The Will Kimbrough Interview is featured on The Paul Leslie Hour.
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We have an interview with the über-talented Will Kimbrough that went out on the radio airwaves years ago. The interview was recorded on November 18, 2006 at the famed live music venue Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Georgia.
Now, Will Kimbrough is an artist very worthy of your ear. He’s one of those all-around musical artists. He’s got a commanding voice, but he’s also a gifted songwriter. As a guitarist he’s greatly respected, but he’s highly regarded as a record producer too. You’ll want to delve into his records, believe us. You listen to Will Kimbrough and immediately think — I need to listen to more of this guy!
It was just the first few years of Paul’s broadcasting career. Ha ha. Boy did he sound a bit like a rookie, but you’ll notice that Will Kimbrough gives a lot of great, interesting details. They talked about “Americana music,” Will’s Mobile, Alabama origins along with musical influences. Will Kimbrough also talks about his song “Piece of Work,” which Jimmy Buffett recorded.
Just as a heads up, Will Kimbrough co-wrote the song “Bubbles Up,” which will appear on the Jimmy Buffett album “Equal Strain On All Parts.” The posthumous album will be released on Mailboat Records on November 3, 2023. You can listen to Will talking about that song and more on Episode #15 of the Will Kimbrough Super Service Podcast. Check it out.
Before we get started here, why not consider giving yourself and others the gift of stories? You can do so by going right here. Paul has a lot more great interviews in store for you. Be one of the folks who keep this show going. Or maybe you’d just like to buy Paul a coffee? Okay. This recording needs to get out there. Will Kimbrough talking to Paul Leslie. Let it roll.
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The Official Transcript
[2:42] Today’s guest is Mr. Will Kimbrough. He’s down here at one of my favorite Atlanta venues, or Decatur, I should say, Eddie’s Attic. Been a lot of great shows here. So he’s coming down here from Nashville, so I’d like to welcome Will to the program.
Thanks, Paul. It’s good to be here.
So you have a new album out. It’s called Americanitis. There’s not many people nowadays that get labeled with the Americana label. And when you look at some of the people that are labeled as Americana it’s kind of a, I’m sure, a badge to be proud of. You know, when I think of Americana, I kind of think of like Jerry Jeff Walker, that kind of thing. But when people say that they don’t, or when people who have not heard your music, when they ask you, what is it that you sound like? What would you describe your sound as?
I would describe it as what I’m going for. Well, what comes out of me is sort of a cross between somebody who’s listening to too many Beatles records and too many Hank Williams records, and too many Johnny Cash records and too many Replacements records all rolled into one.
[3:50] And I’d also like to say that for guys like me, and my friend Tommy Womack’s here with me tonight, we both work in the Americana format, which really these days is more or less just a radio format, you know? Because it encompasses so much stuff, you know? It encompasses real records that…to me are rock and roll records, and records that to me are country records, and records that to me are blues records, gospel records, and folk records, and bluegrass records. So I welcome that group of music that comes together.
I played the Americana Music Association’s award show this year, and Elvis Costello was on there, Allen Toussaint was on there, Marty Stuart was on there, Rodney Crowell was on there, Drive-by Truckers were on there, James McMurtry was on there, and I played on there a few years ago with Mavis Staples, so that’s a pretty good cross-section of American music. There’s a lot more to be included in there too. So yeah, it’s a cool thing to be part of.
I mean, it’s funny because I go over to England a couple times a year and play in Ireland and Europe, and I just had somebody in England tell me that something about the, they called it the Americana Ghetto, talking about, I guess, being pigeonholed and not being able to get out of it.
[5:12] But I think artists that transcend genres and go on to bigger things are just going to do it anyway.
You don’t know if it’s going to be you or if it’s going to be your friend. Like, look at Lucinda Williams.
She was the best new artist of 1998 or whatever. She had been making records for 20 years at that point, literally, since the 70s. So that’s the way show business is, it’s interesting. It’s not that interesting when you’re in it and it’s not going well for you, but it’s interesting when you’re looking at it as a fan.
