Will Kimbrough is releasing this song “When This is All Over” on Valentine’s Day. The song is a harbinger of his forthcoming album I Don’t Want to Start a War, due to be released in September.
Kimbrough calls this his “valentine to the world” and has dedicated it to John Prine and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The song was co-written with Rich McCulley over FaceTime and recorded at Blackbird Studio in 2021 with John McBride. It was mixed by Dylan Alldredge in East Nashville and mastered by Jim Demain in Nashville. The musicians are Chris Donohue on bass, Bryan Owings on drums, and Will Kimbrough on everything else.
“It’s high time to forgive, but never to forget,” pretty much sums up a lot of folks’ perspectives right now. Kimbrough takes a stroll through the country with this one, perfectly timed for the whole world.
I wrote ‘When This is All Over’ with Rich McCulley over FaceTime. He had just moved to El Paso from LA in the middle of 2020, to be closer to his young son. Rich’s good attitude blew me away. Every time we wrote, I would start by simply asking him how he was doing. One day, he shrugged and said, ‘When this is all over…’ and proceeded to tell me all the things he was going to do when he could get out of the house. I wrote it all down. We got to work. It didn’t take long. We were bursting at the seams with all the the people, places and things we missed. Now, here it is a couple of years later and we’re still in this…new world? Either way, this song helps me through. I played it every Saturday during lockdown on my porch, for socially distanced neighbors and folks tuning in online. It seemed like it made them feel better, too. I played this song at a private party on New Year’s Eve and it brought a young woman to tears. I asked her about it later. She said it just hit home and the tears came. It took a little time, but now the song is here for everyone–it’s short, sweet, to the point. It’s a Valentine for everyone on Earth. — Will Kimbrough
Enjoy our earlier interview of Will Kimbrough here: Interview: Will Kimbrough on “I Like It Down Here,” Alabama History and & To Kill A Mockingbird
Keep up with the goings-on with Will, here: https://www.willkimbrough.com