REVIEW: James Robert Webb — Gentlemen Start Your Weekends (SINGLE)
To me, there’s more of a sense of stadium-shaking might in modern country than there was in the output of previous generations, and this goes for country-rockers as much as it does the more casual country crooners. James Robert Webb is taking the rock-influenced path with his smashing new country single “this August, and to say it’s without a potent and anthemic lead vocal would be to admit not listening to it at all. Webb’s been getting a lot of attention for his gilded pipes lately, and after listening to this, I can’t say that I don’t get it.
URL: https://www.jamesrobertwebb.com/
The guitars are rocking pretty hard in “Gentlemen Start Your Weekends,” and they introduce an underlying hard rock influence that wouldn’t have been a part of this song’s aesthetic without them. I don’t know that it’s exploited quite as much as it could have been, but there’s no debating the validity of its presence in the track. When matched up with these crashing drums, it translates as more rock than straight blues, but it’s an element that puts a twist on the lyrical content if nothing else. Webb soaks up his surroundings epically well, which is essential in any collaboration of this nature.
It’s easy for me to see where James Robert Webb can go as far into the trenches of the southern rock realm as he wants in the future, and there are some traces of the classics like Molly and Lynyrd in “Gentlemen Start Your Weekends.” He isn’t overstating the impact of his forerunners or even pushing himself in a retro direction per se, but this singer is certainly acknowledging the importance of old-school southern rock’s greatest voices on his sound here. Even the verses sting with darkness reminiscent of the past, but the ferocity of the fretwork brings the sound closer to something more envisioned than embraced by previous generations.
This master mix isn’t too tight at all, which gives the entire song more of a live concert feel than it does a piece of studio material that producers spent plenty of time working out behind the glass. It also begs the question of how well James Robert Webb would deliver on the stage, which, if it were to live up to the standard the mainstream country players have set for themselves in this performance, would make him a most credible act to catch up with as the concert circuit heats up once more heading into the fall.
Diehard country fans will not want to miss the stormy sounds of “Gentlemen Start Your Weekends” this August, mostly because it brings together all the right elements that are about to attract a lot more love from the press and audiences the same as 2023 comes into its third quarter. Country is already having an amazing year built on the back of hybrid musicians not that different from James Robert Webb, and together with his pure drive, he’s showing us that country-rock can still be quite the force to be reckoned with — especially when it is being performed by a player of such tremendous discipline.
Colin Jordan