It’s never boring if you really want to dig into music, and you can dig into music now more than you used to ever could.
[5:49] And you come from, or you lived originally in Alabama.
Yeah, I’m from Mobile, Alabama.
Were you born there?
I was.
You were?
Yeah.
Kimbrough is an interesting last name, and I was curious, what kind of nationality is that?
Pretty sure that it’s from the British Isles somewhere, or Ireland.
It’s not an Irish name, but it’s from the British Isles somewhere, although there aren’t any Kimbroughs there anymore. There’s no Kimbroughs in England or Scotland or Wales.
So it may be a name that was pronounced a certain way, and just that spelling came when people came to America, or maybe all the Kimbroughs left. Maybe they all died off that were left. But it’s some roots, and I have a lot of Scottish roots, but not from the Kimbrough name. My mom’s a Lindsay, and there’s Gilmers, and so, you know, Lindsays and Hardys and Gilmers, which are all from Scotland.
[6:39] So most of my DNA is Scottish and wherever it came from before that.
So growing up, what kind of music did you listen to?
I listened to, as a kid, I mean, I just listened to the radio and I was lucky in the seventies, AM radio and Top 40 radio was, you know, you’d hear the O’Jays and you’d hear the Eagles and you’d hear Ted Nugent and KISS and Aerosmith, and then you’d hear Charlie Rich. And it’s a pretty good variety of stuff.
It really, in fact, it was almost like a, could be a, what Americana is now, this mishmash of soul music and rock and roll music and redneck music, you know?
You had an album that was on John Prine’s label. [7:20] And, you know, with John Prine, the first word that I would think of with him was that kind of folk. [7:26] And just listening to some of your music, some of it seems to have some of the folk flavor in there.
Yeah, I mean, I have to say this. When I was 13, I saw John Prine. I saw KISS. I saw Bad Company. I saw Eric Clapton. I saw. Charlie Daniels all in about a two-month period.
My parents were taking me to concerts. So that music is all in there, and Prine is a big part of it.
I would listen to Prine’s Bruised Orange album, and I would listen to KISS Alive in the same sitting when I was a kid.
You sound like me.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s like you love music and you don’t say, nobody ever told me that it was wrong, there was anything wrong with both kinds of music, you know, really ridiculous kind of party rock and roll and then really great kind of folk music. You know, for me it was just all good, you know, in my mind.[8:18] It comes from a real mixed up place of just loving music, loving too many kinds of music at once.
When did you get the idea that this was what you wanted to do for a living? That this was going to be your life, you know?
Real early, on my 12th birthday, I got a cheap guitar and I got a cheap ticket to see Bruce Springsteen.
1976, it’s $4.50, Bruce Springsteen. At a theater, a thousand seat theater in Mobile. And I think, [talks to someone else] …are we on? Okay. All right.
At that point, I really did dedicate myself. I mean, it was the day I got my first guitar, but I really did start dedicating myself and formed a band. I’ve never stopped ever since. I was lucky to know what I wanted to do when I was 12, on my birthday.
Hours away from being 11. [Talks to someone else] Okay, all right. Hey, I should go check real quick.
Besides your songwriting, you also have been playing guitar with Rodney Crowell.
Yeah.
[9:21] And opening for Rodney Crowell. So how did you connect with Rodney Crowell?
Well, I live in Nashville, and you just meet different people along the way. And one of the ways you get those—the way I got it was through a friend who I got to work for, and Rodney needed a guitar player and my friend suggested me and Rodney came over to my house and we played through some songs and he gave me a, you know, he said, “well, come on out, let’s do some shows” and it’s five years later, I’m still doing it. And he’s been real supportive of my music by letting me open shows and, you know, helping me out a lot, he’s been very supportive.
Nashville seems like a place that if you’re into music and you, you know, you’re making, you’re making it, it seems like a place where there’s lots of opportunities.
Yeah, there is. I mean, you know, I live there and I’ve gotten to do.
