Looking for Peace Town

Jimmy LaFave, who died just over a year ago, knew his way around and inside a song. As a producer, he could pull the purest, truest sounds out of singers, musicians, and songwriters; he knew just what the songs needed to make them reflect the musical identity of the artists. As a singer and musician, he turned familiar songs into moments of unadorned beauty or wistful longing or light-filled yearnings after love. After he co-produced Looking into Jackson Browne — the 2014 tribute album to Browne — he told me that “once you get one of his songs in your head, it’s hard to get it out.” The same can clearly be said about LaFave, and his final collection — the 2-CD Peace Town — contains 20 tracks that we’re not likely to get out of our hearts and heads once we’ve heard them.

The album opens with a spacious take on Pete Townsend’s “Let My Love Open the Door”; LaFave’s take opens sparely with vocals, guitar, and piano before blossoming into a bright, and almost joyous, ballad of wistful yearning. Stefano Intelisano’s B3 on the bridge lends a soulful jauntiness to the song. Once you’ve heard LaFave’s version, you won’t soon want to go back to the Who’s original. LaFave’s own tune “Minstrel Boy Howling at the Moon,” with its sonic echoes of Steve Forbert’s “Romeo’s Tune,” captures the up-and-down life of a troubadour in a bright, propulsive chords and vocals. The title track comes from Woody Guthrie — LaFave was working on a compilation of Guthrie songs before he died — and LaFave evokes the singer-songwriter’s longing for the “city called Peace Town.” He vows to “search for it/I promise I hunt till I fail/The name on my ear sounds so sweet/Peace Town is the town I love the most.” On this song, as on so many others on this album, the backing vocals of Jaimee Harris and Jane Ellen Bryant lift the music into an ethereal realm, transporting us momentarily out of the mundane while nevertheless rooting us firmly there. LaFave delivers a blistering straight-ahead rocking version of Bob McDill’s “I May Be Used (But I Ain’t Used Up),” and his gentle, luxurious version of Dylan’s “My Back Pages” captures the song’s poignant and reflective tone. If you spend enough time listening to LaFave’s version, you’ll shed a few tears, if only because of his version’s raw and pure beauty.

Other highlights on the album include the LaFave original instrumental jam “Untitled,” a tune driven by guitars scurrying around and under each other. He delivers a rollicking version of Chuck Berry’s “The Promised Land” that contains all of the force and energy of the original. His bare bones take on J.J. Cale’s “Don’t Go to Strangers” captures perfectly the slow jazz and blues funkiness of Cale’s original, and his gorgeous, moving version of David Ball’s “When the Thought of You Catches Up with Me” catches the song’s aching intimacy. You’re likely never to hear a version of “It Makes No Difference” that gets Robbie Robertson’s song the way LaFave’s does. It’s a luxurious, slow-moving, let-me-take-my-time-to-grieve approach, and the vocals float over a dominant piano, whose chords replace the saxes on The Band’s original. LaFave’s high vocals on the final verses mirror the feeling that the singer is almost breaking into tears.

There’s not a bad song on this album, and many of them are more memorable than the originals. LaFave didn’t think he was putting together his final album, of course. These are simply the 20 tracks he had recorded before he died; he had a list of over 100 songs he hoped to complete. While we so wish we could hear those other songs one day, he’s still left us with a beautiful gift that contains the best of his lovingly crafted, ingenious arrangements of these 20 songs.