Album Notes

Royal Wade Kimes is a story from CAN to CAN'T! Following the road that made Royal Wade Kimes the most sought after entertainer in the western world reads like a fairy tale book. Folks you just can't make things like Royal Wade Kimes up, they are gifts. After listening to all the cds of RWK you will truly believe he is one of those gifts, one of those voices that God gives to us.

Kimes worked his way to Nashville, first stop was 75 miles west of Nashville, when he pulled off I-40 and went to work for Loretta Lynn's Ranch. He wrangled horses and played music for the camp-fire shows on her ranch. Next he went on to Nashville, landed a job with Lynn Anderson, working horses and plugging his songs while he trained horses. Then God sent an angel to meet Royal Wade Kimes by the name of Eddy Arnold, "The Tennessee Plow Boy." As RW tells it, "I was walking up the sidewalk in Brentwood TN. when I ran smack into Mr. Arnold, it was like an angel showed up that day." Well that accidental meeting or shall we say, devine intervention meeting landed Royal Wade in the office of Eddy Arnold who recognized Kimes' immense talent and got him his start.

This album overflows with good acoustic guitar. Mike Noble who ranks in the top 5 in Nashville on a guitar produces and plays on the whole album. According to Royal Wade Kimes, Mike has played on all his records and produced all but one. The reason, he gets it, and he gets Royal Wade's sound.
The tracks are like nothing out there. Royal Wade does not follow the crowd. Hangin' Around The Moon could very easily have been a sound track for a movie. Songs like "On The Border" which tells about a small boy working for outlaws for a dime by watching for the law across the way. The way was the Ft. Smith court house where Judge Isac Parker ruled.
"Ride" which tells you just how Jesse James was feeling.
"Box Cars and Barb Wire" a song about drovers seeing the end coming, "18 steers to each railcar" is part of a lyric to the song, lyrics like that are just not heard anymore.

Kimes was asked how he knew so much about all that, the outlaws, the drovers and the west. He said:: "I rode the range in some of the roughest mountain country, outlaw country you could know, and I rode beside old timers who had seen it all, their folks before them. I guess I was a young kid who love to hear about it, and of course I was born doing it."

His hard work and perseverance have helped make him become one of the industry's most gifted singer/songwriters. Having penned hits for Garth Brooks, Diamond Rio and Gene Watson, there are real stories to Kimes' songs.

Kimes first album, Another Man's Sky (Asylum), produced a top-20 hit with "Courage of Daniel." For his second effort, which is this album Hangin' Around the Moon (Wonderment Records), Kimes loaded up his car, hit the road and took his music straight to his fans, often selling CDs right out of his trunk. His hard work paid off again as the album soared to #1 on the World Major/INDIE chart. The album also won the coveted Will Rogers Masters Award and was voted Album of the Year by the Academy of Western Artists. In 2003 the AWA honored Kimes with 12 nominations including Entertainer of the Year.

A note from Royal Wade.

I have traveled just about all over this beautiful country and have seen so much. One thing that really stays with me is the people I have met along the way, and their almost starved and desperate search for real life in their music. I do not mean to be negative here, but real life seems to have been taken out of our music today by the powers that control the Nashville scene.People have to have music. Take it away and they will fall into depression, as my grandfather would say,"They get the blues."
Nashville can't take all the blame, radio has a big hand in what we hear as well. There are a lot of 5 star triple (A) artist out there that will never be heard, one comes to mind, "Bobbie Cryner" a red head that I would drive all day and all night to hear. She can wrapp a note around a telephone pole. Problem is, she and others like her will never be there for me or you to hear. The big machine is too political for that.
It was those kinds of things that caused me to leave Ayslum Records and hook up with Wonderment. At Wonderment, we make records from the heart, from living. That was what music started out to be. What Nashville and the big machines have turned it into is something I don't recognize anymore.
The one thing I know is, I see all you fans out there after my show in the meet and greet autograph line and that is when I learn the truth. You ask;; What happen to this kind of music, some ask with tears in their eyes.
It is easy for me to write and sing the kind of music you ask me for, all I have to do is be true to myself and my music will be.

May your life be filled with music.

Royal Wade Kimes

Keep up with Royal Wade Kimes at www.royalwadekimes.com
www.wondermentrecords.com and www.mountroyaltrailride.com