I’ve gotten to play with people like Rodney and Guy Clark and Billy Joe Shaver, etc, etc. I’ve gotten to produce records. I’ve gotten to play on play in studio on it on albums and CDs and, make my own albums and CDs. [10:28] Write songs for other people and Nashville’s kind of the main place where for me to do that.
Right.
In the pool full of talent there that moves there from all over the world It’s pretty vast as far as like the players in the community of people who you know, and there’s many sides to Nashville. We all know they the real commercial countryside is there and um, they do their thing and you know, we do ours and most of all they pick up on some of our stuff and we get a little payday and we’d go on about our day.
One of the albums that you produced. I’ve been wearing it out and it’s the Adrienne Young. I saw her play in Athens, and I was really just taken by her sound. She’s great. So tell me about some of the work you did with her and how you found her.
We met in East Nashville at a club, at a show, and she said, would you like to write with me? And I said, sure. So we wrote a song called “Home Remedy,” and that was the first song we ever wrote, and we wrote a few more.
And then she was asking me to produce her record and I said sure and she never called me about it. Never arranged a time schedule. And then one day she called me and said “I need help with my record. I started recording it, but I need help. I need you to help me.” You know and I said, “okay when you want me to come in?” She’s like tomorrow and I was luckily I was able to come in the next day. And I was free and I went in and then we made that album called “Plow Through the End of the Row.”
[11:57] Um A little while later after that, we made a record with her called “The Art of Virtue.”
[12:03] And we’re working on one right now, which is tentatively titled “Room to Grow.” And it’s really good. So she’s just a real passionate person. And she’s a really good songwriter. And she’s just, you know, she’s vibrant, energetic, talented person who has a lot of drive and a lot of soul, a lot of good things to say.
One of your songs was, was recently, well, you had a couple of co-writes recently with Buffett on his recent album. But before that, when he did the country-feel album, he covered your song, “Piece of Work.” The best version I ever heard of that, he was in Key West playing on the beach, and he played it with Mac McAnally and it was a really cool version of the song, you know? So tell me about that song, how you got inspired to write that. I always think about that song as like a song that someone is saying to themself almost.
[13:04] Yeah, that song actually was written in a hospital room in Nashville. My youngest daughter had to stay in the hospital a few days after she was born, and then the night before she came home, I took my oldest daughter and my wife and I all went and spent the night. They were going to weigh her the next morning and make sure she was a certain weight and could go home. So it was a big night for us. We had high hope.
So my wife and my daughter fell asleep, and my youngest infant daughter fell asleep. And I was just alone in the room awake with all these weird electronic noises that are in hospitals, buzzers and beepers and heart monitors.
[13:47] Hospitals never stop. You know, there’s 24 hours a day, somebody’s running around down the hall, there’s noises. And I couldn’t sleep.
And that song just started playing in my head, really. I started playing with words and doing a little word game with myself. Next thing I knew I had about half of it going in my head and I figured I better write it down. So I went in the bathroom of the hospital room and I wrote down what I had and then I just for good measure just went on and wrote some more stuff and I think a couple of days later I wrote another part.
Few weeks later. I got my notebook out and looked at it and there it was and I pieced it together. It happened really quickly over a two or three week period of time, little pieces of time. It probably took me an hour to write the whole song. So it was yeah, I was definitely inspired, but I don’t know what from just. [14:37] It just really came out of not being able to sleep, you know and playing with words.
[14:42] And the thing that’s kind of interesting was Buffett having lived in Mobile, I’m sure you kind of have a couple of things in common with him, but how did he discover you?
I met Jimmy through Todd Snider. I was playing guitar for Todd Snider in the mid-90s and we played at Tipitina’s in New Orleans and Jimmy, you know, anybody who knows anything about Buffett knows he loves New Orleans and spent a lot of time there playing when he was younger.
