A Conversation with Will Kimbrough  (continued)

PM: Producing is something you do more and more of. Is that something you see as more of a primary activity in years to come?

WK: I don't know. I'm kind of afraid of it because it's such hard work. I really try to get inside people's heads and try to give them what they want, and it's difficult work. And it does require a lot of tolerance and compassion. [laughs] So I'm trying to be choosy. I'm working with a woman named Bonnie Bishop who's from Austin. She's unbelievably talented singer, a real singer's singer.

PM: Yeah, I've heard about her. They say she's great.

WK: And she's a good songwriter, too. She's really kind of coming into her own as a songwriter, and figuring out her place. I can hear the places she comes from so distinctly and I also hear her own thing. I mean, she definitely knows that she can sing, and she goes for it. But she really has these vocal licks and muscles that I don't have, in her face and stuff. But it's interesting to do.

And East Nashville Skyline with Todd Snyder was the easy one, in a sense, musically, because he knew what with he wanted and he knew that I could help him get that. And we didn't really have to talk very much. He would just say, "Jerry Jeff meets Captain Beefheart," or whatever. "Oh, okay, yeah, I see what you mean." And for years I think he had had producers who would look at him sideways when he'd refer to his taste in--you know, the Dylan records nobody else likes, the Self Portrait, or Prine's later kind of lost years records, like 1980 records, and Jerry Jeff Walker's 1980 words, but those are records that he heard first on those guys in his life. And then he discovered their great stuff, but still the weird stuff sort of sticks with you.

PM: So who do you like for president?

WK: I voted early, because I'm going to go on the road. I should be back by the 5th. But I have to drive home from New York starting the 3rd in the afternoon, so I probably won't get home until the 4th sometime. So I went and voted early today, because the early voting started today. And I can tell you right now, it's fun to go on election day, but it's also fun to go early because you have the place to yourself.

PM: Wow.

WK: It's a nice calm voting. I voted for Obama. And I will support whoever the democratic nominee is.

PM: Right. Who do you got, yeah.

WK: But I like Obama. I think somebody needs to be a people magnet kind of a personality. That's my personal feeling. And I think he's the person that most has that to me. There are things about other candidates I really love. I mean, I love John Edwards. He's a fighter, and I really love him. And I love Hilary, really, still, despite all the--she's a fascinating person and I think really smart, and I think she would be a great president.

PM: Yeah, despite her unlikeability, I like her, yeah.

WK: Yeah. But she showed some--she had this sort of little popular streak in Iowa. I don't know, I mean, who cares whether it's--it's all calculated, a lot was calculated. But I voted for Obama.

PM: Are you much of a book reader?

WK: Yeah.

PM: Anything lately turned you on?

WK: Yeah. I read Dennis Johnson's Tree of Smoke. I think it won some big award, so I got on the waiting list at the library and got it. It's a Vietnam novel. But it has a lot about Buddhism as a source of strength that the Vietnamese people had.

PM: Wow.

WK: And that showed that the--and I'm sort of obviously from our conversation interested in Buddhism right now. And I finally read Geoff Emerick's Here There and Everywhere. [The Beatles engineer talking about his experiences with the group in the studio.]

PM: Boy, that was good.

WK: It's a great book.

PM: So lastly I'll ask you how you think 2008 looks, and how you might like it to differ from the year gone by?

WK: This may be too much reality, but I just had planned to go to Europe in March and tour, and we just decided not to do it because there's not enough dates.

PM: That's a bitch.

WK: But I'm looking at it like, well, I'm going to be home more. I have the opportunity to work on my record and work in town some more and write with people I've been to wanting to write with. So I'm going to muster up some of that. We're always trying to strike the balance, and this is yet another year of trying to strike the balance between work and family. And I think that's pretty universal, the balance that people are trying to strike... I went to a doctor today because I have a sinus infection. And I asked him how he was doing, and he goes, "Okay." You know, he kind of had this look in his eyes. And I said, "Well, what?" And he goes, "Well, I work too much. I don't spend enough time with my family." Of course, it's Americanitis.

PM: Right.

WK: So just continuously trying to strike that balance. I hope that I can actually be kind and tolerant and compassionate and maybe some of it will come back to me. And I want to make a record that I feel like is worth putting out. And I hope these shows coming up go great and I get some more shows, but not too many. I'm just a practical boring old Taurus, really.

[laughter]

WK: I just don't want to get in trouble. But I quit drinking about 10 months ago.

PM: Really?

WK: That's been a good thing for me.

PM: That's a big deal. What's that been like?

WK: It's been good. I mean, I just stopped one day, and I just kept stopping. It has been rather effortless. I haven't gone to any meetings or things like that. But I do have a good support group of people around me. When you've lived in Nashville for 20 years and done music then you certainly know people that have been through way, shape and form of substances and treatment and not treatment and getting religion and losing religion.

PM: Right, every permutation of drinking and not drinking.

WK: Right. So I'm doing that. And it's been good for me. Last winter I had a lot of time at home. I was writing and I recorded the EP and was working on a lot of the stuff that's going to be on my next record. And then I dove right back into it in the summer and the fall. And right before Thanksgiving I worked--I do this a lot. For some reason it just works out for me. I'll get these 25 days in a row of session work, and then touring, all just one after the other for 20 or 25 days. And then I had it again between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And it's just intense, hard to do. And I need to do it because then there are times when your European tour gets cancelled, and all of a sudden your February and March are just wide open. So that's the nature of the flexible schedule and the flexible paycheck, as you know.

PM: Indeed.

WK: Anyway, so I'm just enjoying it. It's not been a big deal. It hasn't been hard to be in the bars constantly, or being out on the road, people drinking or doing whatever. It's just their thing.

PM: Well, you sound pretty sane to me, bro.

WK: [laughs, then sighs] Don't judge a book by looking at the cover.

PM: [laughs] It's been a pleasure talking to, as it always is.

WK: You too, Frank.

PM: So hi to Jessica, and you take care of yourself.

WK: Okay, you too.