Singer-songwriter headed to Tucson navigated the pandemic with 'Hope'

For the first few months of the pandemic, Jim Lauderdale was a little numb.

Actually, he said, it was more like shell-shocked.

“I just felt so strange,” the legendary songwriter admitted during a phone call last month from home in Nashville. “Like everybody, I wasn’t really playing very much music unless it was some kind of benefit and somebody would ask for a song, for me to very clumsily do a video at home.”

As time went on, Lauderdale became inspired. Before the pandemic closed down his world, he had been recording a country album and had written a bunch of songs that didn’t quite fit.

But there was a hint of hopefulness in those songs and others he was inspired to write, sentiments of comfort and a sense of “everything is going to be alright” that poured from his pen.

Lauderdale, who will perform with Tucson’s Rhythm & Roots at Hotel Congress on Saturday, May 14, initially wanted to rush the project out on streaming platforms. He said he felt a sense of urgency to spread a more hopeful message in a time where hope was in short supply for many people.

“I remember telling (his manager), this record, I want to call it ‘Hope’ and it needs to be out like immediately because of these times we’re going through,” recalled the 65-year-old Lauderdale, whose songs have been recorded by George Strait, Blake Shelton, Patty Loveless, the Dixie Chicks, Ralph Stanley and others. “I thought at that time that this (the pandemic) was something that we would be all through with in four or five months. And of course it kept going on.”

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His manager reigned Lauderdale in, convincing him that what he had created was worthy of a full record. This pandemic, he told Lauderdale, was not going to be a flash in the pan.

“He said, ‘I hate to say it but I think there’s going to be a lot of hard times and I wouldn’t worry about rushing it out,’” Lauderdale said. “I’m glad we took our time. I tend to want to rush things.”

The extra time gave Lauderdale the chance to reconnect with Robert Hunter’s widow, Maureen, an artist who created the artwork for the album cover and liner notes.

Lauderdale and Hunter, the longtime lyricist for The Grateful Dead who died in 2019, had written more than 100 songs together over the last decade of Hunter’s life. “Hope” includes one of those songs, “Memory,” which Lauderdale said he had sent to Hunter after he recorded it. When Hunter never responded, Lauderdale learned of his death.

Saturday’s concert on the Hotel Congress Plaza, 311 E. Congress St., will be Lauderdale’s first in Tucson since he played with Ralph Stanley in 2001. The show, featuring Lauderdale and his full band, starts at 7:30 p.m. and tickets are $28 to $40 through hotelcongress.com.