DEL NORTE — Wildwood Sounds, 850 Grande Ave., Del Norte, presents Jeff Plankenhorn, featuring Americana Blues Soul Rock Roots, on Friday, November 30, at 7 p.m. Tickets for this concert and dance are $15. Call 657-4757 email [email protected] or see wildwoodsounds.com. This is a sweets or snacks potluck. Bring a favorite healthy treat to share, with coffee and tea on the house. 

Over the course of the last two decades, Jeff Plankenhorn has worked tirelessly to earn his rep as one of the most reliably can-do, right-dude-for-the-job musicians in Austin, Texas. As an exceptionally talented acoustic, electric, slide, and lap-steel guitarist with a keen understanding of the importance of playing to and for a song rather than all over it, he’s been called on countless times to back a veritable who’s who of Texas and Americana music’s finest singers and songwriters, including Ray Wylie Hubbard, Joe Ely, Eliza Gilkyson, Ruthie Foster, and the late Jimmy LaFave.

Jeff Plankenhorn has become something of an Austin institution, sought after by many artists to lend his musical talents to their albums and performances. Calling him a guitarist doesn’t quite do him justice, though. Sure, he’s designed his very own guitar – a custom lap steel guitar called, perhaps not surprisingly, “The Plank”. Give him just about any stringed instrument, however, and he’ll no doubt get it singing.

But as far as scaling back on the whole sideman thing goes ... bear in mind that there’s a big difference between “hardly ever” and never. Namely, the former still leaves the guy just enough wiggle room to happily say “yes” when legends (and friends) on the level of Ray Wylie Hubbard or the Flatlanders need a can-do guitar man for a sold-out theater engagement. Or, say, when fellow A-list Austin sideman “Scrappy” Jud Newcomb, finds out he can’t make it to a very special Johnny Nicholas gig in Hawaii, and asks “Plank” if he’d be up for subbing for him. Who in their right mind is going to say no to that?

Plankenhorn still selectively takes those kinds of calls not because he gets them, but because he’s earned them. For the better part of the last 17 years, ever since he first moved to Texas with nothing to his name but a Geo Prism, $100, seven guitars and the generous hospitality of Ray and Judy Hubbard, the gifted multi-instrumentalist from Columbus, Ohio has proven himself not just able and willing, but above all worthy of playing with the best of the best. And the reason so many song poets like Hubbard and Joe Ely like having Plank at their side is not just because of his prodigious chops on all things stringed (especially those played with a slide), but because of his intuitive knack for knowing when to hold back, always allowing the singer room to land a lyric and go for the proverbial kill.

“That’s just part of the skill set I learned very early on: ‘When in doubt, lay out,’” Plankenhorn explains with a chuckle. “That joke about knowing when not to play? It’s true.”

Not surprisingly, that particular skill — along with myriad other lessons in the finer points of songcraft that he’s picked up from sharing stages with the masters — has come to greatly inform Plankenhorn’s own music over the years. 

His custom-designed lap slide guitar, a patented “Frankenstein” beauty he calls “the Plank.”

“The Plank guitar came from me wanting to mix together the two worlds of bluegrass dobro and the sacred steel tradition, and my whole last album was dedicated to that one instrument — to get it out there,” he says. The SoulSlide CD also really helped put me on the map as a solo artist, which is why I’ve moved on to focusing more on doing my own thing and only doing a side gig once in a while when I really want to. I wanted to take a bigger look at how the whole world of music is available to me; it’s not about just one guitar or sound, but rather about using all of the instruments I play and bringing all of my influences together — and about really wanting to bring my songwriting to the forefront.”

Jeff is a powerful and yet elegant, soulful and bluesy, heartfelt and yet soaring in his playing.  A musician you will be hearing a lot more from as he gets the recognition he deserves.