Will gets happy, Will gets angry
Friday, July 21, 2006
By LAWRENCE SPECKER
It's possible to make the case that "Americanitis" is exactly the album Will Kimbrough shouldn't have made at this particular juncture in his career.
There's no need to explain this to Will Kimbrough. He knows.
The Mobile native went to Nashville in the late '80s as a member of Will and the Bushmen, a rock group that failed to survive a brush with fame. He stuck it out, working as a session guitarist and touring sideman for hire. He played with his own groups and released a couple of solo albums, honing his considerable singing and songwriting talents. And after a mere decade or so of working all these angles, a world of opportunity finally began to open up for him.
In the summer and fall of 2004, he played on Jimmy Buffett's "License to Chill" album, and Buffett recorded one of Kimbrough's songs as a duet with Toby Keith. As a sideman for acclaimed Texas songwriter Rodney Crowell, he got to tour Europe and to appear on the televised stages of PBS' "Austin City Limits" and DirecTV's "Freeview." Also that fall, the Americana Music Association picked him as its instrumentalist of the year.
He was breaking through to name recognition outside the Nashville industry, and getting his first taste of big-league songwriting success. He was getting people interested in whatever he came up with next. These were good reasons to come out with a collection of pretty songs that wouldn't ruffle anybody's feathers. Instead, Kimbrough's third proper solo album is guaranteed to do just that. No stranger to social commentary, "Americanitis" finds him taking a harder line on the state of the union. And for the first time, he's stepping up with overtly political material.
"I Lie," the album opener, rides a deceptively cozy Western two-step, setting the tone for a disc that features much more rootsy, Woody Guthrie-inspired Americana music than rock. Lyrically, it also sets the tone: It's a stinging indictment of the corporate culture epitomized by the likes of Ken Lay and Richard Scrushy: "I/ lie/ why?/ Because I can/ It's the pleasure and the privilege of the richest
"People in the land/ Don't you understand?/ I don't give a damn for you/ I don't give a damn for you/ That's the truth/ I lie, because I can."
"Pride," the most arresting track on the disc, takes hard shots at the administration and its response to 9/11: "Pride is a man who goes to war to save face. Pride is a man who cannot tell the truth that might make him look weak ... Our sin is pride and we know it, we just can't talk about it."
But there's another side to the album that will be just as striking to those who've followed Kimbrough's career: For a writer who has tended to be somewhat mopey, there's a welcome, unaffected happiness on much of "Americanitis."
It's the strongest on upbeat, non-political tracks like "Grown Up Now" and "Life." But at times the two strains come together, as on "Less Polite," a song that finds Kimbrough griping about some things, but wrapping his observations in a catchy, Beatles-influenced tune that tends to stick with the listener. "I'm trying to be less polite/ I'm gonna tell you what I think/ Worthless information is a corporate creation/ yeah they're trying to kill democracy..."
"I really think that this record is probably the most personal record I've made because in the past I've spoken through some other characters," Kimbrough told the Press-Register in a recent interview.
"Americanitis" comes out Tuesday. It'll be available primarily through
www.willkimbrough.com, with wider distribution pending.
With the release just around the corner, Kimbrough took some time to talk about his ongoing collaboration with Buffett, his work with a role model of Crowell's caliber and the gamble of speaking his mind.
Press-Register: Why go with so much topical material this time out?
WK: Right, well, it's pretty simple. I wrote about 50 songs, as it turned out, for this record. I decided that if I didn't do some of these songs that were more, what you would call political, I decided that if I didn't do the songs that were of that nature, I might not ever be able to do those particular songs. So I made the decision one day, well I'm going to do these songs. I'm gonna see what other songs fit. But all those songs came together in a natural way. I didn't sit down and consciously say, "I'm going to write a political album."
"Less Polite" -- The idea of that song, and you probably understand this, being raised in the Deep South, you're raised to be polite, almost no matter what. Believe what you believe and stand up for it, but be polite. It makes your life easier, basically.
P-R: But then your find yourself standing by while things are said ...
WK: Yeah, and that was an election song, and I was just like, I'm tired of being polite about this, I don't agree with some things. And that, to a lot of people, is really entertaining song, just because of the way it's upbeat and stuff. And there's something happy about expressing yourself, too. There's something very uplifting about that, even if it's something that somebody else doesn't agree with, because quite frankly, the only thing that makes a recording artist different from anybody else is that I went in and sang into a microphone and I had either the guts of the gall, depending on how you look at it, to put it out.
P-R: That upbeat, uplifting quality is something that's new for you, or at least the extent to which it shows on "Americanitis" is new. Songs like "I Lie," "Grown Up Now," and "Life" are all full of lyrics that could have been sung from a grim or ironic perspective, but that's not what you do this time around.
WK: Especially if you have some sort of message there, you want people to not be driven away by the way it sounds. Basically all I'm saying is the same old thing. I'm borrowing from Gandhi and Martin Luther King and John Lennon and saying peace and love are better than hate and war. And I don't know how exactly we're going to accomplish that but we need to try.
P-R: Your observations tend to be more social than political, even in "Pride," where you take a couple of hard swipes at President Bush.
WK: And that's an easy thing to do, I know.
P-R: Comments like, "when did pride get taken off the list of deadly sins" would seem likely to hit closer to home than any mere political sniping.
