The Little In-Between – Tim Grimm (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Too many artists seem more concerned with shaping to the future than acknowledging the past. I’m not saying we don’t need people to write the next musical chapter, but we shouldn’t write off the past so readily. I believe that the future arrives in small, bite-sized, every day increments, and it does so through gentle evolution rather than sudden revolution.

I’m sure it is a sentiment that Tim Grimm would agree with, given that throughout his long and illustrious career, he has made a name for himself by making music of a kind that the likes of John Prine, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan would find immediate kinship with. Perhaps even a Nebraska-era Springsteen too.

There is a real sense of place firmly at the fore of the music found on his latest album, which springs from a life close to the earth and the people of rural Indiana. And so The Little In-Between is an honest collection of songs played with dirt under the fingernails and a face turned to the prevailing wind and weathering. It blends mature country music, bluesy sonics and folk understatements; it is raw and honest and wonderfully unadorned, for the most part.

Timeless music, deceptively simple and wonderfully impactful songs and at their heart an authenticity which only comes from being wonderfully grounded, from knowing who you are and where you belong. I’m unsure what Americana music as a genre is; too many people have too many different definitions. But as someone penning this review from an ocean away, I suspect this is a better musical summation than most.