Review: Will Kimbrough- For the Life of Me
We live in a time of near unprecedented division; political, racial, social, and economic. Many of us even spent a year physically divided from many of our loved ones due to a global pandemic. Division of all kinds is a theme on Will Kimbrough's new album For the Life of Me.
The album's highlight is the mid-tempo ramble “I Don't Want to Start a War.” It's the tale of an '80s Deadhead who fast-forwards to 2021 and finds himself a part of the insurrectionist mob at the Capitol. That may seem like a far jump for one man, but Kimbrough deftly connects the two extremes via a feeling of community. The same feel of community the song's '80s teen felt down on Shakedown Street is the one a more cynical and jaded 50-year-old gets in a MAGA crowd. “Tie-dyed peace sign / flying by a pillared mansion white /Then you swapped that rag / for a MAGA flag in the thick-aired Selma night,” Kimbrough recites as his song's subject falls deeper into his new community. “He says love fell out of style,” Kimbrough laments.
“The Other Side” is another song about political divisions. A jangle-pop guitar anthem that reminds me a bit of Kimbrough's '80s band Will and the Bushmen, it's a call for peace in a time when no one seems much interested in it. “Everything ain't black and white / There's a hundred million shades of grey,” Kimbrough notes, before ripping into a guitar solo that will remind you why he's been one of Nashville's most in-demand session guitarists for decades and has been one of Emmylou Harris' Red Dirt Boys for years.
The album's most searing track is “Clotilda's on Fire.” Originally written for Shemekia Copeland (whose own version is excellent) for the Kimbrough-produced Uncivil War. It's the story of The Clotilda, widely considered to be the last slave ship to land on American shores, in Kimbrough's home of Mobile, AL. The burned wreckage of The Clotilda was recently found and sparked much discussion in and about the community of Africatown that rose from the survivors of The Clotilda. It's a tale of the ultimate division and resilience in the face of that division.
If you're willing to step back from the divide and engage in discourse with someone on the opposite side of the political/social/wealth/racial aisle than you, you're Will Kimbrough's kind of person. Throughout For the Life of Me (especially the album's title track), he pleas for understanding, civility, and a place at the table for everyone. As he says in his John Lewis ode “Rivers of Roses,” “we've got a long way to go / but we've come a long way too.”