[15:10] He came to the show and we were on, Todd was on Jimmy Buffett’s label at the time, Margaritaville Records. And Jimmy came to the show. Backstage at Tipitina’s was this small, stinky dressing room and it was crammed full of people because Jimmy was back there and the whole entourage and things were back there. And we got sort of pushed up together against a wall and I said, “Hey, Jimmy, I’m Will. I’m from Mobile.” And so we started talking about being from the Gulf Coast and we sort of called each other escapees from Mobile. I mean, I love Mobile, but it’s not necessarily a place to do music for your whole life, to have a, career in music. There’s no way to do it really, for me at least.
And then a couple, years later I had sent him my albums as they came out. He asked his niece, who’s a friend of mine, whatever happened to that guy from Mobile, and she said, well he’s still doing, music and still making records. So she called me and said, “I know you’ve sent him all your albums, but send it again, send a package, FedEx it, says my dad, not my dad, my uncle, my uncle is interested in what you’re doing, something might come out of it.”
[16:15] And so, next thing you know, it’s like “can you come down to Key West in January and record, and, we’re going to cut this song “A Piece of Work.”
And now the band Little Feat, Mac McAnally’s producing Little Feat, and they’ve recorded a song of mine called “The Champion of the World,” and the record’s not out yet, but from And from what I understand, it’s still on there. So we’ll see when it comes out if it’s still on there.
But that would be an honor, too. And I think Jimmy sings part of it, you know, it’s like a duet, so it’s cool.
Very cool.
[16:43] So I met Jimmy and he took a liking to me and took a liking to my music and cut some songs.
We went down last year and wrote some songs and recorded them. It’s good.
You mentioned Todd Snider. And there’s a few of your songs that are kind of in common with his. A little bit of his sound is kind of, you guys are kind of similar in some ways. Who out there, as far as the youngster, would you have to give the nod to and say, you know, that guy, he’s really doing well, or you respect him, in other words?
There’s a lot of people I respect, and I’m trying to think of who they are. I like Hayes[17:20] Carll. I don’t know how much younger he is than me. Todd and I are basically in our 40s now, you know, so he’s not a youngster. I think Hayes Carll is good. I admire Ryan Adams, but I don’t know if he’s, you know, if he should do a little, you know, maybe he shouldn’t put out three albums a year, you know, I don’t know. But I admire what he’s trying to do and I appreciate a lot of his stuff.
I don’t know, you know, I guess I’m an older guy and I really keep going back to the the masters. I keep going back to the old, old, old time blues guys from the 20s and 30s, to the old Memphis music, Stax music, to people like J. J. Cale and Tony Joe White. Of course, I think Dylan’s new stuff is good. You have to listen to it and check it out, because it’s worth hearing what he’s saying and what he’s playing. And there’s plenty of good new, stuff. I’m just trying to think of what… I listened to this record by this band called The Hold Steady I thought was pretty good.
But it’s, music is interesting. Once you start going back in time, it’s hard to stay in the present because there’s so [18:22] much stuff that you’ve never heard and somebody will turn you on. Right now I’m real into Memphis music and I’m just discovering all this music that I’d never heard before of all sorts.
Soul music, blues, rock and roll, rockabilly, you know, rock music from the 20s to now and, there’s so much stuff that you start trying to find it all and some of them are hard to find. You’ve got to mail order the CD. It’s kind of fun in the age of the internet where you actually have to wait for something.
Yeah.
Wait two weeks to get your CD.
[18:52] There’s a guy from Memphis, I think I was reading that …
Cory Brandan?
No, Keith Sykes.
Keith Sykes. I’ll tell you this Cory Brandan is good. He may be like 30 now so we’re calling him a kid, but he’s good. It’s a B-r-a-n-d-a-n.
I’ll have to check him out.
And he’s really good. He reminds me, he has his own thing, but he reminds me a little bit of what the humor that Todd has, but Cory’s good. He’s really good. He’s got his own thing.
[19:16] Keith Sykes, yeah, Keith Sykes is great.
You’ve met Keith Sykes?
Many times, worked in the studio, and I know Keith pretty well. Keith’s great.
The reason I was mentioning Keith Sykes is I kind of think that you guys, meaning there’s, a few artists I think that have a common thread running in them, and this is just as a listener. Maybe I’m way off. But I’ve noticed Todd Snider, you and Keith Sykes. I’ve been listening to a lot of that kind of music lately. And there’s a kind of almost like homegrown kind of feel to it, if that makes sense.
