Tag: Will Kimbrough

Review: Will Kimbrough’s fine “Spring Break”

By Paul T. Mueller
“Spring break” took on some added meaning early this year, when the pandemic shut down normal life and most people had to adjust to a strange new reality. For Nashville-based singer-songwriter Will Kimbrough, Spring Break turned out to be a good title for an album recorded during a forced hiatus from touring and other activities. It’s a solo acoustic album of mostly new material, with a few older songs thrown in, and a fine showcase for Kimbrough’s many musical strengths.

Some of Kimbrough’s songs deal directly with the pandemic and its consequences. “The Late Great John Prine Blues” is a gentle, sad tribute to one of COVID-19’s better-known victims. “Handsome Johnny’s coming home/with the late, great John Prine blues,” Kimbrough sings. “All Fall Down” takes a wider view of the situation, realistic but is also hopeful. “Maybe we should listen to some good advice/Maybe it’d do some good,” Kimbrough sings, later concluding, “We rise and we fall together/We fly like birds of a feather/We shine through good or bad weather.”

Several songs deal with travel, and the frustration of being unable to do so. “I Want Out” is the first-person story of a waitress trapped by circumstances, while the narrator of “Trains” dreams of hopping a freight and getting away. Harmonica breaks give the song a Springsteen-like vibe. “Philadelphia Mississippi” tells the story of a woman who left her small town for brighter lights, only to return. “She never felt at home, until she ran away,” Kimbrough sings, accompanying himself with a lovely slide guitar.

Kimbrough acknowledges the need to accept reality and get to work in the folky “Plow to the End of the Row.” In the same vein, “Work to Do” is an anthem to confidence and determination: “I ain’t wasting my time here/I got work to do.”

Not so directly connected to current events are the confessional “My Sin Is Pride,” a bluegrassy take on “Rocket Fuel” (a co-write with Todd Snider, whose band Kimbrough once led), and “Cape Henry,” an account of a Revolutionary War naval battle also written with Snider. Humor finds a place in “My Right Wing Friend,” in which a long friendship transcends political differences; “Home Remedy” explores romantic love, and “Child of Light” is a hymn to parenthood. Kimbrough closes with “Digging a Ditch with a Spoon,” a country blues tune about doing the best you can with what you’ve got.

It’s hard to overstate Kimbrough’s skill and style as a player. Seemingly anything with strings is fair game, and he does justice to a wide range of wood and wire, including several guitar, dobro, mandolin and banjo. Kimbrough is also an accomplished producer, and he does a good job with his own material here, leaving things simple and letting the playing and singing shine through.  

Review: Red Dirt Boys’ Cayamo Edition

By Paul T. Mueller

Not every backing band can make an album that stands on its own, but the Red Dirt Boys are not just any backing band. Emmylou Harris’ touring outfit – guitarist/mandolinist Will Kimbrough, bassist Chris Donohue, drummer Bryan Owings and keyboardist/guitarist Phil Madeira, with all but Owings contributing vocals – are excellent musicians on their own. But they play together with a cohesion that comes from long experience playing together, and a sense of fun that comes from being friends as well as bandmates. This collection, produced in conjunction with their appearance with Ms. Harris on this year’s Cayamo music festival at sea, is a real pleasure to listen to.

There’s no fluff among the album’s 11 tracks, just solid, well-played and well-produced music that deals with themes ranging from Creole cooking (“Cook That Down”) to love (“Plenty Enough”) to hypocrisy (“Religion”) to death (“All Saints Day”). Much of it has a New Orleans sound and vibe, possibly owing to the proximity of Kimbrough’s native Alabama to the Crescent City.

It’s hard to talk about highlights when the whole collection is this good, but “Religion” delivers a heartfelt skewering to people who deserve it; “Plenty Enough” is a realistic take on real-life romance, and “All Saints Day” is a poignant farewell song sweetened by harmony vocals by Ms. Harris herself. Closing track “Jesse” finds Kimbrough and Madeira alternating vocals on a touching tribute to singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester. Kudos to John Mark Painter, whose horns add excellent atmosphere to several tunes.

