New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Balancing successful dual professions as a top musculoskeletal radiologist in Tulsa with his increasingly impactful songwriter and recording artist career in Nashville,
James Robert Webb knows a little something about the need to leave the stress of Monday thru Friday behind and cut loose. In that spirit, the multi-talented performer-and MusicRow Magazine's 2022 Country Breakout Awards' Independent Artist of the Year-primes everyone for some Friday and Saturday night fun with his latest single, the raucous, high energy "Gentlemen Start Your Weekends," set to drop August 11th, 2023.
Written with longtime collaborator and
Music City songwriting community staple Alex Dooley, whose songs have been recorded by, among others,
Easton Corbin and
Craig Campbell, "Gentlemen Start Your Weekends" certifies Webb - a longtime fixture on Billboard's Country Indicator Chart and
Texas Regional
Radio Report - as a Southern rock and
Heartland rock and roller.
The singer sets our anticipation high from the get-go on "Gentlemen…": "You can feel it in the air, man, this work week's all but done/There's excitement everywhere." His vibrant, down-home lyrical imagery includes a whistle blowing, white flag comin' off pit row, new boots on, putting dents in "that payday money,' a little juke joint and a hometown honey. His hook is pure infectious combustion: "Gentlemen, start your weekends/I've got that finally Friday feeling that I've all been needin'/So fire those engines up, let's have a little fun. . .it's what we're livin' for."
Tapping into America's love for NASCAR and a countrified, Fast and Furious franchise aesthetic, "Gentlemen…" promises to be another in a long string of hits for Webb these past few years. To date, the singer - who released his debut album
Pictures in 2016 - has scored nine Top 40 hits on
Music Row's Country Breakout chart, five consecutive Top 40 appearances on Billboard's Country Indicator chart and four Top 20 hits on the influential
Texas Regional
Radio Report, including the #1's "Stealing Home" and "Lovesick Drifting Cowboy."
In addition, the video for Webb's 2021 single "Okfuskee Whiskey," a semi-biographical tune about a moonshiner great grandfather which reached #32 on Billboard's Country Indicator chart and #14 on MusicRow Magazine's Country Breakout chart, has 1.2M+ views on YouTube. Its multi-platform success has inspired a partnership between Webb and Tulsa's Red Fork Distillery to create a new, regionally distributed whiskey with that name.
"I started as a new traditionalist influenced by 90's country acts like
Brooks & Dunn and Toby Keith. To me, those songs were a fusion of American roots genres from country to rock. These days I'm tapping into my rock and roll side" says Webb, who released his self-titled fourth album in 2020 and earlier in 2023 showcased his heartfelt side with a beautiful new version of "Always on My Mind."
"Gentlemen Start Your Weekends' was written on the spot one Friday afternoon in Nashville. According to Webb, "I had just finished my last writing session of the day and ran into Alex Dooley, who had just wrapped up his own. The minute he said that phrase, I knew it had the makings of a great song. We wrote it right then and there! I had this uptempo track which was influenced by songs that are fun to play on guitar like the Stones' 'Brown Sugar.' We took this hook in the spirit of Hank Williams Jr.'s 'All My Rowdy
Friends Are Comin' Over Tonight' and an update on the
Brooks & Dunn vibe with a little
Motley Crue and
Poison thrown in. Many people I write with want to do ballads, but I'd rather write up-tempo stuff.
"In crafting the lyrical narrative, I try to remove myself from the perspective of being a doctor or songwriter. In this song, I wrote from the point of view of my teenage and college years-as a kid looking forward to the weekend when weekends were an even bigger, more exciting deal," he adds. "As we get older and assume family and other responsibilities, our weekends often get consumed with soccer games and dance recitals. But when you're young, it's all about going out, having fun, and living life. Peeling out of the high school parking lot, hanging out with our buddies or going on that date with that special girl. Weekends kind of get lost in the adult shuffle, and there just aren't enough songs about them, so I wanted to put this out there to remind people of a time in life that was more carefree."
