ND #78 Bookazine excerpt: The Webb family

NOTE: This article appears in No Depression #78, the third in a series of bookazines published by the University of Texas Press. Used with permission.


DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO
Jimmy Webb’s kids couldn’t help but follow him into music,
even as it became a more difficult road to travel.
Now they’re sharing the journey together.

by Peter Blackstock

Where have they gone, don't they ever walk
Don't they ever slow down, don't they ever walk
I used to think his eyes were melting
Gazing at the wind and weather
But now I know, he cried sometimes...
— Jimmy Webb, “Cottonwood Farm”

“It was almost a divine intercession, that this piece of music was really meant for this purpose,” muses Jimmy Webb, discussing the title track to Cottonwood Farm, the new album in which he collaborated with the Webb Brothers -- his sons Christiaan, Justin, James, and Cornelius. Though “Cottonwood Farm” was written more than 30 years ago, Jimmy never released it; the only recording in existence over the decades was a solo vocals-and-piano demo, which clocked in at a shade past ten minutes.

It’s an epic composition, even by the standards of the songwriter whose seven-minute opus “MacArthur Park” remains one of the longest songs ever to hit the upper reaches of the Billboard charts (via the late Richard Harris in 1968, and again ten years later with Donna Summer’s disco remake). It’s also, quite possibly, the best thing he ever wrote -- even acknowledging that this is the guy responsible for “Wichita Lineman” and “Galveston” and “Highwayman” (among literally hundreds of other songs covered by an impossible range of artists).

One of his foremost peers thought so, at least. “Paul Simon once told me, ‘This is the best piece of music you’ve ever written,’” Jimmy relates. “And I thought, well, yeah, it probably would be, because, you know, I would write the best piece of music I’ve ever written, and then I wouldn’t record it for 30 years. That’s what I would do.”

He chuckles at the folly of that reality, then turns more philosophical. “Even though I didn’t know it at the time, this album is the reason that I wrote this piece of music. Because it was really the glue that brought our family back together again, after a pretty nasty divorce, and some rough times as a family. It’s been a real healer for us.”

Cottonwood Farm, due out September 21 on Proper U.K. in conjunction with a November tour of the United Kingdom, is indeed a full-on family affair. It teams Jimmy not only with his offspring -- who, as the Webb Brothers, made a fair name for themselves in recent years with a few indie-leaning pop albums -- but also with his father, who contributes vocals to “Cottonwood Farm” and takes a solo turn on the mid-2oth-century standard “Red Sails In The Sunset,” a song that looms large in Jimmy’s memories of his childhood. “I can remember my father singing ‘Red Sails In The Sunset’ to me,” he says, “literally sitting on his knee, with him and his guitar, watching his fingers.”

The Webb family, from left t0 right: Christiaan, James, Jimmy, Cornelius, Justin, Robert, and Charlie. (At far right on the drums is Cal Campbell, son of Glen.) Photo by Jessica Daschner.


Jimmy gives considerable credit to his parents, Robert and Sylvia Webb, for fostering his musical development during his childhood years in the 1950s in the small Oklahoma town of Elk City. “I grew up in this incredibly musical family,” he says. “My father played guitar; my mother played accordion. He was a southern Baptist minister; music was a weekly affair, like it was for J.S. Bach, who wrote cantatas nonstop. And we learned at a young age to carry a tune. We learned to sing harmonies, to get up in front of a group of people. When you think about it, it’s almost like a laboratory for creating performers. We learned to stand up in front of the whole church and sing, and make mistakes, and keep going.

“It was my mother’s dream that I would be the pianist for the church by age 12, and I was able to do that, due to her unfailing sense of discipline. When I did not have much discipline, she had a lot. She’d put the egg timer on top of the piano and set it for 30 minutes, and say, ‘OK, when the bell rings, you can go outside.’”

His father and mother had performed for awhile, along with an aunt and uncle of Jimmy’s, in a group called the Buffalo Quartet. “They went around and played local gigs in that area of southwestern Oklahoma,” Jimmy says, recalling that they played songs such as Rex Griffin’s “Won’t You Ride In My Little Red Wagon” and Woody Guthrie’s “Oklahoma Hills.” “The piece de resistance was ‘Old Shep,’” Jimmy laughs about one of the chestnuts in his father’s repertoire. “He would do ‘Old Shep,’ and all the women would cry, and all the kids would cry. I can remember people saying, ‘Robert, do “Old Shep,” do “Old Shep!”’ And I can remember Mom saying, ‘Robert, if you do “Old Shep,” I’m leaving!’”

