Nashville, TE (Top40 Charts/ Daphne Records) - In the music business, the type of person who can sing, write songs, play an instrument or more than one instrument, and perhaps engineer and produce music in a recording studio is considered gifted.
When such a person is also an internationally touring performer, bandleader and Grammy nominee, you might call them a musical "Renaissance man." In Nashville, that person is Will Kimbrough. Kimbrough's upcoming full-length studio album, Wings (Daphne Records - Feb 23, 2010), is his fifth solo offering, and delves into subject matter that most professional musicians deal with at one point or another-the conflict between family and career, love and work, parents and children. Kimbrough easily related to the theme and realized its universal condition with listeners and their lives.
"It's about having a home, leaving the old home, finding meaning in little things, giving thanks, wondering, sinning, being forgiven, keeping an open mind, loving, living in the moment," says Kimbrough. "Or it's at least thinking about those things."
Musically, Wings displays the same diversity that Kimbrough does as a musician and as a student of music-based in folk, rock and soul, with touches of atmospheric guitar, cello, saxophone, trumpet, banjo, and Hammond organ. It also features the vocals of some of his favorite singers, including Sarah Siskind, Julie Lee, Jonell Mosser, and other talented friends. The backbone of the album features a rhythm section of drummer Paul Griffith and bassist Tim Marks.
Wings reaffirms Kimbrough as one of Nashville's most respected songwriters, featuring co-writes with Jimmy Buffett and Todd Snider, among others. Buffett wrote the title track with Kimbrough, and recorded a version of "Wings" on his forthcoming album, Buffet Hotel (due out December 8).
Kimbrough is pleased with the way the ten songs on Wings create a theme, though he did not set out to do it that way. Rather, he wanted this set of material to tell stories and set a mood.
"I wanted it to be uplifting without being simple minded," he says. "Several of these songs: 'Three Angels', 'Wings,' 'Big Big Love'-celebrate life's complications. Others like 'Love to Spare,' 'Let Me Be Your Frame,' 'A Couple Hundred Miracles'-are secular hymns. Wings is intended to be listened to as a whole album." And as a whole, Wings excels as enlightening, engaging, uplifting and universally accessible - solidifying Will Kimbrough's place as one of music's modern-day Renaissance men.
