Interview with Will Kimbrough by Jeff Grill
/Will Kimbrough
Photo by Stacie Huckaba
Will Kimbrough is a multi-talented, prolific singer-songwriter, guitarist, mandolinist, and record producer for numerous artists, with over 20 albums to his credit, spanning varied genres. He began his career with Will and the Bushmen, recording and self-releasing an album and a 45 single before the band moved to Nashville in 1988 and signed with SBK/Capitol/EMI Records. Will’s more recent work includes his solo albums (e.g., “Wings,” 2010, “Sideshow Love,” 2014, “I like It Down Here,” 2019), and albums with bands of which he is a member including DADDY, The Red Dirt Boys (Emmylou Harris’s background band), Willie Sugarcapps (the Lower Alabama supergroup consisting of Will Kimbrough, Sugarcane Jane, and Grayson Capps, with Corky Hughes), and with Brigette DeMeyer, as well as performances as a sideman for singers Jimmy Buffett, Shamekia Copeland, Rodney Crowell, and Todd Snider, and numerous others. His most recent album is “Red Dirt Boys–Cayamo Edition,” and he provides four songs for, and appears on Jimmy Buffett’s forthcoming (May 2020) album, “Life on the Flip Side.” Will Kimbrough, a Mobile, AL native, lives in Nashville, TN.
Will Kimbrough Interview by Jeff Grill (conducted via email April 09–14, 2020)
JG The first song of yours I remember hearing is “Good Night Moon,” and it just knocked me out. It was included on one of the early Oxford American music compilation CDs. I bought that issue at Square Books in Oxford, MS when my wife, Linda, and I were traveling back to Athens, AL from Little Rock, AR several years ago. Some years later, after moving back to Mobile, I asked John Thompson, owner of Callaghan’s, Irish Social Cub, in the Oakleigh Garden Historic District, if you might sing it during a show you were going to do there. He assured me that you would include it, and you closed with that song, to my great pleasure. How did “Good Night Moon” come about?
WK I got the melody in my head and we had several copies of the book Goodnight Moon on the coffee table; our eldest child, Emma, was a baby then, and we had been gifted several copies. I just started singing, “Goodnight Moon, goodnight stars…” and my mind followed with, “Goodnight old broke down cars” — and it was on. I later took the song to my friend Gwil Owen and he helped me finish it.
JG As one with no talent for music except for listening, I have always wondered which comes first, the lyrics or the music? Or does that vary from song to song?
WK It varies. I have written lyrics, then added music. I have written a melody and chords, then added lyrics. I have done my fair share of co-writing (sitting down with another writer, or writers). Sometimes it all comes at once.
In recent years, I’ve written a lot while traveling, just talking into the Notes App on my iPhone. So, I’m writing lyrics first. Getting back to them later. That’s my favorite way to write now—write lots of lyrics. Get to the music later.
But it’s wide open. Anything goes.
JG Do you have a typical process that you follow when writing a song? If you do, can you describe it?
WK No. Except for what I said about talking lyrics into the phone. I do that while traveling. Of course, right now no one is traveling!
There was a time when I was, I suppose, more precious about writing—I needed my solitude, my cup of coffee, my notebook, solitude. After raising two children, making 20 or so albums, writing with many different kinds of people, including over 20 combat veterans, as part of Songwriting With Soldiers, I can truly say I am open minded and simply love to write songs. It’s my therapy, my outlet, my expression, and my livelihood.
JG Your songs can be rollicking, funny, rootsy, full of love but not the mushy sentimental type of love song, and sometimes dark. For example, your album, “Wings” is full of beautifully-expressed love songs, but “Sideshow Love” goes in a very different direction, with “Soulfully” being deeply felt and beautifully executed, but not overly sentimental, with “Let the Big World Spin” offering a kind of primal beat, and with “Home Economics” and “Dance Like the Grownups Dance” offering humor and fun. And then there is also “I Want Too Much” which seems pretty edgy. When I asked you about that song, once, you said that your wife didn’t like it. I can see why; it made me uncomfortable because it tells a truth that hits close enough to home. So, my two questions are these: how do you develop an album? That is, do you write songs with a concept in mind or do you write songs and save them until you find that you have a cohesive collection that would work as an album?
WK Every couple of years, I write a song that really gets my attention. A song that makes me think I’d like to put it on an album with other songs. So that really puts my brain in album-making mode. I start writing other new songs, of course, but a funny thing also happens, older songs start to pop themselves up, so to speak, and call attention to themselves. A new favorite composition sometimes makes old songs that have never been released seem new again. I guess it’s just context. Anyway, before I know it, I have 10, 12 songs, and I know it’s time to make an album.
It’s said we live in a post-album world, but I am an album person. I love singles - we have a big box of wonderful old 45s and sometimes have dance parties—but albums—albums are special friends. Lifetime friends.
So, I try to make great albums. Not sure I’ve ever succeeded. But Lord it is fun to try.
JG How did you begin your career?
WK With the band, Will and the Bushmen. We made our first album in Slidell Louisiana and released it ourselves, we recorded a 45 RPM single in Tuscaloosa and released it ourselves. We moved as a group to Nashville in January 1988. We were signed to SBK/Capitol/EMI Records in 1989, and recorded two records for that label: a self-titled album recorded at Bearsville up in Woodstock New York released in 1989 and a record called The Blunderbus recorded in Nashville and released in 1991.
I think the Bushmen’s first album, “Gawk,” and our 45, “500 Miles b/w Dear Alex,” are The closest we got to capturing the energy of a live show. I wanted to mention the band, because I spent my 20s in that band… To be exact from age 19 to 28. Wonderful, painful and pivotal years.
Great experiences in the Bushmen—recording demos at the Record Plant in New York City, the walls literally crowded with platinum and gold records by John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Jimi Hendrix and kiss.