His parents’ musical endeavors and encouragement provided the foundation, but Jimmy built on it when he began doing something they hadn’t done: writing original songs. “It started during the offertory at the southern Baptist church, when they would pass the plate along the aisle, and I had to think of a way to fill twenty minutes or so with something approximating an interesting musical presentation,” he says. “I would begin to do variations and different chord changes, and customize the hymns that were available into some kind of musical program. That was the germination of the improvisational skills that really are the primary tools of the songwriter.”

Webb’s development from that point is relatively well-chronicled. Not long after his mother’s death in the early 1960s, he decided to try to make it as a songwriter. He headed for Los Angeles and hooked up with folks such as Johnny Rivers who helped him get his songs in front of hitmaking singers and performers. By the end of the decade, he’d written chart-toppers and received multiple Grammys -- heady stuff for a guy who was barely into his 20s.

Webb took a different approach in the 1970s, seeking to establish himself as a performer and recording artist as well as a writer. Though the five solo albums he released during the decade weren’t big sellers, today they stand as artistic landmarks of an era which produced a handful of genius-level songwriters recording for labels such as Reprise and Elektra and Asylum. “Guys like Mo Ostin at Warner Bros., Lenny Waronker, people like that, almost ran a laboratory over there for strange musical types, like Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman, Leon Russell,” Webb recalls. “It was kind of a freaky bunch of people sitting around, waiting for their turn to go in and talk to the bossman.”

Webb’s steady recording output (he released four albums between 1970 and 1974) began to slow in the mid-1970s, in part because he’d begun to raise his own family. His 1977 album El Mirage included the song “Christiaan No,” named for his first son; around the time that album was made, Jimmy’s second son, Justin, was born. Three more boys followed over the next decade or so -- James, Cornelius, and Charles -- and then finally a girl, Camila, who just finished high school this past spring. All but Charles appear on the new Cottonwood Farm album.

* * *

Inevitably, it seems, the Webb children have been swept into the slipstream of music, if by varying degrees and measures. It started with the oldest two. “Christiaan and I have lived totally parallel lives,” Justin says. “We had bunk beds, and then we shared an apartment in college, shared flophouses and rehearsal spaces in Chicago -- you know, everywhere, we just were always together, until a couple years ago.” (Justin, who got married this past spring, lives in Southern California, as do brothers James and Cornelius; Christiaan has lately been back and forth between California and Missouri, where his fiancee’s family is from.)

It was Christiaan who took to music first. “Christiaan, from the time he was 8 or 9 years old, he was like, ‘I’m gonna be a star,’” Justin says. “He had bands, he had music videos that he shot on my dad’s camcorder in the backyard. He’s always been a real dreamer.”

For his part, Christiaan remembers “trying to write songs, totally intrigued by watching my dad, the way he played piano and the way he wrote. I got kind of into playing piano, and he was very cool about encouraging me, and buying me new synthesizers and stuff.”

Justin was a different story. “We were very close as kids, but he was also very private about his music,” Christiaan explains. “He’d play his guitar in the attic and no one knew what he was doing up there....We didn’t start playing together until college. He had a little tape of some songs he was writing, and I realized that this is the guy I wanted to write songs with. It was kind of a revelation, because I’d been making music without him for so many years, and here he was, quietly writing these songs and playing guitar.”

Justin offers further insight. “I was kind of like an Alex P. Keaton kid,” he says. “I was really conservative -- not like (politically) conservative, but just conservative in my decision-making; very pragmatic, and very practical. I was into songwriting, but I didn’t see it as a practical long-term career....It really took Christiaan and his spirit of risk-taking and optimism to drag me out of my solitary closet songwriting place, and to say, ‘You’re good, and you can do this, and we can do this together, in fact.’ He’s really the one that took me out of my shell, because I wouldn’t have taken those kind of risks.”

Their father was supportive but not pushy. “I didn’t take an active role” in steering them toward music, Jimmy says. “But they had a propensity for it, and they grew up around it, and they always thought it was pretty neat....They also had kind of on-site training. They went to gigs, they had pianos and instruments laying around the house, they had recording equipment they could use. There was an inexorable kind of force that pulled them in.

