By Michelle Love
Photos by Lisa Cheek & Contributed
Kyle Kimbrell hopes his listeners feel something through his music. The Vestavia Hills native’s latest album “Easy Truths,” which came out this past April, is the product of the profound love he’s always felt for music and literature as well as his deep love for songwriting.
The 12-track album contains songs that are older works that he’s had in his back pocket for a while and others that are new tracks that tell stories of the people and places that have inspired him in life. The album was produced by Cornelius Chapel Records, a local music label that focuses on artists with more unique sounds and voices.
Kyle’s “Easy Truths” proved to be special enough for their attention. To his delight, it’s been well received from the public, receiving high accolades from critics and high-stream numbers on Spotify.
“New World Order,” the 11th song on the album, has more than 25,000 streams.
“It was kind of like getting your first poem published,” Kyle says. “This is the one album I’m actually proud of. The other ones, I’ve gotten better.”
His love of music goes back to his childhood. Growing up as the son of two medical professionals, Kyle says his love of music came from within as his parents didn’t place a lot of focus on the arts.
He picked up a guitar when he was 12; although, his story doesn’t have the prodigy ending one would expect. Kyle says he got frustrated, not being able to learn the instrument right away, but he picked it back up during his freshman year of high school.
With a combination of self-taught and professional lessons, Kyle learned to play guitar. He played in a band called Solomon Grundy in high school, with which he performed at various school events, and as he got older, he expanded to various, local venues around Birmingham.
Kyle released two EPs and one other album in the past. However, he highly encourages people to ignore his early works as he, in his words, “didn’t really know how to sing,” back when his first EP came out in 2016.
“The songwriting, I think, was good,” he says. “I was trying to be unique and find my own sound. This [album], I was able to take more time and focus on it and redo things if I wasn’t happy with it.”
He describes “Easy Truths” as undoubtedly his best work with a combination of genres such as folk and rock elements with an indie alternative vibe. He’s proud to place it under the Americana umbrella, which encompasses folk, rock, blues and country.
Kyle plays the guitar, harmonica and pedal steel, in addition to his singing. However, his real love has always been songwriting.
Over the years, he’s taken inspiration from lyricists such as Neil Young and Jason Isbell, taking note of how the lyrics of a song can create an emotional experience for listeners.
“It’s always been songwriting for me,” he says. “I’ve always loved books. My mom used to take us to Books-A-Million growing up, and it was my favorite thing in the world. At first, I wanted to be a guitar player and be like Jimi Hendrix, but as I got older, I realized how much I love reading and writing. So, I grew more into songwriting stuff.”
Kyle says the songwriting experience, for him, is different every time. Some days it starts with a melody on the guitar, but others begin with a simple line he’s written down.
“A lot of songs on this album are story songs, very character driven, so it’s different every time,” he says. “If I have a specific theme or topic or place I want to write about, that makes it a little easier. When it comes, you have to nab it when it’s there.”
His upcoming album features a song called “Paperback,” which is about his love of books and reading.
“I’m a big poetry and Southern gothic guy,” Kyle says. “I love a lot of Southern literature. I’m a huge book guy. It’s inspired a lot of my songs as well. I hope one day when I’m able to buy my own house, [I’ll] have a room just filled with books.”
Being under the Cornelius Chapel Records label is a dream-come-true for Kyle. It’s opened several doors of possibilities for him, including a tour in November with Will Stewart, another artist under the Cornelius Chapel Records label.
He’s also already working on a new album.
“It’s a label I’ve looked up to ever since I was a kid,” he says. “It gave me validation that I could be in the same ballfield as other artists I look up to. Like, ‘Wow, maybe I can do something right with this kind of stuff.’”
Kyle says he thinks a focus on songwriting abilities has skyrocketed due to the heightened popularity of the Americana genre.
“I think Americana specifically has boomed in the last 10 years,” he says. “People like Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell and Tyler Childers, I mean the list goes on and on. I think a lot more people are doing that type of music that focuses on songwriting styles. Jason Isbell has definitely been a huge inspiration for me over the years. When he got big, I really think that’s when the big boom really started.”
He hopes this album speaks to all types of people, whether emotionally or spiritually. He describes the album as a “very blue-collar album,” as he focuses a lot on writing about people who are just trying to get by day-to-day. The first song on “Easy Truths” is called “Interstate Livin’,” and it’s about a man who lives by an interstate, goes to work every day, comes home and reflects on how he’s unhappy with his life.
“Art is all subjective,” Kyle says. “It’s funny to me—like the songs that weren’t my particular favorite on my album, if you look at Spotify—they’re a lot of people’s favorite songs. It’s just real interesting to me that art can hit everyone differently.”
While many artists flock to social media or the internet to post their work, Kyle says he has a love/hate relationship with social media. While he feels it has the ability to highlight talented musicians who may not otherwise get recognition, it can also “oversaturate” the industry.
Kyle admires anyone who wants to get their work out there, and he notes that now, more than ever, people have unlimited resources to learn to play instruments. He credits both Archer Guitar School and the Birmingham School of Music in Vestavia Hills as great places for aspiring musicians.
While music is at the forefront of his career, Kyle works a day job, pulling in 40 or more hours a week. He spends as much of his free time as he can songwriting.
At the end of the day, he just wants to make music.
“If I can just keep making records, I’ll be happy,” he says. “If my music can make somebody feel something and it speaks to them and speaks to their heart, then I’ve done my job. I just like to make records.”
