Continued from Part One:
The next step is to dig deeper, personally and creatively. "The middle act in the songwriter's life is to begin to evoke more subtlety from the language and from the musical pallets in order to create songs," Jimmy said, "and perhaps, dare I say, even create a reputation that precedes one, so that when a producer sees a CD with your name on it, he goes, 'well there may not be seven hits on this CD, but this could be a helluva ride, and I'm going to listen, because this person writes some interesting shit.' "
Jimmy said he had to wait until that "second act" of his life to really learn what it means to craft "sensitive, personal statements that evoke multilayered emotions and images.
"I like to think that I learned that from Joni Mitchell," he said. "I spent a lot of time with her. I spent a lot of time studying her music, wanting to be like her, wanting to be able to write the way she wrote. Sometimes I think I may have succeeded to some small degree."
Jimmy thinks that, unfortunately, we are kind of in the drought today as far as that kind of depth is concerned. But he's not, he says, someone who's prune-faced and acerbic about the music scene today; there are songs that he does like. In fact, his three older sons have a band called the Webb Brothers, who are signed to BMG and recording for Warner UK. No, their songs are not Jimmy Webb songs. In fact, one of their songs is entitled "Are You Happy Now," and the entire song consists of that lyric only. "I understand what they're doing," Jimmy says. "I understand that there's a minimalism at work. There's a different approach. There's an anti-constructionism at work in today's music, and I think that it's certainly valid -- as valid as any of the Postimpressionist or Neo-modernist movements that took place in painting. But personally, I hate to see the baby go out with the bathwater. I hate to see craftsmanship die in this particular field where it was practiced with such great expertise..."
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