“And I watched it happen with mixed emotions, because I thought, oh God, this is going to be rough on them. There’s going to be a lot of ‘up’ moments, and those are going to be great, and then there’s going to be some ‘down’ moments. And I’m going to be there for all that -- because I’m the dad.”

Christiaan and Justin’s musical partnership began during their brief tenure at Boston University, where Christiaan had a band Liquid Courage that eventually evolved into a new outfit called Mercybeat which included Justin. At some point they met street-singing indie-pop sensation Mary Lou Lord, who recruited the brothers as backing musicans for an opening-slot gig with Guided By Voices. Christiaan recalls the experience as formative in redirecting their outlook on music.

“She was the one that turned us on to that band, which became such an influence on the Webb Brothers and really made us kind of redefine ourselves as ‘indie’ musicians,” Christiaan says. “Whatever that meant, we wanted to be that -- as far as breaking out of our childhood influences, and, whatever my dad had exposed us to, and then whatever we saw on MTV....Maybe it was growing up around so many famous people and stuff; it makes you a little self-conscious about going into the music business. Meeting those people made me feel so much more at ease, and made me feel like I could just concentrate on my craft.”

Shortly thereafter, the brothers moved to Chicago, where they eventually gave into the obvious notion of billing themselves as the Webb Brothers. It wasn’t that they had been shying away from associating themselves with their father’s name; well, not entirely, anyway. “We didn’t wanna be riding coattails,” Justin allows; “we were maybe a little too aware of that at the time. But also, we were kind of transforming from bands to bands. Members would come and members would go, and basically, by the time we started calling ourselves the Webb Brothers, we didn’t have a band anymore. You know, our band was sick of following us from dirty club to dirty club and not making any money. It had basically dissolved.”

Looking back, Jimmy expresses some regrets about their departure from school, but he acknowledges the circumstances that played into it. “Chris and Justin took that plunge pretty early and decided, well, screw college, we’re goin’ for it....All of a sudden they just decided, well, this is what they were gonna do. There was some trouble at home, there was a divorce brewing, and, I think they thought, ‘We’ll do it. Because Dad did it, we can do it.’

“And, you know, that has always kind of bothered me, because the paradigm of my success was, I run away from home when I’m 17, basically, and I go to Hollywood, and I have a couple of rough years, but at the end of that, I get Grammy Awards. That’s disturbing to me, because, if they thought that was going to happen to them, the odds of that happening are astronomical.”

“I think he was concerned,” Christiaan acknowledges, “and looking back, rightly so.” Still, the brothers didn’t necessarily believe they would, or even could, follow in their father’s footsteps. “The songwriter as an occupation that it was in the 1960s didn’t exist when we we came out,” Justin observes. “So you couldn’t really follow in his footsteps, for a number of reasons. It was impossible to re-create what he did. And so, we just did whatever seemed cool to us at the time musically.”

And then a funny thing happened: The Webb Brothers’ career began to take off. With the help of their childhood pal Julian Coryell -- the son of noted jazz guitarist Larry Coryell, who was good friends with Jimmy -- they made a record in 1998 called Beyond The Biosphere that earned them a deal with the U.K. division of Warner Bros. A second album, Maroon (which was released in the U.S. as well as overseas), received critical accolades and led to tourdates with some big-name acts in the U.K. A third, self-titled album, on an independent label, followed in 2003 before things essentially stalled.

“There has to be this certain kind of manic belief that you could do this, or you would never embark on this course of action, because it’s completely insane,” Jimmy reflects. “So I know that my children had that same manic belief that it could happen. They almost made it happen in their young years,” Jimmy marvels in retrospect. “They came very close, in a very antipathetic record business — a business that was a lot rougher and a lot more difficult than the one I grew up in. I mean, they had to sell a certain number of records to stay on the label, and if they missed that number, they were off the label. I was never up against that; I made record after record after record that didn’t sell.”

In the end, Christiaan figures his dad felt “a certain amount of pride in what we did. We could actually support ourselves with music for years, and travel the world, and make albums and stuff....And to tell you the truth, working on this album with him now, I think, oh God, I’m so glad we had all that experience — because I actually feel like that experience was almost necessary to feel comfortable with this.”

From left: James, Christiaan, and Justin Webb. Photo by Jim Newberry.


