Jeff Black w/ special guest Jim Roll

Jeff Black's fourth album, Tin Lily, is as hard to pin down as his previous work, where he has collaborated with everyone from rock experimentalists Wilco to Americana favorite Iris Dement to progressive bluegrass stalwart Sam Bush. As usual, Black found an inspired collection of musicians to collaborate with him on the self produced Tin Lily.

Mandolinist Sam Bush, who's last album was named after his cover of Black's song "King of the World," joins former Johnny Cash bassist Dave Roe, former Steve Earle drummer Craig Wright and guitarists Will Kimbrough, who's currently working with Rodney Crowell and Jimmy Buffett, and Kenny Vaughan, who performs with the likes of Kim Richey and Lucinda Williams among so many others. Engineered and mixed by Billy Sherrill, the song cycle on Tin Lily exemplifies the duality that make Jeff Black such a compelling, vital and important performing songwriter.

“Black is an artist of substance,” wrote Billboard in a review that compared his piano ballads to Randy Newman and his rockers to Bruce Springsteen. Paste magazine adds, “The search for spiritual sustenance and lasting meaning underpins Black's reverent, battling-the-darkness-and winning songs.” He concedes that, while he doesn't want to offer in-depth explanations of what his songs mean, “I love songs about freeing the spirit, about minimizing the struggle the best you can, about treating your individuality as something that's precious and important,” he says. “Those are the topics I come back to because those are the ideas I keep examining within myself.” But Black is too complicated to make it easy. His songs take unexpected turns, cursing and snarling at points, showing their lust and their desire as well as their determination to remain bound for glory.

As anyone who's seen his moving, funny, and unpredictable concerts already knows, He never plays the same show twice, pulling from his commercial catalog Birmingham Road, Honey And Salt, B-Sides And Confessions Volume One, and the new music on Tin Lily, he responds to the moment and to whatever voodoo is floating through the air shared by a unique collection of people on any given night with the stories and songs that transcend the role of a singer/songwriter and his instrument. What makes a Jeff Black record or show exciting is that, as a listener, you know the singer is there not to perform for you, but to take you on a journey with him.

Novelist Rick Moody, author of “Demonology” and “The Ice Storm” (the latter of which became a 1997 Kevin Kline film) called Jim's 2000 CD, Lunette, “one of the best singer-songwriter albums of the last five years.” Jim had given Rick that CD to spark interest in a songwriting alliance. The first fruits appear on Inhabiting the Ball and Rick's not the only guest lyricist, either. Poet and fiction writer Dennis Johnson (of “The Name of the World” and “Jesus' Son” fame) was actually the first author Jim enlisted. The Rock Editors for Amazon.com picked Inhabiting the Ball as one of their top 10 CD’s of 2002 along with Elvis Costello, Beck and Peter Gabriel.  Don't miss this chance to see why the LA Times, National Public Radio, and the New Yorker have also raved about Jim’s music.