Over his 20 years as a recording artist, singer-songwriter Jim Mize has released only three albums, totaling 30 songs, so it’s fair to say that his level of quality control has been high. Nothing on his records is filler. Everything’s essential to the overall Mize experience.
Here are six songs — two from each album — for anyone in need of a Mize sampler:
“Let’s Go Running” (from No Tell Motel). The song that launched Mize’s career has the low instrumental drone of The Velvet Underground, the gruff vocals of Tom Waits and the precise imagery of Guy Clark. While most of Mize’s music could be filed neatly under roots-rock, “Let’s Go Running” is harder to classify. It’s like a beautiful poem about loss and moving on, given an arrangement so simple that the listener has no choice but to focus on every wizened word.
“Emily Smiles” (from No Tell Motel). When Blue Mountain recorded “Let’s Go Running,” it helped encourage Mize to think more seriously about his potential as a musician. Blue Mountain also took a stab at this uptempo rocker, with its surging melody and sweet chorus about the healing power of a friendly face. It also captures the roughness of Mize’s voice — an instrument the singer himself has modestly described as “adequate” for its main purpose, which is to get the lyrics across with some urgency and soul.
“Promises We Keep” (from Release It to the Sky). Though it appears on his second album, this pounding midtempo anthem is the first song Mize wrote where he felt satisfied right away with what he’d made. “It came so quick I couldn’t tell you how I wrote the damn thing,” he said, which helps explain the track’s directness, accented by layers of distorted and chiming guitars. “I love raw,” Mize says. “During the mixing of the records I’m always fighting for every raw thing I can get on there.”
“Delta Land” (from Release It to the Sky). Mize likes to look on his songs as timelines, freezing moments and ideas from his own life. That doesn’t mean they’re only about himself. The loping “Delta Land” — with its slide guitars and descriptions of a part of the country he has traveled extensively — is like a dispatch from a sympathetic outsider. It evokes a place and sparks the imagination. “I like to write enough where people get different images out of it,” Mize said. “Get that movie clicking in their head.”
“I Won’t Come Back Again” (from Jim Mize). Mize’s songwriting has increasingly tried to follow in the footsteps of musical heroes like Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, who communicate in ways that are ingratiating and unfussy. “I Won’t Come Back Again” harks back to Mize’s boyhood favorite, John Fogerty, whom Mize loved because he “had a good hook and a guitar line on every song.”
“Drunk Moon Falling” (from Jim Mize). A great example of a how a song can come from anywhere, this Mize favorite was inspired by a conversation overheard in Austin between two ambitious young artists who spend their days parking cars and serving drinks. At once catchy and melancholy, it is also unusually knowing about how it feels to keep dreams at a distance while earning a paycheck.