White Jim

Wrong-eyed Jesus!

Label: Luaka Bop

Genre: Rock / Pop

Availability

LP €26.99

In Stock

It’s the 25th anniversary of Wrong Eyed-Jesus—the début album from that erstwhile druggie, drifting, storytelling, taxi-driving, recovering Pentecostal maverick talent from Pensacola, Florida who took alt country by storm in the ’90s—and so we’re putting it back out into the world in a beautiful new gatefold jacket.

Wrong-Eyed Jesus, or The Mysterious Tale of How I Shouted Wrong-Eyed Jesus! (1997) revealed Jim to be a spiritual anatomist of the South on par with Flannery O’Connor and Tom Waits. His music was a conduit for all the crazy stories he found himself at the center of—for no good reason other than that the South is a crazy place.

Fans of alt.country called it a masterpiece. Jim found all the attention pretty hysterical:

“For 20 years I’d written these dark little songs,” he said. “Every once in a while I’d play them for someone and they’d shout, ‘Stop! That sucks so bad it makes my ears pop!’ Then a thing called alt country came along and, boom, all of a sudden everyone’s hollering ‘Jim, you’re a friggin’ genius!’ I mean, what happened???”

Twenty-five years after the fact, it’s a lot easier to see what happened. (By the way, if you haven’t seen his BBC documentary, “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus,” an award-winning road-movie exploring Southern culture, do.)

May “Wrong-Eyed Jesus” give you a shot at redemption.