Adults deserve adult music. The Red Dirt Boys deliver.

2017 Americana Music Festival begins

By Ken Paulson –

Our favorite event of the year is – for obvious reasons – the Americana Music Festival in Nashville. This year, the line-ups and complementary events are particularly robust. A festival that once cranked up on Wednesday is in full swing already. Here’s what Tuesday looks like:

Grimey’s hosts the Americana Music Festival kick-off event at 5 p.m., with shows by Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real, Joana Serrat, Joseph Huber, the Steel Woods, Jesse Dayton and Zach Schmidt.

At 6 p.m., Will Kimbrough and friend take the Americana Music Festival stage at Fond Object Records, 1313 McGavock Pike. Guests include Tommy Womack and the Red Dirt Boys. (Kimbrough and Womack – “Daddy” – pictured above.)

At 7 p.m., the Belcourt Theatre will screen “50 Years of Blonde on Blonde in Concert,” featuring Old Crow Medicine Show. At 7:30 p.m., a stage production called “The People Sing!” is scheduled for War Memorial Auditorium. The show features Hayes Carll, Allison Moorer and many more in an exploration of the fight for freedom and justice in America.

And don’t miss Will Hoge at the High Watt at 10 p.m.

 

 

New release: Two Tracks’ “Post Card Town”

Americana Music News – Coming May 19 is Postcard Town , the new album from the Wyoming-based Two Tracks. It’s clearly a tightly-knit band with comfortable harmonies and a fun approach.

They reached out to Will Kimbrough to produce this set and that has paid dividends.

Here’s their mini-documentary on the making of “Postcard Town”:

New releases: Paul Thorn, Kimbrough & DeMeyer

Americana Music News – New and recent releases:

Review: Will Kimbrough’s “Sideshow Love”

sideshow loveby Paul T. Mueller

On his seventh solo album, due for release in mid-February, Will Kimbrough turns away from Big Issues to focus on more personal matters. There are 12 songs on Sideshow Love, and they’re all about one or more aspects of human relationships – love, sex, loneliness and various combinations thereof.

Check them off: Anticipated love (“When Your Loving Comes Around”), physical love (“Let the Big World Spin”), boastful love (the title track), practical love (“Home Economics”), and so on.

High points include “I Want Too Much,” a confessional song that features some really nice acoustic picking; “Has Anybody Seen My Heart,” a gentle lost-love ballad written with Joy Lynn White; and “Who Believes In You,” co-written with Carter Wood and featuring some beautiful cello by engineer and co-producer David Henry.

Will Kimbrough is an excellent player, singer and producer, and his talents are on full display here. One could wish for a bit more poetry in his lyrics, but in light of his other contributions that seems a bit churlish.

Best, maybe, just to appreciate the moods and colors he creates with his guitar (and several other instruments) and his voice.

Follow the latest in Americana music news on Twitter at @Sun209com.

 

 

Review: Willie Sugarcapps

Willie SugarcappsBy Ken Paulson
We first saw Willie Sugarcapps in the Grimey’s Record Store parking lot in Nashville this spring and for the record, there’s no Willie. This is a band of friends with considerable musical talents and their energy and collective spirit fueled a fun and engaging set in the parking lot.
Willie Sugarcapps consists of  Will Kimbrough, Sugarcane Jane (Savana Lee and Anthony Crawford), Grayson Capps and Corky Hughes, an amalgam in name and spirit.
Their impressive album feels homespun and acoustic, and sounds like someone set up recording equipment on the front porch.
Many of the songs are about life’s basics: celebrating the birthday of a 93-year-old, repairing a relationship and just working your way through life.
Capps’ “Poison” is a particular treat and natural sing-along: “Drink a little poison before you die.”
And then there’s “Willie Sugarcapps,” the title track and self-mythologizing tale of a singer and multi-instrumentalist who we need more than ever:   “Folks are suffering all across this land, Woody Guthrie’s long gone, won’t you give us your helping hand?”
It takes a confident band to name itself, a song and album after a legendary figure they just made up. Bo Diddley would have approved.
Follow Sun209: Americana Music News on Twitter at @Sun209com.

