Gill Landry
From Joe Hill to Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan, Americans love the idea of the wandering troubadour. The songwriters who do the “hard travellin'” to root out eternal truths to pass along in song occupy a vaunted space in the collective imagination.
To that list of wizened characters you can add Gill Landry.
See Gill Landry in Daniels Hall on December 17 at 8 p.m. Ticket information and complete show details can be found here.
Gill Landry? If you don’t know the name there’s a good chance you know his voice as he spent the better part of a decade with Old Crow Medicine show, to which he added his voice and considerable talent.
After joining Old Crow in 2007, he contributed the song “Mary’s Kitchen” to their 2008 album Tennessee Pusher.
In 2007 Gill released his first solo album, The Ballad of Lawless Soirez. Pop Matters compared Gill’s songwriting favorably to the Southern Gothic literary style mastered by Tennessee Williams, and praised the album for capturing an “almost cinematic feel, as if an homage to a time and place both destructive and strangely alluring.”
He followed Soirez with another solo album in 2011, Piety & Desire, which was cinematic in its scope with a sometimes noirish feel.
All the while Gill kept up a steady schedule with Old Crow. On the band’s 2012 album Carry Me Back, Gill shares a songwriting credit on the rollicking “Mississippi Saturday Night,” but his lyrics and and vocals take a true star turn on the hard luck love tale “Genevieve.”
He left Old Crow for good in 2015 but not before contributing one more song to their catalog. “The Warden,” which he co-wrote with Felix Hatfield, closes out the Grammy Award-winning 2014 album Remedy. It’s a sober finale to what is largely a raucous, good time affair.
Gill continues to criss-cross the continent, fronting his own band in support of his self-titled 2015 solo album. The album captures Gill in fine voice and fully in command of his storytelling powers. A standout track on the album called “Waiting For Your Love” even name checks Denver’s Colfax Avenue.