Grammy-nominated musician Daniel Kimbro has forged an impressive career as an accompanist. His prowess on the double bass pays the bills with copious gigging and session work. If you prefer to measure success by the company he keeps, that company is elite. Kimbro has shared stages and studios with John Hiatt, Jerry Douglas, Alison Krauss and Eric Clapton, to name four luminaries among dozens.

Up until April 15, though, a career goal lingered. Kimbro had yet to officially release a solo album. The reason was simple; the psychology more complex.

“Well, I wish it were a better answer than (I put it out) because I’m not scared to put it out anymore,” said Kimbro, 42, during the first of two calls from home in Knoxville, Tenn.

Kimbro doesn’t look like he scares easily. It’s the formidable mustache, which makes him look like he just walked off the set of “Tombstone.” But he wasn’t besieged by gunslinging bad guys. Kimbro was tortured by mental gremlins, the inner voices wondering if the album was good enough. The voices naggingly pointing out tiny flaws in tuning and intonation that average listeners would never notice.

After years of mental gymnastics, Kimbro stuck the landing. Despite any doubts, he now believes that “it just seems less important to be impressive and more important to be authentic.”

That quieting of his inner dissonance led to “Carpet in the Kitchen,” and its U.S. release represents years of Kimbro’s writing, recording and convincing himself that it’s good enough for you to hear it as it is.

Getting to that point took prodding. Some came from his father, Shawn, a musician and writer who has authored three books about fishing on Chesapeake Bay. His dad reminded him from his own experience that “it’s just a snapshot; it’s like a Polaroid picture, where you are at a moment in time,” Kimbro said. “Put it out there and move on to the next thing.”

A big push came from fellow musicians, people who surely would have heard any small imperfections. The greatest encouragement, Kimbro said, came from Douglas, Nashville singer-songwriter Sam Lewis and British roots musician Martin Harley; the latter two being his bandmates in the trio Harley Kimbro Lewis. Harley assured him that he’d feel rewarded for taking the leap of faith.

“Martin said a thing to me that was like, ‘I think you’re gonna be really, really surprised, when you put your thing out into the world, at how many people come back to you with affirmations’,” Kimbro said. “(By) how many of your peers do so. And he’s been correct about that. I have gotten a lot of praise from my musical peers and heroes and people saying to me, ‘Where the hell have you been, writing these songs like this?’ and that’s been really, really, really affirming. At the same time, every single time I send the SoundCloud link to a friend in the music biz, I just (think), ‘Oh my God, here we go. They’re gonna see it all,’ and it’s just like standing in front of the mirror naked before the first day of school.”

A smack in the face

Kimbro’s musical foundation formed back in his school days. The taste at home ranged from Van Halen (whom his parents saw on their first date) to Townes Van Zandt, and in multiple directions from both points. He started playing in his family’s bluegrass band at 10, although he didn’t at that time view it as a career. He was interested in military service, something of a family tradition. That changed in high school. Kimbro and his father saw Americana royalty – Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, playing with Guy Clark – at the roots-music event MerleFest, and it broke down the mental barriers he had erected around folk music.

“I don’t know what happened, but somehow the heavier and the lighter subject matter, which are often juxtaposed against one another within the same song, just really started smacking me in the face,” he said. “I loved it. And so, all that stuff combined with the myriad genres that were always heard in the household really informed the imagery and sonic landscape.”

Kimbro studied music at the University of Tennessee. After graduation, he set out to make it his career. While on tour with the Lovell Sisters, he performed in front of Douglas, which became another life-changing event.

Douglas, a legendary player of the dobro, or resophonic guitar, knows more than a little about juggling genres. He has made a career out of sonic exploration, and his success is reflected in the accolades and work that have come his way. He is a 16-time Grammy Award winner as a recording artist, bandleader, producer and composer. His commanding, lyrical style has led to roughly 2,000 credits as a studio musician and honors that include the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award and membership in the Bluegrass Hall of Fame.

In 2013, Douglas asked Kimbro to join his band. That opportunity expanded as Douglas invited him into two other ventures: the international Transatlantic Sessions concert series and his Flatt and Scruggs tribute band, The Earls of Leicester. In 2021, the Jerry Douglas Band backed Hiatt on the singer-songwriter’s Grammy-nominated album “Leftover Feelings.” All the projects have boosted Kimbro’s growth. And they gave him the best seat in the house, standing downstage with his double bass, to observe the dynamic between artist and audience.