WK: You remember the Don Henley song "Boys of Summer," which is sort of the quintessential '80s angst song, and it has the line, "saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac." That's real '80s. It's like, the psychedelic hippies have grown up and they're rich middle-aged men now. And that's kind of what "Pride" is (saying). That's an "Americanitis" thing, too, a "What would Jesus Do" sticker next to a "Power of Pride" sticker. To me that's completely kind of mixed-up and crazy, but to a lot of people it's not. (They) might think that's perfectly natural and yet somehow the sin of pride wouldn't apply to you being an American, because God loves America.
I just don't subscribe to that. I'm not saying God doesn't love America, I'm saying that if there's a God, then God loves everything, because God made everything and God is responsible for everything. And we're responsible for ourselves. And I know this. I've been all over this country. I love it. I love this piece of land, and I love the people that live on it. But we're not better than anybody. We're just more people and we have a beautiful system that was bestowed upon us by mixed-up people who thought that freedom also included owning slaves. And not letting women vote, and not letting people vote that didn't own land, that couldn't read. That was the founding of America. From the get-go we've been mixed up, but the idea of it is what's great, the Constitution and the bill of Rights, and all that stuff is genius.
I'm not trying to be self-important, but I'm one of those people that believes Democracy is a work in progress. And that's the whole point.
"Pride" was s song that some people urged me not to put out, because they said it sounded preachy. I said, well it is, it's a sermon. I was trying to channel like a Johnny Cash kind of father figure, saying, "Now listen, y'all." And that's another thing. The 9-11 opportunity was -- I don't mean that it was an opportunity, but as it turned out, the world was with us. I just traveled all over Europe and (now) they're not really with us. They consider us now to be part of the problem. And whether they're right or wrong I don't know.
And meanwhile I want to have a good time and play music. But those things were on my mind, and that's where the songs came from.
One thing I would like to say about this record, that it's a patriotic record, and I really believe that. It makes people chuckle at the show if I play a song like "Less Polite" and say it's patriotic, but to me that's part of the point of paying attention to being an American, is to use your freedoms, but to respect other people's freedoms as well. Anybody that disagrees with me -- cool. Rock right on.
P-R: As a songwriter, you don't have to worry about offending a large popular audience at this point. A song like "I Lie" or "Pride" doesn't necessarily hurt the commercial potential of a straighforward rocker like "Another Train." There must be a kind of freedom in that.
WK: I've seen this with Rodney Crowell, who I work with, where he's done work of a topical nature in the last few years, but he still gets songs cut, because when the artist thinks a song will be good for them, it doesn't matter. If I was like the head of the KKK or something, then it might be an issue because it was such a negative thing. There is a freedom that comes with having more of a cult kind of following thing. Because you can do whatever you want. And also, I'm the record company. So it is my decision.
One of the things that instills confidence is to go play shows and people want the record.
P-R: Probably another thing that instills confidence is getting tapped by Jimmy Buffett as a collaborator. And you're working again with him on his upcoming album?
WK: Yeah, we recorded back in like January or February, and we wrote some songs for it. Together, this time we actually wrote some together. ... I think it's coming out in October, that's the last I heard. We wrote some really cool songs for it.
P-R: Do you have any idea if they're on the album?
WK: I know two of them at least are, two of the ones we wrote. That's good. I'll survive another couple of years.
P-R: He's known for party songs, but on recent albums he's developed an appealing citizen-of-the-world perspective.
WK: Yeah, in fact, one of the songs we wrote was called, "Party at the End of the World." It's about both things, it's about the end of the world and it's about a party. And it's about Tierra Del Fuego, where he visited. He went and visited down at the bottom of Patagonia, Argentina, it's considered the end of the world before you get to Antarctica. And so it's about three things. It's about a place that's considered the world's end, the end of the world, and they're going to have one last party. We wrote a couple of other really cool songs too. We wrote a song called "Everybody's On the Phone."
P-R: His use of "Piece of Work" was a major endorsement of you as a songwriter. Presumably it has had other rewards as well.
WK: The Buffett thing was great, but it did not make me ... like, for instance, if I was practicing law or a dentist I would probably make that money every year rather than just get that once. And then you go back to getting your musician pay. And hopefully you get (a similar success) again.
P-R: As for your ongoing association with Rodney Crowell, has that brought benefits beyond a semi-regular paycheck?
WK: Definitely. A lot. I'm around, watching his work ethic, which is a great work ethic. Rodney loves writing. He's a real, real writer. He writes popular hits still and he also writes heavy-duty personal and what you might call political songs. Just an all-around artist and a good person to be around and be influenced by. He's got a talent that's God-given but he's very conscious of working hard and nurturing that, and of nurturing people around him.
I went to him and said, "I make records and I need to be playing..." I basically went and did guitar player blackmail, I was like, I'll definitely stick around more if you let me open some shows. I'm very flexible, I just want to get out in front of people. And he gave it a shot and it makes for a good show, and I think he recognized that too, that it was compatible and that it was on par. I don't know what's going to happen in the next year, because I'm getting more gigs on my own. I'm starting to get festival gigs and things like that.
P-R: So the Will Kimbrough name is starting to carry some weight out there?
WK: I've traveled around enough to where I ought to have a few fans. If I didn't, maybe I should quit, long as I've been doing this. I was joking the other day, man, I'm finally getting festival gigs. It's only taken me 22 years. The main thing is, you do it because this is what you really want to do, and if you are making a living at it you're really lucky.
Again this record is earnest to the point of -- whatever. It's very heartfelt. It's not me trying to change the world or thinking that I am, it's just commentary. I'm just having fun, and I'm getting a lot of opportunities to do what I wanted to do. It's hard work but it's fun, and right now I'm real happy to be home with my family.