Recording in Woodstock, meeting Rick Danko of The Band, down on his luck. Meeting John Sebastian of the Lovin Spoonful, who commented on the people we were working with as basically shysters. Meeting Marshall Crenshaw who basically said the same thing.
Going to meetings with the record company on some upper floor of a skyscraper in Manhattan with expensive paintings on the walls.
Having a private meeting between the band and the “wrecker” company president, Charles Koppelman, A legendary record man – at the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta - where he sat in an opulent wing chair with a foot-long cigar and told us that we were not going to make it.
At the same time these kinds of memories are balanced with wonderful memories of night after night of sweaty roadhouse shows with kids dancing themselves dizzy.
My Takeaway: that’s the real stuff. The roadhouse sweat. The long career over a lifetime. Perhaps that’s me compensating for my lack of mainstream success, but nevertheless I think it’s pretty sincere.
To spend Ones days Doing what you love. That’s the stuff.JG You collaborate with many other musicians, at many levels. I’d like to ask about some of those collaborations, notably with Daddy, with Emmylou Harris and the Red Dirt Boys, with Brigette DeMeyer, and, of course, the LA (Lower Alabama) super-group, Willie Sugarcapps.
How did these collaborations come about? How do they differ from each other and from solo writing and performing?
WK DADDY was initially a collaboration with Tommy Womack. We’d been in a band called The Bis-Quits in the early 90s, made a record for the late great John Prine’s Oh Boy! Records—and we put together our dream band for the kinds of songs we had in mind—blues, early rock n roll, classic gospel, honky-tonk—and those dream players, John Deaderick on piano and organ, Dave Jacques on bass, Paul Griffith on drums, said yes! We’ve made three fine albums with these geniuses. Now John’s a Daddy and Paul’s moved to California. Not sure what the future holds, but I’m really glad we got together.
Emmylou Harris asked me to consider playing guitar for her back around 2007, but when she realized I was at the time playing for her old friend Rodney Crowell, she said, “I’m not stealing Rodney’s guitar player!”
Luckily, after Rodney moved on to a new sound, Emmylou called again and this time, in 2011, I auditioned and got the gig. I have been playing with Emmylou off and on now, for 8 years and counting. It is everything you would imagine it to be. Singing harmony with Emmylou? Heaven. Playing all her classic songs? Paradise. Spending time with her and the band on the road? Joyful.
I’d like folks to know that Red Dirt Boys (comprised of Chris Donohue, Will Kimbrough, Phil Madeira, and Bryan Owings) is not only Emmylou’s backing band, but a band unto ourselves, and we have made a record I just love. It is at reddirtboys.bandcamp.com and you can listen and download there. Red Dirt Boys is my outlet for my most New Orleans influenced songs.
Brigitte DeMeyer and I started working together on one of her solo albums. I was called in to play guitar and mandolin— then we started writing songs and singing harmony. Wow, we had beaucoup chemistry. It took a while, but we made two records together: her solo record “Savannah Road” and our collaboration, “Mockingbird Soul.” She’s a super soulful artist and a great writer. Our song “Half Drunk” will be on the new Jimmy Buffett album! And I just shared some songs we wrote that Brigitte had forgotten about. Who knows? We may make another Brigitte and Will album soon.
Willie Sugarcapps [comprised of individual acts, Will Kimbrough, Sugarcane Jane—husband and wife duo Savannah Lee and Anthony Crawford, Grayson Capps, with Corky Hughes] …you know I love WSC. We were put together to play the Frog Pond at Blue Moon Farm in Silverhill by Cathe Steele. Maybe it was 2012? We started improvising harmonies on each others’ songs. We started jamming on each others’ songs. We did not know each others’ songs, but it felt like we did. We were smitten. Again, there was some kind of chemistry that just clicked. Now we’ve made two albums and an EP, played some festivals including Jazzfest and Targhee in Wyoming. Or was that Idaho? Haha. I just sent my band mates some new songs, in hopes of sparking the next Willie Sugarcapps album.
How did you become involved with Songwriting with Soldiers? How often do you participate in the retreats? Is that writing more difficult than developing your own material? Is it more satisfying? Has it changed your writing?
WK I was playing on Mary Gauthier’s album, “Rifles and Rosary Beads”, which is made up of songs Mary wrote with soldiers, on Songwriting With Soldiers retreats. I was blown away by the songs. Mary suggested that maybe I should be part of SWS. Radney Foster suggested it too. And then the founder, Darden Smith, officially asked me to join SWS. I said yes, and since 2017, my personal, spiritual and creative life has been transformed. Not many people get to be a songwriter at all. And very few of those writers get the opportunity for a brand new reason to write, a brand new purpose for songs. That is what Songwriting With Soldiers means to me. And the amazing people I have and who have become friends. I am so grateful.
JG Is there anything that you would like to add?
WK I am truly one of those lucky people who knew what to do with his life as a very young person. And I have gotten to pursue it full time since the 1980s. To continue to do what I love, to continue to be inspired by life and my fellow musicians and writers, to have my work transformed by Songwriting With Soldiers, to have my songs recorded by artists like Jimmy Buffett and Little Feat, it is all part of my dream coming true into reality now for over 30 years. I am truly grateful and inspired for the next phase of creativity.
I helped write 4 songs for new [Jimmy] Buffett record, and I got to play on the whole thing. It was the 6th Jimmy Buffett record I’ve worked on since 2002, and that group now feels like family, too—I’m no longer the new guy; I’m an honorary Coral Reefer.
I’m lucky and I do not take that for granted. I was raised by great parents and have an amazing older sister who is a mind-blowing artist herself—she continues to grow and stay inspired. How beautiful is that?