Midway through the Webb Brothers’ run -- after they’d recorded Maroon, but before they began touring behind it -- Christiaan and Justin brought James into the fold. James was just short of earning a degree in music at Bard College when he left to join the band, a decision that remains a sore point for Jimmy but with which James seems to be at peace. “He’s a good enough pop to let me make my own decisions, my own mistakes,” James says. “Whether or not that was a mistake, I don’t know. I can still knock out a string quartet and a woodwind section faster than anybody else.”

One point James underscores is that he was inspired by both his father and his brothers. “My dad was one thing -- and he was a great, successful songwriter -- but my brothers, I really looked up to them too. And I saw that they had a degree of success, and I figured I’d just start walking down that road and something would happen for me, eventually.”

Musically, James is perhaps more like his father than any of his siblings. “My thing was, I wanted to get out there and do Van Dyke Parks-style arrangements,” he says. “I wanted to really stand out. It wasn’t necessarily important for me to have a conventional band in any way. I knew that I wanted to be able to create different musical environments with arrangements.”

That’s largely what led him to Bard, where he was in “basically a conservatory program,” he says. “I’d taken three years of composition, three years of musical theory, three years of vocal repertory. I was sort of in boot camp for music. I was priming myself up to be prepared; I wanted to be really good at arranging strings and woodwinds and horns.”

And one other thing: singing. “The three years of vocal repertory really taught me the nuts and bolts,” he says. “I learned to sing like a classical singer; I got a lot of powerful exercises and understanding of the mechanics of the human voice. And it helped me enormously.”

One of his best vocal lessons, long before conservatory classes, came from attending Jimmy’s performances over the years. “I’ve watched him perform all my life -- he’s a big influence on how I approach the whole thing, absolutely,” James says. There’s a similarity in the way the two men throw caution to the wind in their vocal delivery, and James realizes the importance of drawing upon such emotionalism for the collaboration with his dad.

“I feel like I’ve gotta go crazy on this one,” he says. “When I get out there, I’ve got a lot to sing for. I’ve got everybody in my family to sing for; I’ve got my whole life. If I want to be a musician, I’ve gotta sing my guts out, so that it’s as good as it can be. And then, if it doesn’t happen, I can look back and say, well, it wasn’t because you were a subdued performer!” He laughs. “So when we get onstage, I’m not nervous, but it’s high stakes. It’s very high stakes for me.”

Unlike his three older brothers, Cornelius Webb actually did finish college, earning a degree from the Conservatory of Music at SUNY-Purchase, a state school just north of New York City. Cornelius (the family calls him Cory) is playing bass in the family band; he says he’s also “a pretty solid drummer,” though on Cottonwood Farm the drum seat was filled by another old son-of-a-family-friend, Cal Campbell (whose dad Glen has recorded more Jimmy Webb songs than any other artist).

Cornelius’ band experience is more limited, though he did do some Webb Brothers gigs in the latter days of their run. The chance to play with both his brothers and his father clearly is a thrill for him, if also a bit daunting. “He’s my dad, but he’s also one of the greatest songwriters ever, so it’s a privilege to be able to play with him and have that opportunity,” Cornelius says.

“It’s got me reading again; some of Dad’s stuff is so complicated that I just had to have it on notes in front of me to figure it out. When we go out to England, we’re going to try to do ‘MacArthur Park’ -- which I really want to do, because I figure it would just be so much fun live, if you actually got it off and the whole band was cookin’. But all those transitions -- I think the song has, like, 45 chords in it. But that’s kind of the fun part of playing with my dad, is that he brings that element into it -- that serious modal-jazz and classical element, and the virtuosity of his instrument. I’m a solid bass player, and my brothers are good songwriters, but none of us are virtuosos on our respective instruments in the way that my dad is. It’s definitely been a challenge playing with him.”

It’s likely also been somewhat of a challenge for Jimmy, who rarely has played anything other than solo piano gigs in the past couple of decades. “For my dad, it’s a whole new thing to be playing with a band, which is something that he hasn’t done for a really long time,” Cornelius says. “And he’s getting a big kick out of that. Because it really changes things. Like, he can’t stand to play things the same way twice, so you always really have to be paying close attention to him, and watching him when he’s playing. Because he’ll just change things on the fly. He’ll drag out a bar an extra measure or two, or slow it down, just with the emotion he’s feeling at that moment. Little things like that can make a big difference.

