Jimmy LaFave, in concert and in his natal chart

We saw Jimmy LaFave and his band play at our local theatre at the weekend. (Photgraph above by my husband). I had never heard of this artist until recently, but he's well known in Texas and Oklahoma. Jimmy LaFave's style is known as "red dirt music" after the red soil of Oklahoma. He was born in Texas, but grew up in Okie-land and loves the state as his own.

Oklahoma has an excellent track record of producing musicians - Woody Guthrie, Leon Russell, JJ Cale, Chet Baker, Jimmy Webb, Jimmy Rushing, Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Reba McEntyre, American Idol & Grammy winner Carrie Underwood, and there's a long list of others, past and present, too.

LaFave notes that Oklahoma possesses "a frontier spirit, with an Australian edge to it, you can hardly see a band in Austin without an Oklahoma musician. There's a vibe there that's not in Texas or anywhere else I've found. It's the desolation that makes Oklahoma beautiful, like the Delta before you get to New Orleans."
This and all quotes below are from an article by Dave Marsh in the Austin Chronicle

We enjoyed the concert. I commented during the interval that a lot of Jimmy's songs sound kind of sad and nostalgic, not at all the "shit-kickin'" stuff I'd expected. The musicians in his band were excellent and widely experienced. It was very good to note that Jimmy gave them all due credit, on several occasions throughout the show.

At the end of the show Jimmy sang Woody Guthrie's famous "This Land is YOUR Land, This Land is MY Land", and invited the audience to join in. I love this song - it was written by Woody Guthrie in 1940 as a protest at the state of his country at that time. One verse from the original lyrics goes:

"In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?"

Woody Guthrie was as annoyed as the Dixie Chicks are today in their song "I Ain't Ready to Make Nice". I'm not sure how many people nowadays, even in Oklahoma, realise that Woody was protesting in this song, but he was !

The first thing I did next morning was to search for Jimmy LaFave's birth data. I found it on-line - 12 July 1955, Wills Point, Texas, and quickly realised it wasn't surprising that much of his music held nostalgia and seemed a little sad and emotional.

Sun, Venus and Uranus in Cancer. Mercury in Gemini. Mars, Jupiter and Pluto in Leo. Moon probably in Aries, it was at 18* at 12 noon. Saturn in Scorpio, Neptune in Libra.

His three planets in Leo show clearly - he's at home on stage, born to be there. I was pleased to find some quotes in the Austin Chronicle article, linked above, which support the fact that he does, indeed, possess the emotional, sensitive and caring personality associated with the zodiac sign of Cancer :

"When a friend needs a boost, LaFave turns on his warmth, not necessarily charm, just plain and powerful empathy. All his friends say something similar to Bob Childers, LaFave's songwriting mentor: "Jimmy's a really sensitive guy, but he spends a whole lot of time making sure nobody knows it."

"Singing is very emotional," allows LaFave. "You get obsessed with a lot of stuff. There's a sense of loneliness you have as an artist. That's why I close my eyes when I sing, because I like to go somewhere and find that place in everybody."

"There was a haunting night at the Cactus Cafe a few years ago, when he dedicated a song to a close friend who had just suffered a genuinely tragic loss of a loved one. He sang "Emotionally Yours" as if it were his best friend who'd been killed, and he sang it not only without flaw but from deep, deep inside what the words mean. Sitting there in the dark, you could forgive yourself for thinking it was the first time anyone at all had sung those words to that melody."

It's satisfying to find that the astrology broadly fits the impression one gets of a person, even from a distance, and still better when someone else's impression can be found to support it too.