Hear Americana King Jim Lauderdale’s Rippling New Ballad ‘Time Flies’

Time Flies is probably something of an understatement for Jim Lauderdale. Having cut an average of an album a year for more than three decades, the two-time Grammy winner could be forgiven for losing track of his own output. This summer, he’ll be releasing two more LPs: one of which was very nearly lost to the sands of time, and another whose title track is premiering today.

“Time Flies” is a warm, reverential reflection on the passage of the years, a rippling Southern rock ballad that unfurls like smoke in the furthest reaches of the memory. “Don’t it seem like a dream come between because time flies?” Lauderdale sings in the refrain, ruminating on the foggy space between what was and what might have been. Cut in Nashville with the help of Lauderdale’s co-producer Jay Weaver, Times Flies is the 61-year-old’s first album since last year’s Beatles-inspired London Southern.

“Time Flies is a collection of my latest songs and is a different sounding record than anything I’ve made before,” Lauderdale tells Rolling Stone Country. “The title track ‘Time Flies’ was co-written with Mando Saenz, a great singer-songwriter from Texas. We wanted to convey that feeling you get as you realize time and lives go by fast.”

Due to be released the same day as Time Flies, on August 3rd, Jim Lauderdale and Roland White spotlights a young Lauderdale when he’d first arrived in Music City. Recorded with mandolin ace Roland White in Earl Scruggs’ basement in the summer of 1979, these songs predate Lauderdale’s official solo debut by 12 years. They were only recently unearthed by White’s wife after nearly four decades in obscurity.

“I wasn’t able to get a deal for it at the time with my efforts. Several years later … I thought the time was right and called Roland to get the masters. Roland said, ‘I thought you had them.’ We couldn’t find them anywhere. A few months ago as Roland was leaving the stage after sitting in with me at the Station Inn, he said, ‘I think my wife found our tape at the bottom of a box,'” Lauderdale says of the lost recordings. “These two records being released on the same day are good bookends to me for the rest of my recorded work.”

Here’s Lauderdale’s upcoming tour dates:

May 19 – Hiltons, VA @ The Carter Family Fold
May 26 – Lafayette, LA @ Warehouse 535
May 29 – Nashville @ American Legion Post 82
May 31 – Nashville @ The Station Inn
June 29 – Chicago @ The Hideout
June 30 – Chicago @ The Hideout
July 19 – Buffalo, NY @ Sportsman Tavern
July 20 – Trumansburg, NY @ Trumansburg Fairgrounds
July 29 – White Sulphur Springs, MT @ Jackson Ranch
August 25 – Black Mountain, NC @ Pisgah Brewing Company