“He kind of considers himself to be a transcendentalist, and he really has an artistic and spiritual connection with his music. You can see it when he’s playing -- he’s closing his eyes, and it’s about the music and the songs, and he really feels it. That’s something that I’m also taking from this project, and playing with him -- he’s really investing so much emotionally into the performance, and the expression of it.”

Jimmy Webb at the Blue Door in Oklahoma City, May 2005. Photo by Greg Johnson.


One of the bigger challenges in making a “Jimmy Webb & the Webb Brothers” album was choosing the material to be included. It was settled early on that the record would consist of approximately half Jimmy Webb songs and half Webb Brothers songs (the latter batch being a mix of tunes from Justin, Christiaan and James). In addition to “Cottonwood Farm,” a couple others from Jimmy’s catalogue surfaced as clear choices. “Highwayman,” a smash for the country supergroup of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, was ideal for divvying up the four verses between Jimmy, James, Justin and Christiaan. And “If These Walls Could Speak” (covered over the years by Amy Grant, Nanci Griffith, Shawn Colvin and others) struck a chord because of its personal relevance to the family.

There was a conscious effort to steer away from the big hits; though they’ll play some of those songs live, on the album they gravitated toward lesser-heard numbers from the Webb songbook, including “Where The Universes Are” and the previously unreleased “Snow-Covered Christmas.” Part of the plan, says Justin, was, “How do we expose the world to the best Jimmy Webb songs that aren't really common knowledge?”

Though the song-selection process was ultimately “democratic” -- “we all voted,” says James, “and whichever songs got the most votes went on” -- it was Justin who helmed the project. “Justin is a natural-born administrator,” Jimmy says. “He grabs the reins of power instinctively and begins to formulate a plan.” He’s also become quite accomplished in production, Cornelius contends: “He’s got a lot of attention to detail in what he does. I mean, he’s a great songwriter, but he’s become a world-class editor as well in the last couple years.”

Producing the album is not something Justin has taken lightly. “It’s a lot of responsibility,” he says. “The music is so good, and you want to try and make, you know, if not the definitive version, a great version....And with ‘Cottonwood Farm,’ I really want to try and make the definitive version. Just to get my grandpa, and his soulful, honest voice on it, while he’s still around, is just priceless.”

* * *

The character at the center of “Cottonwood Farm” stretches back another generation beyond the Webb Brothers’ grandfather. The song is about Jimmy’s grandfather (on his mother’s side), who passed away in the mid-1970s. It’s a remembrance of simpler days in rural Oklahoma, a time of church-going and cotton-growing, of milking cows and fishing holes, of Sunday-morning radio programs and picture shows in town, of forts and caves and Indians and monsters.

When Jimmy wrote it in the early ’70s, his grandfather was still alive. “Yeah, I played it for him several times,” he says. “I remember one time in particular; he had retired from the farm and was living up on the river, and had a pretty little place in the dunes there, and still had a garden out behind his house. He could never stop growing things. But, he sat in a chair, and there was this old upright piano nearby, and I played it -- ‘Raised a family, broke his back, always drove a Pontiac’ -- and the tears just began to roll down his face. It was a great moment, but in many ways it was a very tough moment. It was tough for both of us.”

The final lines of the song bid an aching farewell to those old ways:

They cut down the trees and they plowed down the cotton
They dammed up the river and they broke its arm
Old times there are not forgotten
Just lost in dreams...

What his grandfather lost in the wake of those changes -- what he could no longer pass on to his children and grandchildren -- is perhaps, in some ways, analogous to what Jimmy is losing in his own day and age. In terms of self-sustenance, the profession of music is quickly becoming a fallow relic, its bounty cut and plowed, its conduits dammed and broken. And yet the dreams...the art, the craft, the creative spark that sets it all alight...are not forgotten. Sometimes the music must be its own reward.

“Agnes DeMille said, ‘There is no satisfaction, only a divine dissatisfaction,’” Jimmy Webb concludes. “Which is a quote that I guess I should have stuck on my icebox. That’s what it is: It’s a divine dissatisfaction. It is connected to a higher source. And we just have to, in a way, submit ourselves to the ebb and flow of fate, as artists.”

ND Bookazine co-editor Peter Blackstock first saw the Webb Brothers perform when they opened a show for their father at the Double Door in Chicago on October 23, 1998.

Q: What do all of these LPs have in common? A: Each of them (along with hundreds of others) contains at least one song written by Jimmy Webb. Photo by Peter Blackstock.