Will Kimbrough has been a fixture on the Southeastern music scene for more than 30 years, but he’s hardly resting on his laurels. The Mobile native — and onetime frontman of college-town kings Will & The Bushmen — resides in Nashville these days, and his calendar stays full.
In addition to his solo career as a singer-songwriter, Kimbrough has served as a high-profile sideman for Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris while having his songs recorded by Jimmy Buffett, Little Feat and Todd Snider, among others. As if he isn’t busy enough, Kimbrough has recently teamed with some stalwart musicians to form the project Willie Sugarcapps.
On Saturday, Feb. 14, Kimbrough will perform in Birmingham in a show presented by the Small Stages concert series. Recently, we caught up with Kimbrough by phone from his Nashville home.
Weld: Will, thanks for your time. Is there a simple way to describe the variety and hectic schedule that make up your career?
Will Kimbrough: I’m basically a freelance worker that does music. I seek out certain things and I get offered certain things out of the blue. Usually, you don’t get a lot of time to decide. People decide who they’re going to book or who they’re going to hire for a session and you have about a day to decide. Probably like any freelancer, you say yes to everything and sort it all out as best you can.
Weld: What is your focus in the coming weeks and months?
WK: Hopefully, we will get a Willie Sugarcapps record out this year. I’m putting out a live CD & DVD — it’s going to be 60 to 70 minutes of music. It doesn’t go into Bushmen territory, but it covers everything I’ve been doing in this century.
Weld: We are enjoying your latest solo release, Sideshow Love. How did the album take shape?
WK: I had a couple of songs that were new and they seemed to be telling me that I ought to make a record in that direction. A few older songs peaked their heads up in my memory – they were songs that I had recorded before and loved, but they never fit in with a collection in my mind. A couple of those songs go back pretty far. Sometimes you play an old song for somebody that never heard it and they’re kind of knocked out by it. I don’t base everything on somebody else’s opinion, but it helps to have someone chime in sometimes.
Weld: Your project Willie Sugarcapps [Kimbrough, Grayson Capps, Corky Hughes, Anthony Crawford and Savana Lee] is really starting to take flight. When you write songs these days, do you ask yourself, “Is this a Will Kimbrough song or a Willie Sugarcapps song?”
WK: I think about it a lot and send songs to the other folks in Willie Sugarcapps. If I get a big response, I’ll ask them to learn it and we’ll play it at the next show. We have a lot of songs now — 25 or 26 songs — and it’s a long show if we do them all. I have a sense of what’s good for both.
For more information about the Small Stages concert, visit www.smallstages.com or email info@smallstages.com. Showtime is 7:30 p.m.