WILL KIMBROUGH- ZEWTOPIA 2006

By Kevin Lee Associate Editor

For Will Kimbrough, a trip to Mobile can be a journey through time itself. He can go backward, into a storied past as a Port City wunderkind, or he can bring the future with him to show the homefolks what lies ahead.

His appearance at ZEWtopia, a Mobile music festival slated for Saturday, April 15, will be a little of both.

“We’ll have a little of our old material and some of our new stuff,” Kimbrough said recently.

Presently a Nashville resident, Kimbrough relocated about 15 years ago and the move seems to have paid dividends. He has a released a trio of solo albums, with another nearing completion.

“We’ve been working on this new CD,” said Kimbrough during the journey from a studio back into town. “We’re in the last stages; we’re mastering it. We’re just listening to it in different places and making sure it sounds right before we take it to press it up.”

Collaboration has also been on his agenda. “We’ve been working with this Scottish singer-songwriter named Dean Owen,” Kimbrough said.. “We’ve been in studio since Saturday doing that.”

In fact, teamwork seems to have become his forte`. Kimbrough has garnered a healthy reputation in the music town for his joint efforts. He joined Athens artist Todd Snider for studio time, capping a working relationship that extends back a few years.

And the progress of the Snider project? “Great,” Kimbrough said. “It’s done. They’ve started the machine to get some publicity out there over the summer and they’re talking about putting it out in August or September.”

Will also teamed forces with another Mobile native. He joined bard Jimmy Buffett in Key West for tandem recording duties. “It was fun,” Kimbrough said. “We wrote a few songs together and I think they’re all gong to be on the record, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

The future of that work coincides with the Snider plan. “I think his (Buffett’s) record is due out in September, too,” Kimbrough explains. “It’s always fun to be around those guys, You know, guys like Sonny Landreth are always there, and the guys from Little Feat are playing and so on.”

In addition, Will has been teaming up with Nashville heavyweight Rodney Crowell, joining him in Austin, Texas for South By Southwest, a combination music festival and industry workshop that has grown to universal proportions. “I’ve been to most of those,” Kimbrough said. “I think this was about the 20th one, and I’ve been to about 17 of them. It’s fun if you can do it. It’s gotten big, kind of like Austin has.”

As far as Kimbrough’s most recent solo album, dubbed “Americanitis,” he feels it has a lot to offer. “I’m pretty excited. I’ve been working on it for a long time, and I’ve just finally been learning that’s just how I do ‘em.”

He has learned to be comfortable with his own timetable. “They didn’t have to be started and finished over the course of a year or so,” said the musician. “With all the other stuff that goes on, I don’t get bogged down in it, and you can work and go get the money to pay for it. So it’s good.”

“It’s been in the works about 15 months,” he continued. “I started it in January of 2005. It’s been done and recorded for a while but we had to mix it and all that. It’s17 tracks, so it’s a big old record.”

Kimbrough went through a fertile period that served him well. “Yeah, I had a bunch of songs for this record. I think I recorded about 25 and ended up with about 17 I thought worked together.”

There’s also new territory on the album. “This record sort of has the most rockin’ thing I’ve ever done and the most folksy thing I’ve ever done. It’s definitely different.”

Will said the lyrical content is a departure as well. “The last real studio record I did was called ‘Home Away’ and it was real personal. This is a little bit more political just because of what was going on in the world when I wrote these songs. I usually write about whatever I’m paying attention to, and I was watching 9-11 happen and watching what happened after that. Then the songs just came out.”

They had an obvious personal slant that couldn’t be handed over to another artist. “Once you have all the songs, you have to decide what to do with them,” said Kimbrough. “Songs like that, they’re for you to do, they’re not for anybody else to do really, so you do ‘em. It’s pretty different in that way. I had to figure out how to write them like I wanted to. You know, I’m just putting it out and people can think whatever they want.”

There’s a rawness to some of it that he felt worked well. “Some of these recordings are of the first time I played the song after I wrote them,” he explained, “and some of the stuff I recorded at home was like that. I took the typed words and printed out lyrics and walked into my little room and played in my laptop and recorded the song and we ended using that for the basis for several of the songs.”

It was like lightning in a bottle. “We had the opportunity to re-record but we kept going, ‘Why? Listen to that!’”

“Americanitis” is slated for a September release which means the Mobile native has a momentous autumn ahead. He hits the road soon, touring Texas and then heading to Europe.

In the meanwhile, ZEWtopia awaits. “I usually come home for a holiday and you don’t want to get a band over the holiday ‘cause they always have family and stuff to do over Christmas or whatever. This is Eastertime, but I’m getting a band together and bringing it down. I’m excited.”

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

Archives