Versatile Will Kimbrough Goes Solo for First Time in Five Years with Love Letter to the South ‘I Like It Down Here’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

Will Kimbrough’s five-year hiatus from a solo album with I Like It Down Here does not mean he hasn’t been busy. Few have been busier. This spring could see Kimbrough enjoying some of the fruits of his labors. He produced Shemekia Copeland’s outstanding America’s Child and co-wrote “Ain’t Got Time for Hate,” nominated for Album of the Year and Song of the Year at the upcoming Blues Music Awards. He’s already received a UK Americana Song of the Year award for Dean Owens’ “Southern Wind.” Kimbrough calls himself an “artist, musician, producer, writer.” His credits extend to Emmylou Harris’ backing band, The Red Dirt Boys, his partnerships with Tommy Womack in Daddy, and with Brigitte DeMeyer as well as stints with the Americana collective Willie Sugarcapps. He’s even found time for session work with the Blind Boys of Alabama. And, this is only scratching the surface. Kimbrough, a multi-instrumentalist, is an in-demand sideman on countless Americana albums.

With small breaks in his hectic schedule here and there, some of these tunes have been gestating for some time but Kimbrough, who is very socially conscious, not only pays tribute to his birthplace, the South, he sees what Patterson Hood and others have called its duality. Several of the ‘love letter” songs were penned prior to the 2016 election, which then muddied the picture. How could just good people be capable of such heinous acts as a lynching. Yes, Michael Donald’s lynching, the subject of “Alabama (for Michael Donald)” where Kimbrough is accompanied by Shemekia Copeland, occurred in 1981, but still very much reverberates today as does John Coltrane’s “Alabama,” written in the aftermath of the Birmingham church bombing. Kimbrough proves his feel for gutty atmospheric blues in the slide-driven, Brigitte DeMeyer infused “Buddha’s Blues.”

Thankfully, the rest of the record doesn’t bear its somber tone. Kimbrough’s view of the South is far-ranging, beyond even its duality. The title track embraces the redneck aspect of a southerner sleeping in, waking up to his first Bud Light in the early afternoon. There’s the sheer exuberance of the Gulf Coast in the gentle ballad “Salt Water & Sand” and the pop joy of the opening ode to fun with its rather tongue-in-cheek blues lyrics, “Hey Trouble.” Kimbrough’s versatility shines in the R&B of “It’s a Sin” (to kill a mockingbird), the album’s best track, written the night after the famous novelist, Harper Lee, passed. More up-tempo rock fuels “When I Get to Memphis” (not a cover) and “I’m Not Running Away” carries the kind of Petty type rock n’ roll he does with Daddy. He shows he can write powerful love songs too as in “Star” and reveal sincere compassion in “Anything Helps.”

Kimbrough can wield an axe with the best guitar slingers and can give any song whatever needs on a stringed instrument or keys but if you ask his peers about him, his most endearing quality might be his humility. He’s never one to show off even though his musical and vocal chops can stand aside any. When he’s a sideman, he is consistently in service to the song, an approach he embraces here on this spare effort where he’s joined only by his Red Dirt Boys, drummer Bryan Owings and bassist Chris Donohue in the core band. Guests include folks he often works with, most already mentioned. Sugarcane Jane, (Savana Lee Crawford and Anthony Crawford from Willie Sugarcapps) join on “I’m Not Running Away.” Lisa Oliver Gray harmonizes on four tunes. Jim Hoke adds sax and the horn arrangement for “It’s a Sin” and Dean Owens joins Kimbrough on vocals for “Hey Trouble” and “Anything Helps.”

Will Kimbrough may be not as thematic or cohesive as he is on some of his earlier work, but his scope has broadened considerably in the intervening five years and the South just has too many disparate parts. Nonetheless, this one has terrific moments and arguably, some of the best songs he’s ever written. These ten songs, each three or four minutes in length. are the essence of Will Kimbrough, songsmith.

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