Music

Jim Mize's bluesy rock closes summer's Arkansas Sounds

Conway singer-songwriter Jim Mize will perform Friday at the Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock as part of the Arkansas Sounds Concert Series.
Conway singer-songwriter Jim Mize will perform Friday at the Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock as part of the Arkansas Sounds Concert Series.

Jim Mize will perform Friday at the Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock as the final show in this summer's Arkansas Sounds Concert Series. It also marks the first time he has played the venue, which has hosted Ben Nichols and Suzy Boggus in this year's run of shows.

"It looks like it's a nice place, I just have to find it," the 59-year-old says with a raspy laugh. That laughter often punctuates his conversation as he talks about his music, his recent retirement after 34 years as an insurance adjuster with Farm Bureau and how long he and wife Dana have been married.

Jim Mize

7 p.m. Friday, Ron Robinson Theater, 100 River Market Ave., Little Rock

Admission: $10

(501) 320-5715

arkansassounds.org

"We've been married 25 years," he says. "Wait. Is it 25 years? Yeah, ha-ha-ha!"

Mize certainly sounds like he's having fun.

He's an Arkie through and through, growing up all over the state -- Conway, Marianna, Searcy, North Little Rock -- as his father traveled while working as an telephone company engineer. The family finally settled down in Conway and, after a stint in the Army, Mize returned there and went to work for Farm Bureau.

Music took hold in his early teens, he says, but it was mostly just a way to attract girls.

He didn't enter a recording studio until his early 30s, but had been writing songs -- country stuff, mostly -- and playing out on occasion.

In 1994, while cutting demos at a studio in Water Valley, Miss., owned by Fat Possum founder Bruce Watson, Mize met Cary Hudson and Laurie Stirratt of the Oxford, Miss., band Blue Mountain. The group eventually recorded a version of Mize's gorgeous "Let's Go Running" for its album Dog Days. Blue Mountain would also later record "Emily Smiles," one of Mize's most popular songs.

"It's all luck," he says of his music career. "Not to take anything away from myself, but sometimes it's who you know and being in the right place at the right time."

His first album, 2001's No Tell Motel, cemented his relationship with Watson, the scrappy Fat Possum label and its Big Legal Mess imprint. Mize's other records include 2007's Release It to the Sky and 2014's outstanding eponymous release.

There's a swampy, north Mississippi hill country blues that is recognizable in Mize's music, but there is also just as much Americana, rock 'n' roll and country. They are blue-collar songs of relationships -- good and bad -- of running off to some better place, Jesus, and of trying to make the best with what you have.

"... it all sounds very much like Arkansas, like nowhere else. And like someone who should be heard," wrote Grant Aldren about Release It to the Sky for nodepression.com.

For years, Mize's music career percolated alongside his day job as an insurance adjuster, which didn't really afford him a chance to tour, although he had done a few long weekend jaunts and has played the Mercury Lounge in New York. Not long after retiring in 2015, he hit the road with Stirratt for a two-week run through part of the South.

"We hit New Orleans, Tuscaloosa, Oxford, Nashville, Knoxville, Tupelo and Harrisburg," he says. The Spartan life of the average touring musician took some getting used to.

"I just don't know how these people make it on the road. Maybe I'm just spoiled. I like a nice hotel room that doesn't look like a murder scene," he says with that infectious laugh.

For Friday's show, Mize has assembled a crack backing crew of local heroes.

"I've got a supergroup" he says of the band that includes Isaac Alexander, David Hoffpauir, Jason Weinheimer and Chris Michaels.

Weekend on 08/04/2016

Upcoming Events