Well, I think it’s, we’re all coming from. I mean, you know, I saw, when I saw John Prine when I was 13, Keith Sykes opened for him. [20:02] And John Prine has since, you know, done Keith Sykes songs, they’ve written songs together.
Keith Sykes wrote songs for Buffett. Keith Sykes wrote songs with Buffett, Keith Sykes is friends with Jerry Jeff Walker. Jerry Jeff Walker has done his songs. Todd Snider got signed to his first publishing deal by Keith Sykes. There’s not only a musical thread, but a serious professional and personal thread.
Keith Sykes is a real connection to a lot of things. Keith goes back to the early 60s. He was on Vanguard Records, which was the folk label that had Joan Baez and other great folk artists. He made a couple of albums when he was probably 18, 19 years old that were getting him some real recognition in the era of early Bob Dylan, in the early 60s. And then he left and went back to Memphis, did what he did. So he’s a connection. Keith’s a real connection. Keith’s a real underappreciated and underrated artist. Partly due to his own fault.
As much as I love and admire him, he could make more albums, but he’s only done what he’s done, which is great. Someday somebody ought to write a book about Keith and connect him to all the things, he’s connected to. I’m reading a book called “It Came From Memphis,” which is a great Memphis music book, and it does tie in so many things that it’s almost mind-boggling. Memphis is a good thing to talk about here because that’s a real homegrown type place. When you think of that music, it’s very homegrown. It almost exists outside of the music industry except for a certain.[21:31] period, like in the 60s, Otis Redding and music like that. Booker T. and the M.G.s, they were on top of the charts. They were number one. And Elvis, of course. But there’s a very homegrown quality.
But the music place like Elvis came out of was Sun Records, which was a homemade studio, and Stax Records was an independent label run by some people. So I definitely admire that homegrown aspect.
And I think that the music probably reflects that.
I’m glad I asked that question. There was something I wanted to add, kind of a philosophical question. What is it, and I’m asking this because it’s funny, because someone can write a song and they intend a certain message. Like for example, there was a Michael McDonald song I was listening to and I took it as kind of an inspirational song. I was talking to him about it. He mentioned, and it was not, it was a song about loss more or less. [22:33] I guess the reason I’m asking this is you never know what kind of message someone’s gonna get from one of your song.
Right! That’s true. And that’s what I’ve gotten all my life from music myself. I mean, I’m obviously a big music fan. I’m talking about all this music I’m studying up on and listening and waiting for the CDs to arrive in my mailbox, so I must I’m still as much of a fan as I ever was. So I understand that too and I get and sometimes I just get a message from just the music itself, just from like a guitar sound or the way your horn section sounds or a drum sounds. It gives me a feeling and it does send a message to me. And that’s what music does.
So what is it that you hope people get out of your music?
I hope they get some kind of emotional feeling. I hope they get some joy and I hope they can work through some sadness if that’s what they want to do. I really just hope they enjoy it. If they get something else, like you said, and I agree with what you said. I think you’re right on the mark that people can get different messages. [23:27] Um, so I just think, I want people to hear it and get whatever they get out of it, really. And really just some joy, you know, because I get, I get joy out of music, even if it’s, sad music, but a lot of joyous music as well, you know, you can sort of work through your problems through some music or help you understand your own life.
Even if the writer has never have any clue, you know, they’re from India and never been to America, you know, they can, you can hear some music and it gets you through a period of time.
It’s good. It’s good for your soul.
So my last question to you, this program, through the powers of technology goes out all over the world. So, my question to you is, what would you like to say to the world?
I’d like to say that peace is better than war and love is better than fear, and live music is better than recorded music, but buy my album anyway. (Laughs)
Well, Mr. Kimbrough, I do thank you for taking the time to speak with me, and it was a pleasure.
[24:26] You bet. Same here, Paul. Thank you so much.
Thank you.