Undermain Theatre Gives Jimmie Rodgers Dramatic Treatment

The Undermain Theatre will present the world-premiere of Waiting for a Train: The Life and Songs of Jimmie Rodgers, the Father of Country Music on Saturday, April 1, 2006

PRESS RELEASE — The Undermain Theatre, Dallas’ premiere experimental theatre company, will present the world-premiere of Waiting for a Train: The Life and Songs of Jimmie Rodgers, the Father of Country Music on Saturday, April 1, 2006 (which marks the UMT’s 22nd anniversary). Bruce DuBose wrote and will star in this production as the Country Blues innovator along with Matthew Posey, Walter Hardts, Carrie Bourne, Kevin Grammar, Brandi Andrade, Ben Bryant, and musicians Lyle Hathaway and Jeff Whittington. Undermain Artistic Director Katherine Owens will direct. Designers are: Happy Yancey, costumes; Bryan Wofford, set; Russell Dyer, lights; and Sara Romersberger, choreography.Waiting for a Train will open Sat. April 1, 2006 at 8:15 p.m. at the Undermain Theatre’s Basement Space at 3200 Main St. in the Deep Ellum area of downtown Dallas and will run through May 13. The play will be performed Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays at 8:15 p.m. Reservations and information are available at 214-747-5515 or www. undermain.com. Ticket prices are Wed and Thurs $15, Fri $20, and Sat $25. Discounts are available for seniors, students and KERA members.

One of the first recording artists to sell a million records, Jimmie Rodgers was born in Mississippi, but performed more in Texas than anywhere else in the world. His 111 recorded songs include “ Blue Yodel (T for Texas)”, “Waiting for a Train” and “In the Jail House Now”. He built his home in Kerrville and had several recording sessions in Dallas at the Jefferson Hotel. In 1931 he toured Texas with Will Rogers in a Red Cross benefit for drought relief. His influence on popular music was profound and inspired countless artists. Tom Piazza of the New York Times writes “his career was a meeting point for images and folk material from the American South and West, from black and white traditions, and it offered clues to ways in which that material could be blended into the mainstream of popular music.”

In recent years his work has inspired numerous tribute albums by the likes of Merle Haggard and Bob Dylan, who wrote in his liner notes: ”Jimmie Rodgers is one of the guiding lights of the 20th century ... a blazing star whose sound was and remains the raw essence of individuality in a sea of conformity, par excellence with no equal.” The first artist to be inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame, Rodgers’ success helped the popularity of phonograph machines, recordings and guitars. An East African tribe even chose him for a deity. In 1986 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Bruce DuBose as Jimmie Rodgers

The Undermain’s play follows Rodgers’ path through drama, song and dance along with images of the early 20th century. The play explores Rodgers’ childhood adventures performing in medicine shows, his work on the railroad and his early tutelage from black musicians he encountered in these formative stages. The interwoven plot provides brief glimpses of his partnership with Ralph Peer who produced his recordings for the Victor label, his relationship with his wife Carrie and his collaborations with other songwriters and recording artists including Louis Armstrong and the Carter Family.

Bruce DuBose is a founding member and Executive Producer of the Undermain Theatre where for the past 22 years he has been acting and directing as well as composing and performing his music, arrangements and sound designs. Most recently, he arranged and performed the music for Undermain’s wildly popular Margo Veil. At the Ohio Theater in New York he did the same for Swedish Tales of Woe by Eric Ehn, of which the Village Voice said “The beauty of director Bruce DuBose’s original guitar and percussion compositions– ambush us in landscapes of wordless fright”.

In 1999 he formed a Middle Eastern influenced folk/rock band called Plato’s Kave along with Nick Brisco of the ‘80s band Fever in the Funkhouse. The band played at Dallas area clubs such as Club Dada and Muddy Waters as well as in the Dallas Theater Center’s 2000 Big D Festival of the Unexpected and in various New York venues.