Jed Zimmerman may be the most Memphis Texan you’ll ever meet. Or is he the most Texas Memphian? Living in the Fort Worth area, he’s clearly a Texan now, but this is one native son of Memphis who hasn’t forgotten his roots. It’s more apparent than ever on his new album on the local Madjack label, Below the Blooms, wherein our hero journeys back to the land of his birth to record his songs with players steeped in the Memphis sound.
That was the goal from the outset, when Zimmerman called on his old friend Mark Edgar Stuart to produce the project. A core band was assembled at Delta-Sonic Sound that included Stuart, Danny Banks, Al Gamble, and Will Sexton (another Texas/Tennessee border jumper). Other odd players, like myself, were recruited to toss in a few chords, and, to hear Zimmerman describe it, it was a bit of a dream team.
“It’s almost like a little Wrecking Crew, this group,” he says. “I just wanted that authentic thing. With you Memphis guys, man, I was like, ‘Let it do its thing, man!’ There was nothing to think about here. I wanted to make a record with you guys, the way you guys feel it right when you hear it. There was no pre-planning. Let’s just get these guys together and let them interpret it the way they want to interpret it.”
Zimmerman typically plays solo guitar in the classic troubadour style, but with the Memphis band, he found himself rethinking the arrangements. “I don’t need my name in the credits, like ‘Jed on guitar,’” he says. “I might try a guitar overdub. Well, maybe Jed’s inadequate, all right? And sometimes it just didn’t need it! And I was fine with that. It’s big boy music. There’s so much beautiful space on this record that we didn’t need a lot of mandolins or guitar strumming. The breathing is important.”
Case in point, the opening track, with nary an acoustic strum to be heard. “Oh my God, them birds are chirpin’!” Zimmerman sings. Okay, is this a nature lover’s song? “Oh my God, look at all the light!” Hmm, he doesn’t sound too thrilled about it. “Doin’ time for the crime of … murder.” Wait, what? And then comes the song title and punch line, all rolled into one: “I killed a day, last night.” As remorseful morning-after looks at tying one on go, it’s a gem. That craftsmanship is typical of the entire album, and Zimmerman’s approach generally. Not surprisingly, his craftsmanship has roots in Memphis as well.
As he recalls, after graduating from Germantown High School, “I was 19 or something, living in Eads, Tennessee, and that’s when Cory Branan was starting to blow up. I’d hear the Pawtuckets, Jimmy Davis and the Riverbluff Clan — Jimmy’s like a brother to me. And then there was Mark Stuart. I’d play songwriter showcases at the Flying Saucer. Mark Stuart heard me and drove all the way out to Eads, and we sat on the front porch. He really thought I had something.”
Encouraged, Zimmerman moved to Midtown, ultimately reuniting with his high school sweetheart, Kelley Mickwee, to form a musical duo that lasted for years. That’s when a turning point came. “I was playing a Jed and Kelley gig when Keith Sykes walked in, and my knees started shaking! I was already a fan. We had a beer, and he liked the songs. So he ended up producing two Jed and Kelley records. He’s the ultimate songwriter. I have such respect for him and his comedic genius.”
Today, having long parted ways with Mickwee, he’s still honing the craft exemplified by songsmiths like Sykes, and, Memphis Wrecking Crew or not, the new album lives and dies by Zimmerman’s pithy writing and unaffected delivery. “I’ve worked really hard on my songs,” he says. “A lot of people have this notion of ‘You gotta write a song every day if you wanna be this or that.’ But I pore over my stuff. I’ll fill up half a notebook on just a line or two. Because I don’t see the point in turning in a homework assignment or finishing a song just to say that you’ve finished a song. When I finish it, I’d like to sing it for the rest of my life.”
Jed Zimmerman, Mark Edgar Stuart, and special guests will play a record release show at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts on Friday, October 15, 7:30 p.m. $10.