Sun209 contributors

Will Kimbrough: Spending most of 2011 touring with Emmylou Harris as one of her Red Dirt Boys, Will Kimbrough often performs with Rodney Crowell, Jimmy Buffett and others when not performing his own shows, writing hit songs, working as a session performer or producing others notable artists across various genres.
Will’s songs have been recorded by Jimmy Buffett, Little Feat, Jack Ingram, Todd Snider and others, while he has released 10 artist albums and a 3-CD box set to-date, including five albums as a founding member of DADDY, the bis-quits, and Will and the Bushmen. A new studio album is due out in late 2012. Dubbed an “Alien” performer as a way to explain his un-earthly, masterful performance on the guitar, Will was recognized in 2004 as the “Instrumentalist of the Year” by the Americana Music Association.
His websites: http://www.reverbnation.com/willkimbrough and
http://www.willkimbrough.com

Bill Lloyd: Bill Lloyd is a Nashville-based songwriter, musician, recording artist and producer who is most often remembered as half of the late ’80s RCA country-rock duo, Foster and Lloyd. Lloyd’s diverse musical activities include working as a producer (ranging from Carl Perkins to MTV reality show indie-rockers, The Secret), a session player (from Brit-pop icons like Ray Davies of The Kinks and Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze to country legends like Buck Owens and Steve Earle), a sideman (Poco, Marshall Crenshaw and with Cheap Trick when they perform The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper with orchestra) and as a songwriter (with songs cut by Trisha Yearwood, Martina McBride, Sara Evans, Keith Anderson, Hootie and the Blowfish and many more). He has recorded a string of critically acclaimed solo records that blend his melodic power pop sensibility with finely tuned song craft. During his stint as the Stringed Instrument Curator at The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, he created the quarterly series Nashville Cats, that he continues to host. He’s the music director for the First Amendment Center in Nashville. He also organized and plays in Nashville’s high concept cover band, The Long Players

Ken Paulson: Ken Paulson is the editor of Sun209:The Americana Music Journal. The former editor-in-chief of USA Today and a journalist for almost thirty years, Paulson began his career as a music reporter for Chicago-area publications in the ‘70s, and later worked as music critic for the national Gannett News Service and as a music writer for a wide range of magazines, including Goldmine, Environs, Triad and Family Weekly.

Terry Roland: Terry Roland is an Americana-roots music journalist who has published interviews, reviews and feature articles for FolkWorks, Sing-Out, No Depression and The San Diego Troubadour.

Bruce Rosenstein: Bruce Rosenstein is currently Managing Editor for the journal Leader to Leader. His book Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life was published by Berrett-Koehler in 2009.For 21 years, Bruce was a librarian for USA TODAY, where he also wrote about business and management books for the Money section of the newspaper. He has written for such publications as Leader to Leader, Leadership Excellence, American Executive, ONLINE and Information Outlook. He also wrote scripts for a weekly rock music radio show heard around the world on the Voice of America in the 1970s and ’80s, and contributed to such music publications as Trouser Press and ARSC Journal. He and Steve Leeds released one of the first compilations of independent rock music, Declaration of Independents, on their Ambition Records label in 1980. His website is www.brucerosenstein.com.

Joe Ross: Joe Ross of Roseburg, Oregon has been a music journalist and reviewer for over three decades. Now retired from the day job as a civilian with the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe is working full-time on music-related endeavors, including teaching and songwriting. He “edu-tains” with his interactive, fast-paced “Roots of Bluegrass” solo show that traces that music’s evolution while demonstrating banjo, mandolin, guitar, concertina, autoharp and dulcimers. But you might also see him performing a solo show of Latin, Hawaiian or even Beatles music. Performing since age 12, Joe also currently plays with various bands including Irish Crème (Celtic), Umpqua Valley Bluegrass Band (Bluegrass), The Keynotes (Polka Band), Zephyr Duo (Old-Time), and Alamojo (Western Swing). His eight albums, available at Amazon and CDBaby, span multiple genres and also include many original songs. Contact him at rossjoe@hotmail.com

