The Tale Behind the Tune ... Wichita Lineman

Wichita Lineman was written by renowned songwriter Jimmy Webb. Apparently the idea for the tune came him to him one day as he was driving across an endless stretch of flat prairie highway in the midwest USA when he saw a telephone repairman atop a telephone pole with his portable phone in hand talking to someone. He wondered who the repairman would be talking to and what would they be talking about. Webb had just written a big hit song for Glenn Campbell ... By The Time I Get To Phoenix. I used to sing that song with Bobby Kris And The Imperials when I was a kid. At that time, Campbell was mercilessly hounding the songwriter to write a follow up hit. After getting several calls from the singer, Webb told him that he was working on something he thought might fill the bill but it wasn't quite ready to go just yet, but that he would send along what he had of the song so far to see if Campbell liked it. And also to get the country singer to back off with the persistent phone calls. A couple of weeks later he got another call from Campbell saying that he loved the tune and that the recording of it came out great! When Webb objected that the song wasn't quite finished yet, the singer responded ... It is now!

I stumbled across the tune at a rehearsal one day with Graham Young in his basement when he handed me a piece of paper with a bunch of chords written on it and asked ... ever done this one before? I responded ...What is it? ... and he said Wichita Lineman. We then played the song together and I fell in love with the chord changes immediately. At the time he and I were preparing to record some demos we could submit to a local music festival to see if we could perform there as a duo. Not long after thereafter we recorded the tune at Chalet Studio ... chalet.com ... with me on piano, Graham on guitar and a robotic drummer on my keyboard. The guitar and vocal track on our final mix of this recording were taken directly from that original demo ... which was apparently not good enough to get us the gig. So I put the demo on the back burner and moved on.

A couple of years later I came across the demo again as I was browsing around on my computer and Graham's guitar playing blew my socks off ... that's not unusual, So I decided to bring in the rest of the guys into the studio to finish the job and turn the song into a full band recording. In the process we got rid of the keyboard drummer and replaced it with the incomparable Al Cross ... one of the finest drummers in the country. We never have and never will use computerized drums on any of our recordings released to the public.

Not too long thereafter we brought in the go to pedal steel player in our neck of the woods ... Burke Carroll ... to record another song ... Let's Stop Whinin'. When we had finished recording that tune, I asked Burke if he would be willing to play some takes on Wichita Lineman ... which he agreed to do. Listening to Burke play was like going to heaven! I then called in Parick Fockler to mix the song for us and he did a wonderful job. This recording features one of the the most beautiful guitar solos I have ever heard. 


On this recording Burrows And Company are ...

Drums ... Al Cross
Bass ... Dennis Pendrith
Hammond B3 ... David Chester
Pedal steel guitar ... Burke Carroll
Guitar ... Graham Young
Piano ... Bob Burrows
Vocals ... Bob Burrows

Recording engineer ... Justin Meli
Mixing engineer ... Patrick Fockler
Produced by ... Bob Burrows

Wichita Lineman was written by Jimmy Webb


Thank you for taking the time to read this Tale Behind The Tune.
And thank you for your ongoing interest and support for our music ... much appreciated.


Bob