic artists traveling entertainments back roads, there is a commonality that threads them together–the music is the thing; it’s not the business of music that’s caught their attention. There is none of that slurpy, syrpy plastic overlay that makes so much homogenized, over produced, contemporary music so imminently forgettable.

The fact that these musical vagabonds reflect an artistic commitment to interests larger than self interest driven cupidity is evident in their music and in the way they live their lives. Leonard Cohen spent several years, living and studying in a Bundist monastery. Similarly, Jimmie Dale, a philosophy student, spent much of the 80's studying with a guru in Denver and the late Mickey Newbury, one of the truly great influences in modern music, famously avoided the commercial side of music, at times not performing or even recording for extended time periods.

Any account of a Jimmie Dale Gilmore concert wouldn’t be complete without at least some mention of his penchant for philosophical musings, digressions, ranging from leftist political sentiments that would make the Dixie Chicks tepid disavowal of Bush seem conservative, to meditations on the meaning and mysteries of life. As Jimmie Dale noted in one way or another, he never encountered a digression he could avoid, not that he wanted to. The Butch Hancock song that Gilmore claims as his own and sings with knowing conviction, “My Mind’s Got A Mind Of It’s Own,” represents in concise form a kind of autobiographical snapshot of Gilmore.

Near the end of the concert Jimmie Dale paused and announced that he wanted us to meet a friend of his. “Paul ,” he said, looking down at a big, burley, Burl Ives sized man seated just a couple seats in front of our table, “come on up here.” The big man, his faded brown hair drawn back in a pony tail, quickly moved to the stage and stood beside Jimmie Dale looking a little disheveled in a pair of baggy nondescript grey slacks. His bearded face made it a bit difficult to read his expression, but he seemed rather shy and didn’t speak. Gilmore continued, “This is Paul Cebar of ‘Paul Cebar and the Milwaukeans.’” He then proceeded to tell us, with some invited help from Robi Gjersoe, that it was Paul Cebar who advised him that Robi was the guitar player that Gilmore needed. At that time Gjersoe was a member of Cebar’s “Milwaukeans.”

Up to this point Paul has stood essential mute, listening to Gjersoe and Gilmore reminisce about Gjersoe’s move from the “Milwaukeans” to Austin, Texas. Kinda seemed like he might have been thinking, “What in the hell am I doing up here.” Then, Jimmie Dale turned to Paul and said, “I’d love to have you do a number for us, would ya?” With a few whispered words between Gjersoe and Cebar, Paul strapped on the acoustic guitar and, with Gilmore and Gjersoe playing behind him, Paul started to play. I could feel my neck start to tingle as I listened to one of the most beautiful barbitone voices I have ever heard. He sang a song I’d heard many times before, the old Johnny Cash tune, “I Still Miss Someone,” but oh did he make it uniquely his own with phrasing and vocal nuances that clearly conveyed his deep understanding of the ideas embed in the song.


The concert at an end, the audience enthusiastically called Jimmie Dale back a couple times for encore numbers. As I later drove those hundred miles back north, home, I did so knowing that I’d had a memorable, uplifting experience that enriches life as only the arts can. Swank Hall and I’ll not be strangers anymore.

Listen' to tunes for ya,

Davy Crockett