WATCH JIM LAUDERDALE'S JUBILANT "YOU CAME TO GET ME" ON 'CONAN'
Jim Lauderdale and band took the Conan stage late Tuesday night for a performance of “You Came to Get Me,” a sparkling tune that blends the best of Northern soul with Lauderdale’s unending Southern charm.
The self-penned song from Lauderdale’s latest LP London Southern, released earlier this summer, joyously celebrates both the deliverance in a newfound love and Lauderdale’s lifetime passion for American R&B and the Beatles-led Merseybeat, along with the underground soul scene that emerged in the Sixties from dance clubs in the northern British towns of Manchester and Wigan, among others.
Recorded at London‘s historic Goldtop Studio, the LP is the pioneering Americana artist’s 29th offering since his 1991 debut Planet of Love, which featured his original versions of “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and “The King of Broken Hearts,” cut a year later by GeorgeStrait for the multi-platinum Pure Country soundtrack. London Southern reflects, perhaps more than any other album in his expansive catalogue, Lauderdale’s earliest musical influence.
“I first started playing drums when I was 10 in the school band,” Lauderdale tells Rolling Stone Country. “I’d play along with Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Beatles, or whoever, just on a snare drum, for hours. The Beatles were just so important to me. It was like magic. Melodically, they created something so different, with their influences of American music mixed with British dancehall-type songs that they heard, skiffle and everything like that, which was an influence on their music. [There was] this kind of bouncing back and forth from America to England, and England to America, with both sides absorbing the influences from one another and taking it somewhere else.”
Lauderdale is currently on tour and will return to Nashville next month for AmericanaFest, where he will also once again host the Americana Music Association’s Honors and Awards show on Wednesday, September 13th.