Jimmie Dale Gilmore

Biography

Jimmie Dale Gilmore (born May 6, 1945) is an American country singer-songwriter and actor currently living in Austin, Texas.

Life and career

Gilmore is a native of the Texas Panhandle, having been born in Amarillo and raised in Lubbock, Texas. His earliest musical influence was Hank Williams and the honky tonk brand of country music that his father played. In the 1950s, he was exposed to the emerging rock and roll of other Texans such as Roy Orbison and Lubbock native Buddy Holly, as well as to Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, the latter two being in the lineup at a concert he attended on October 15, 1955, at Lubbock's Fair Park Coliseum. He was profoundly influenced in the 1960s by The Beatles and Bob Dylan and the folk music and blues revival in that decade.
With Joe Ely and Butch Hancock, Gilmore founded The Flatlanders. The group has been performing on and off since 1972. The band's first recording project, from the early 1970s, was barely distributed. It has since been acknowledged, through Rounder's 1990 reissue (More a Legend Than a Band), as a milestone of progressive, alternative country. The three friends continued to reunite for occasional Flatlanders performances, and in May 2002, released a long-awaited follow-up album, Now Again, on New West Records.
After briefly attending Texas Tech University, Gilmore spent much of the 1970s in an ashram in Denver, Colorado, studying metaphysics with teenaged Indian guru Prem Rawat, also known as Maharaji. In the 1980s, he moved to Austin, where his first solo album, Fair & Square×Fair & Square1988 · Studio albumSpotifyYouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 10 tracks1White Freight Liner Blues3:252Honky Tonk Masquerade3:083Fair & Square3:114Don't Look for a Heartache3:095Trying to Get to You2:586Singing the Blues2:497Just a Wave, Not the Water4:488All Grown Up2:42999 Holes3:1310Rain Just Falls3:43, was released in 1988.
In 1994, Gilmore teamed up with Willie Nelson to contribute "Crazy" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization.
Gilmore appeared as himself in Peter Bogdanovich's 1993 film The Thing Called Love, a love story about young songwriters in Nashville.
Possibly his most memorable acting role was in the 1998 movie The Big Lebowski, where he portrayed a bowler named Smokey, an aging, emotionally "fragile" pacifist, threatened "on the lanes" with a pistol by Walter Sobchak, "The Dude" Lebowski's best friend and sidekick (John Goodman).
He has been a guest on The Tonight Show with host Jay Leno, on the Late Show with David Letterman, on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, also in Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion on NPR, and the Fresh Air radio program with Terry Gross.
Gilmore's song "Braver Newer World×Braver Newer World25 June 1996 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 11 tracks1Braver Newer World5:002Come Fly Away5:533Borderland4:084Headed for a Fall5:075Long, Long Time3:406Sally4:517There She Goes3:448Where Is Love Now3:079Black Snake Moan3:2110Because of the Wind5:0211Outside the Lines3:46" is featured in the 1995 Noah Baumbach film Kicking and Screaming. In 2005, Gilmore released Come on Back, an album of songs his father loved. Gilmore said of the album, "This new album is a compilation of recordings of some old songs that my dad loved. I love them too, and it is a project very dear to me." His version of "Mack the Knife" from the album One Endless Night×One Endless Night29 February 2000 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 13 tracks1One Endless Night3:492Banks of the Guadalupe3:023No Lonesome Tune3:084Goodbye Old Missoula5:235Georgia Rose4:026Your Love Is My Rest4:107Blue Shadows3:468Defying Gravity3:429Ripple4:5010Ramblin' Man3:3611Darcy Farrow4:4712Mack the Knife6:2913Fort Worth2:56 is on the soundtrack of Jacques Audiard's 2009 film, A Prophet (Un Prophète). Gilmore has been nominated for three Grammys, Best Contemporary Folk Album for Spinning Around The Sun×Spinning Around the Sun1993 · Studio albumSpotifyYouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 12 tracks1Where Are You Going4:232Santa Fe Thief5:023I Was the One3:174So I'll Run3:525I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry3:416Mobile Line (France Blues)3:447Nothing of the Kind3:218Just a Wave4:139Reunion2:5710I'm Gonna Love You3:4811Another Colorado3:3312Thinking About You3:17 in 1993, Best Contemporary Folk Album Braver Newer World in 1996, and Best Traditional Folk Album Come On Back×Come On Back22 August 2005 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 13 tracks1Pick Me Up on Your Way Down3:002Saginaw, Michigan3:173Standin’ on the Corner (Blue Yodel # 9)2:594Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes2:075Four Walls3:336I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive2:597Walking the Floor Over You2:248I’m Movin’ On3:019Don’t Worry ’bout Me3:1610Train of Love3:3611Jimmie Brown the Newsboy2:1512Gotta Travel On3:4213Peace in the Valley3:02 in 2005.
Gilmore's son, Colin Gilmore, is a singer–songwriter based in Austin.