Grift pays off, as Grimm shows off that the art of politicised singer-songwriting is anything other than redundant.

Release Date : 12th September 2025

Label : Vault

Album : CD / Vinyl / Digital

25 YEARS A TROUBADOUR

I wonder quite how many troubadours travelling the world there are, with bios that begin with a “25-year career as a storytelling balladeer in the tradition of John Prine, Woody Guthrie, and Bob Dylan“. A fair few, and you won’t be familiar with all of them. And neither, despite his quarter century, was I with this one. For, however good he is, whilst awaiting that citation, an edge is needed.

For Grimm, or at least for me, that edge is his evident love for Scotland and Ireland; indeed, a side hustle is his travel company, taking interested Americans to those countries, for folk song and music inspired tours, celebrating the traditions of either. He is, of course, on hand, with his voice and guitar, joining along with local expert guests. I am assuming it is out of such trips that he has engaged some of the musicians here, on his latest album, which is around his 13th.

From Indiana originally, and where he still resides much of the time, or as much as his travels, and other excursions into acting, on stage and screen, allow. For this record he has engaged a bevy of names that will be familiar to the broad family of folk and traditional music, notably Dougie Pincock, the one-time Battlefield Band piper and multi-instrumentalist. Director of Sgoil Chiùil Na Gàidhealtachd, Scotland’s National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music, based in Plockton, these last 23 years, it seems he is again picking up his performance tools. Likewise, Beth Malcolm, one of the same nation’s finest singers, joins across the opening track, with Paul McKenna, too, popping up elsewhere. Is this bit player inclusion sufficient to make this otherwise little known singer, at least in the U.K., worth a punt? Let’s see.

BIG OLD BROTH OF A VOICE

The relief as Grimm’s big old broth of a voice creeps out the speakers is no small comfort, warming and rich enough to stand up a spoon in, none of your thin soupy gruel. Up In The Attic, which is the opener, is a marvellous evocation of the benevolent spirits that might look over us, from above, when above may be nearer than expected. Or not, as myriad meanings about how the hold the past can have on a failing mind might closer hit the spot. Your choice and something to rue over, as Sergio Webb weaves some electric audio spells with his guitar, in the spaces between the poetry of the verses. Beth Malcolm provides appropriately ethereal harmonies, the “angel at the top of the stairs“, her voice almost more shadow than flesh.

From there, Grimm moves into a well-observed narrative, a study of individuals observed on the street. Very much in the style of James McMurtrey, the descriptions are pin-perfect, wry and matter of fact, yet still imparting all the weariness of both observer and observed. Nate Borofsky joins to support Grimm’s rolling fingerpicked guitar, his piano a backline contrast to the agile slick of electric from Webb. Ageing and it’s ravages remain a large part of the story, and Grimm tells it well: “We’re all getting older, we all carry scars, something cut us too deeply, something hit us too hard.” With the post-nursery rhyme of In The U.S.A. to follow, social commentary through a child’s eye, the songs fit well together, with Alissa Branch now adding harmonies to the widoms innocently sung, however knowing that innocence is. This guy can write!

CHUCKA CHUCKA GUITAR AND DING DING BASS

A change of mood, then, for Hunting Shack, a folkabilly rollick with chucka chucka guitar, and ding ding bass from the intriguingly named Chief. The story of the hut he inherited from his father, it becomes a wistful reflection on times past and times lost. A mix of Johnny Cash with Robert Earl Keen, think of that as a compliment. Which it is, a high one. The cover that follows comes from the pen of Susan Werner, a fellow traveller in America’s rural hinterlands. Called Barbed Wire Boys, it refers to farming folk of an older midwest than now, grizzled survivors in battered circumstance. With Webb now on dobro, it is a glorious sequence of sepia tinted memory.

Mists Of Ennistymon is the main song that drew me first in. Or rather, it’s promise, being the one with Dougie Pincock. At first it starts unpreposessingly enough, a ballad of Grimm’s family backstory. But, as a whistle starts to keen enticingly in the background, it jumps a notch, and then several more, as a small pipes solo graces the melody with certifiable Celt, mixing well with the clip-clop rhythm of Chief and Webb, on bass and mandocello respectively. The harmony vocals are from Paul McKenna, but, frustratingly, offer little of his available character.

LOOSEN A TEAR DUCT

A second cover is John McCutcheon’s Christmas In The Trenches, and addresses the well-travelled story of the Christmas Carols/football match in no man’s land, 1914. I’m not going to lie, it is a deeply sentimental song that, with a cynical head on, might cloy. But a couple of large malts to the better, on Christmas Day, it might loosen the odd tear. Especially with the last line, “At each end of the rifle, we’re the same“, Oof! Leading into Bow And Arrow, which is a classic “If I Had” song, inviting comparions with ones referencing hammers or boats. Indeed, it is the latter, Lyle Lovett’s song, that this most closely resembles, which is, again, a compliment. The bow and arrow are cited as the if required, for when life, or fools, throw lemons.

WHEN DONNY MET ARLO?

Some more historical fancy, up next, if based on a smidgeon of fact, ahead flying off into whimsy. A song Grimm has included before, as Woody’s Landlord, the titular track of his 2016 release. The Revisited version here adds new verses, to bring the story of the landlord’s family up to date. For, apparently, “and this is no bunk“, Woody Guthrie’s landlord, the Woody in question, was no other than Fred Trump. Very much in the style of Guthrie, and referencing key song titles, this goes on to imagine the scenario, in a dream, whereby the Don and Arlo, son of Woody, might play in the sandbox together.

Unsurprisingly, the POTUS to be isn’t presented in a glowing light, the newer verses adding in even more up to date references, such as to the “hillbilly boy“, J.D. Vance. This contains the best couplet of the whole album: “Liar. liar, pants on fire, nose as long as a telephone wire“, all set to a bouncing folkabilly stomp, Webb’s guitar as incendiary as the bite of the wordplay.

NO PITY SPARED

POTUS is neither spared any pity for the next song, either, Broken Truth, which explores the reality of Trump’s America, and without any humour or irony to sugar the sour taste. Borofsky is back on piano, it otherwise just the guitar and voice of the author. No punches pulled, it is a poignant recognition of all and any flaw, in full view. Of course, this time he isn’t directly referred to by name, but “Damn that man who tears this country apart” leaves little room for doubt, not least as a litany of his legacy gets spelt out, in detail, lifting further words from Guthrie and some from Dylan, the whole without much other than contempt. Delicious slide from Webb eggs up the sense of abject anger.

A BANJO IS NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS

You sort of need a little respite after that well deserved character assasination, and that comes in the gracious gravitas of Hadley’s Banjo. The gift of a banjo is clearly something, as Jon Wilks‘ song Banjo Therapy teaches us, and this a spoken word piece, with guitar, a tribute to Sergio Webb, his main man on all things string, across the record, It memorialises the day that Nashville songwriter, John Hadley, gave the gift of his banjo to Webb. Elegiac in the expressive and emotive language used, it is a tremendous gift in itself to Webb, who adds some thwacks of upstrummed banjo, likely the one in question, to the second half of the song. Very reminiscent, in style, of David Olney’s Jerusalem Tomorrow, it is equally moving, and that is, yes, a further compliment to Grimm’s craft.

WHAT A FIND!

Well, what a find, even if the 13th album, in a long career. Did it and does it need the names mentioned to draw the listener in? Broadly, no, but it cannot be denied that it did. And now also to his back catalogue.

Here’s the earlier and shorter version of Woody’s Landlord, from 2016, to whet your appetite for this new and longer version:

Tim Grimm online : Website / Facebook / YouTube

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