Tommy Womack: A successful singer-songwriter with songs recorded by Jimmy Buffett, Todd Snider, Jason Ringenberg, Dan Baird, Scott Kempner and others, Tommy Womack is the author of the rock memoir cult classic “Cheese Chronicles: The True Story of a Rock n Roll Band You’ve Never Heard Of” and the recording artist behind 2007’s career-defining There, I Said It! album, as well as founding
member of the band DADDY with the Americana Music Association’s
instrumentalist of the year Will Kimbrough. A two-time winner of “Best Song” in the Nashville Scene’s annual “Best of Nashville” poll, Tommy is releasing a new solo studio album – NOW WHAT! – in late February 2012. He is always writing towards his next book. His websites:

http://www.tommywomack.com

Lisa Oliver-Gray’s solo debut: Dedicated to Love

Tommy Womack wrote an enthusiastic ode to Lisa Oliver-Gray and her first solo album Dedicated to Love on Sun209.com earlier this month.

He didn’t oversell it.

You can tell this was a liberating project for all involved. Lisa steps up front with a fresh and powerful voice and her DADDY bandmates and co-writers deliver songs that are largely buoyant and reassuring.

The album opens and closes with the joyous and melodic “Everybody Wants to Be Loved,” written by Womack and Tom Littlefield, celebrates a relationship that works on “I Can Count On You,” written by Lisa, Tommy Womack and Michael Webb, and honors a beloved grandmother on Lisa’s self-penned “Lucille.”

In other words, this is an album about real people and relationships, but with a decidedly positive perspective. The songwriting and the band, which includes Womack, Kimbrough, album producer Michael Webb, Tim Marks and Paul Griffith – are first-rate.

Here’s Lisa talking about her first solo album:

(Photo by Paul Needham)

Will Kimbrough at the Rutledge

Tonight’s Americana Music Festival midnight show at the Rutledge features Will Kimbrough, voted 2004 Instrumentalist of the Year by the AMA and a repeat nominee in the same category in subsequent years. Kimbrough is also a fine singer-songwriter and this is a great opportunity to see his solo set.

Kimbrough is just off the road with Emmylou Harris and earlier toured with Jimmy Buffett. His “Nobody From Nowhere,” written with Tommy Womack (also booked for the festival), and “Wings” were featured on Buffet’s “Buffet Hotel” album.

Earlier in his career, Kimbrough fronted fun and fresh rock bands Will and the Bushmen and the Bis-Quits, who were signed to John Prine’s Oh Boy label.

In recent years, Kimbrough, Womack, John Deaderick, Paul Griffith and Dave Jacques have toured and recorded as DADDY.

To top it off, Kimbrough posts videos of his favorite licks, a weekly feature inexplicably named the “Lick of the Day.”
Here’s a sample:

New this week: Brigitte DeMeyer’s “Rose of Jericho”

Out this week is Brigitte DeMeyer’s first album since moving to Nashville and “Rose of Jericho” shows that she’s fallen in with good company.
Brady Blade is back to produce the new album, with Nashville neighbors Will Kimbrough, Mike Farris, Sam Bush, Mike Henderson, Al Perkins, John Deaderick and others lending their talents.
The first two songs on DeMeyer’s fourth album illustrate the duality of the songs on “Rose of Jericho.” “One Wish” is a buoyant gospel song (“If I had one joy to sing/I’d tell the people about a mighty king”), but then the country-flavored “This Fix I’m In” brings it all back to the earthly concern of missing your child while on the road. Themes of Home and Heaven run throughout the album.
There’s some Maria Muldaur in DeMeyer’s vocals and style, most evident on “Alright A-Coming” and “Say Big Poppa.” And like Muldaur, DeMeyer has the confidence to tackle a variety of styles, and the voice to back it up.