Gig review: Kimmie Rhodes, CCA, Glasgow

IT MAY not be a conscious acknowledgement, but when Texan singer-songwriter Kimmie Rhodes sings “I’m flying under the radar” in her song Contrabandistas, she could be referring to her 30-year career trajectory at the more literate end of country music.

While commercial success may largely have eluded her, she certainly has the respect of her peers: artists who have covered her songs, or with whom she has collaborated, include Trisha Yearwood, Wynonna, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Emmylou Harris, Townes Van Zandt and Tom Petty. And it wasn’t hard to see why on her latest Scottish visit, which found her in warmly relaxed mood, performing an apparently spontaneous selection of material from her 15-album back catalogue, impressively accompanied by son Gabriel on lead guitar and backing vocals.

“It’s not a real slick show we put on,” she warned superfluously at the start, proceeding to comprehensively charm the crowd with both bubbly anecdotes about working with her heroes, and the engrossingly diverse potency of her songcraft.

She opened with the valedictory title track of her 1996 album West Texas Heaven, straightaway higlighting that her vocals combined youthful and weathered, rich and raw qualities, suffusing the lyrics with an emotional intensity at times reminiscent of Iris DeMent.

Later, the homecoming jubilation of God’s Acre supplied the perfect complement, while other standouts included the intimate storytelling style of I Just Drove By, the artfully broken scansion of the beseeching I’m Gonna Fly, and the deftly Tex-Mex tinged Espiritu Santo Bay, at once reverential and seductive.

Rating: ****