Jimmy Webb Delivers Hit Songs on Fall and Winter Tour
Published
For Immediate Release
Contact: Elaine Schock or Meredith Louie
Shock Ink 818-932-0001
Jimmy Webb Delivers Hit Songs on Tour,
Including “MacArthur Park” from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,
With Personal Stories in “An Evening with Jimmy Webb”
“Jimmy Webb has mastered
the convergence of poetry and music.”
— Kansas City Star
Tickets on Sale Now
For Webb’s Fall & Winter Tour Dates
(photographer: Sasa Tkalcan/Helsinki Festival)
NEW YORK — Billy Joel called Jimmy Webb “an American icon.” Bob Dylan dubbed “Wichita Lineman” “the greatest song ever written.” Frank Sinatra cited “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” as the greatest saloon song ever written.With praise like this, along with dozens of hit songs, multiple GRAMMY Awards, and inductions into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, singer/songwriter Jimmy Webb is truly a living legend.
Hot on the heels of having the most-talked-about song of this summer (his 1967 perennial pop classic, “MacArthur Park,” which played in all its seven-minutes-and-21-seconds-
“An Evening with Jimmy Webb” has the iconic artist performing his biggest hits, such as “MacArthur Park,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Didn’t We,” “Galveston,” “Worst That Could Happen,” and “The Highwayman,” plus some deeper cuts, such as “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” (recorded by Joe Cocker, Judy Collins, and Linda Rondstadt) and “Do What You Gotta Do” (recorded by Nina Simone, and used by Kanye West for his record “Famous”).
Along the musical ride, Webb takes fans on a personal journey with stories about his songs, life, and career — giving them a glimpse inside his creative mind. He regales the transfixed audience with tales about how some of his greatest hits came about, his first songwriting job at Motown, and the trials and tribulations of a career trajectory that took the teenaged preacher’s son from a farm town in Oklahoma to the top of his longed-for profession in Hollywood in only a few short years.
“Jimmy Webb delivered some of his best-known compositions, and his versions conveyed their traits and merits, their lyrical and musical panache, craftwork and sophistication,” writes the Kansas City Star on “An Evening with Jimmy Webb.” “But his stories put most of them into a variety of contexts, some humorous, some historical, some novel, and some trivial. Jimmy Webb has mastered the convergence of poetry and music and got the fame and fortune they deserved for delivering some of the most timeless music of their time.”
“Webb peppered his show with stories and anecdotes from his illustrious career,” notes Best Classic Bands. “He opened his show with ‘Highwayman,’ a song about reincarnation that he told the audience he was initially reluctant to pitch to the four country legends until Johnny Cash, a devout Christian, excitedly extolled, ‘I want to fly the starship,’ referring to the opening line of the fourth verse. Webb drew laughter from the crowd when he talked about how different each of the four Highwaymen sounded. …Jimmy Webb ranks right up there with the best of the storytellers.”
Webb is a unique artist in that he’s the only one to receive GRAMMY Awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration. In a songwriting world where many songs have multiple songwriters taking the “it takes a village” path to write a good song, Webb has always been more of a lone wolf of songwriting. Writing the lyrics and melody, and composing the music, Webb represents a piece of cultural history that does not exist anymore. It is this kind of craftsmanship and the idea of one person writing a complete song that makes Webb “one of the indisputably greatest songwriters of all time” (Variety).
October 30 – The Vogel – Red Bank, NJ
November 7 – Kent Stage – Kent, OH
November 9 – Memorial Hall – Cincinnati, OH
November 19 – The Tin Pan – Richmond, VA
November 22 – BPAC – Pinehurst, NC
December 1 – Dosey Doe – The Woodlands, TX
December 4 – The State Theatre – Austin, TX
December 7 & 8 – Musical Instrument Museum – Phoenix, AZ
December 20 – My Father’s Place – Roslyn, NY
January 24, 2024 – Palm Springs Cultural Center – Palm Springs, CA
January 31, 2024 – Catalina Jazz Club – Los Angeles, CA
February 1, 2024 – Catalina Jazz Club – Los Angeles, CA
About Jimmy Webb:
Multiple GRAMMY-winning cross-genre songwriter Jimmy Webb’s most popular songs are touchstones for a generation yet remain timeless: “MacArthur Park,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Didn’t We,” “Galveston,” “Worst That Could Happen,” and “The Highwayman” for starters. During his live shows – which are different every night because of his incredible improvisational piano playing and wealth of stories – Webb creates a unique connection to the audience: Like a long lost uncle in town to regale with tales from the road, revealing the stories behind his hits, his first songwriting job at Motown, through a career trajectory that took a teenaged preacher’s son from a farm town in Oklahoma to the top of his longed-for profession in Hollywood in only a few short years. His books, Tunesmith: The Art of Songwriting and memoir The Cake and the Rain demonstrate his incredible talent with words and music.
Webb has topped the charts over and over from pop to country, blues, jazz, disco to even rap and EDM with interpretations by some of the industry’s greatest including Art Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, Frank Sinatra, Donna Summer, Josh Groban, Glen Campbell, The Highwaymen, Barbra Streisand, The Fifth Dimension, Guns n’ Roses, and James Taylor. The Webb covers are continuous: being released for Pride Month 2024 is a hot new dance version of “MacArthur Park” by Micah McLaurin and Amber Riley.
Since Webb’s GRAMMY sweep in 1968 when his own “Up, Up and Away” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” both vied for Song of the Year ( “Up” won), to the use of his “Do What You Gotta Do” in Kanye West’s “Famous,” the man often praised as “America’s Songwriter” remains a respected icon in popular music – and continues to challenge his artistic boundaries with projects like a classical nocturne. He is always included in the lists of the greatest songwriters.
Jimmy lives on the North Shore of Long Island, New York, with his wife, a PBS television host and producer, Laura Savini. He has six spectacular grandchildren, five sons, and a daughter.
# # #
