Charlie Louvin had been a professional gospel and country musician for years when rock ’n’ roll came barreling up behind him on the lost highway. He and his brother, Ira, were a top draw as The Louvin Brothers when the kid from Memphis arrived and changed popular music and culture.
“When Presley was beginning, we had him as an opener,” Louvin, 82, said via telephone from his home in Manchester, Tenn. “Even Elvis once upon a time was an ‘also.’ He was a good boy. Anyone who loves his mama that much can’t be all bad.”
More than 50 years later, Louvin is back on the road with another rock ’n’ roll true believer, Dexter Romweber, whose idolization of Presley helped start his own career. As founder of Flat Duo Jets and now the Dexter Romweber Duo, he has always been a man out of time, so it’s appropriate that he’s touring with a man who’s apparently timeless.
Louvin is the headliner on a two-week run through the Southeast with the Dexter Romweber Duo, including a show on Thursdaynov19 at Zanzabar. Louvin met Romweber only a few weeks ago in Nashville, although their shared management had been encouraging them to tour for months.
“At first I wasn’t sure if it would work out, but after meeting him and seeing what a true country legend he is, I think it will be a good match,” said Romweber, whose sister, Sara, performs with him on drums. “He was very spry for 82. I didn’t expect someone so compact and strong in such a strange way.”
Louvin has spent the two years since his comeback performing with a bizarre array of artists, including Cake and Cheap Trick. The Romwebers make a lot more sense, and now that Dexter is exploring more deeply his love of jazz and crooning, his sound actually reflects much of what was happening on the radio during the first 20 years of Louvin’s career.
“I was backstage when he started singing one of his slow songs,” Louvin said of Romweber, referring to the Nashville show at which the two met, “and I thought it was Frank Sinatra. I went out front and it was Dex. I think he’s real sincere in what he does, and I couldn’t believe he still had that little Silvertone guitar.”
Louvin made a triumphant return to music in 2007 with his first album in 25 years, “Charlie Louvin.” The authenticity of his vision, and a touching song about his late brother, attracted the attention of young music lovers with an ear for country music of the past. He’s released three albums since: “Live at Shake It Records”; “Ships to Heaven,” with a trio of gospel singers; and “Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs,” which should be self-explanatory.
They are all true to his roots.
“There were people who called the Louvin Brothers bluegrass, but if they called it that to Ira’s face, they had to fight,” said Louvin, who was born Charles Elzer Loudermilk in 1927 in tiny Henagar, Ala. “We started out playing hillbilly music, but somewhere along the line that became a bad word. If a stranger got in your car and hillbilly came on the radio, you’d change it because you didn’t want them to know that’s what you listened to.”
The Romwebers released a new album called “Ruins of Berlin” earlier this year and recently teamed with Jack White, a longtime fan, to record a single at White’s Nashville studio. “The Wind Did Move” (with “Last Kind Word Blues” on the flipside) was released last month to four-star reviews and may be the first of several White collaborations, and the Dexter Romweber Duo will do some more dates with Louvin next month.
Louvin will probably be the oldest person in the room at Zanzabar, and may end up pulling double duty. When told that he could get a good fried green tomato at the bar and grill, he offered to show the kitchen how to make fried cucumbers, just in case they ran out of tomatoes.
Anything for Kentucky, he said.
“We’re Alabama born, but love Kentucky,” Louvin said. “Somebody told us that Kentucky was a place for beautiful horses and fast women, or did I get that backwards?”