“It has given me more comfort in different sized venue settings. Indoor, outdoor, large, small; we play all kinds of stuff with Jerry and with ‘Transatlantic Sessions’ and with all the people (he plays with). By being Jerry’s right-hand, low-end accompanist person, I have found myself playing with a lot of different folks. And in a lot of different spaces. That has allowed me to watch how John Hiatt communicates with an audience in a large venue, how John Hiatt communicates with an audience in a smaller, more intimate venue. I could go on, and drop more names, but you can extrapolate just how valuable that experience is for a person who is about to go stand with a guitar or a banjo or a double bass in front of people by himself and try to communicate his artistic intentions through lyrics and pitches. That has been invaluable,” Kimbro said.

Storyteller

He’s getting to put that experience into practice with the official release of “Carpet in the Kitchen,” which came together over several years. Kimbro wrote and recorded as time allowed around his work as an accompanist, which feeds his family. He completed a version of the album in 2019. Jordan Perlson and Mike Baggetta, who play drums and electric guitar, respectively, on the album, added tracks to the final version in 2023. He tested the waters that winter, selling CDs of the album at the merch table on a tour with Douglas and Tommy Emmanuel. This spring, he went all in with CDs, streaming and even vinyl (still in the preorder stage at danielkimbro.com/shop).

“Carpet in the Kitchen” reflects an affinity for story songs and writers who work in that medium.

“If I had to list people who I really am drawn to in the songwriter realm, the first two that come to mind would be Jimmy Webb and Randy Newman,” said Kimbro, who also listed R.B. Morris, Sarah Jarosz, Hiatt and even Douglas’ lyrical dobro style, among many others, as writing influences. “There’s a beginning, a middle and end, a time and a place, and just a theater of the mind thing that happens when you listen to one of those writers.”

Kimbro’s affection for storytellers shows up in his songs. “Loyston,” which leads off his album, tells the story of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought infrastructure and electricity to the southeastern United States, while also vividly describing what was lost in the process and weighing the price of progress. “Keep on Livin,” inspired in part by his parents, is a look into the obstacle course of domesticity from young love to empty-nesting.

The beating heart of the human condition ties the album together, though it often is probed from the dark side. “A Killin Song” is a historical who’s who of killing machines, from flint arrowheads to remote-controlled drones. “Where I Lay You” is a lilting take on “if I can’t have her, nobody can.” And one is unlikely to hear a gentler murder ballad than “Chesapeake.” In it, a Maryland tugboat captain kills his unfaithful wife and her lover – also the man’s best friend and preacher – and then wrestles with the aftermath and the engineering of his own demise.

“One of the concerns I’ve gotten is a little bit of pushback on how much death and destruction there is,” the East Tennessean said. “But you know what, man, I’m an Appalachian, and we got it from the Scotch-Irish, and this is what we do: singing happy melodies with terrible lyrics. It’s what I know. It’s where I’m from.”

Murder and all, Kimbro said “Carpet in the Kitchen” has been well-received by the audiences that have heard it live and by those musical peers and heroes. Douglas, who plays on “Chesapeake” and “Loyston,” recorded a version of the latter with his own band on his 2024 album, “The Set.”

“(Jerry) loves my songwriting, and I’m thrilled by that because that dude has recorded with Ray f---ing Charles,” Kimbro said. “I’ve taught myself that when certain folks tell you positive affirmation things, you need to put them in your mental bank account and just believe them. And it doesn’t matter if they’re just being nice or if you perceive that they’re just being nice. … Just leave the doubt and take (the compliment). When someone of his musical stature says something like that, I’ve just decided that life is short and it’s time to say, ‘thank you very much,’ and just leave that deposited in my mental CV.”

Since he was in the United Kingdom for the Transatlantic Sessions in January this year, and since he had a booking agent there, Kimbro decided to release “Carpet in the Kitchen” overseas in January and play supporting shows into February before returning to the States. He’s back in the UK on May 22 for a second leg of his album release tour, kicking off that night in Edinburgh, Scotland, before heading to England for shows in Blackpool, Sheffield, Hereford, Brighton and London before closing out in Glastonbury on May 31.

Kimbro hopes to grow his solo career and said that he has close to two albums’ worth of new material. He should have time to practice his own stagecraft in the U.S. and Canada, too. Douglas is booked through September on tour with Alison Krauss and Union Station, with whom he has been the featured instrumentalist since 1998.

Even if it takes time to reach his next milestones, Kimbro can take comfort in conquering his fears about his first album – although he walked that back just a bit during our second conversation.

“That was a lie. I’m still scared. But I’m here for the fear,” Kimbro said. “It’s just a reminder that I’m alive, and it’s, like, OK, fine. I hear those fearful, negative voices, and I hear the comparative analysis, and I hear the mistakes and the intonations or lack thereof, in a literal musical analytical sense I hear the bad and I hear the good and it doesn’t matter. It’s the process. It’s worth being alive for. Sometimes you throw the fly into a tree and you gotta go get it, and you catch an awesome fish the next cast. You never know what’s around the corner, so you gotta put the thing out there.”