This stripped-down debut collaboration should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the work of singer-songwriters Brigitte DeMeyer or Will Kimbrough.

Brigitte DeMeyer & Will Kimbrough’s first collaborations began some 6 years ago (first on DeMeyer’s 2011 release, Rose of Jericho and Savannah Road in 2014), while continuing to forge successful solo careers themselves.

After years of writing, recording, touring and collaborating Brigitte DeMeyer and Will Kimbrough join together as an official duo on Mockingbird Soul which was released on January 27th.

Patience proved to be a valuable tool in the creation of Mockingbird Soul, the recent co-billed album from Brigitte DeMeyer and Will Kimbrough. The pair had been writing songs for several years as well as recording and touring together. Mockingbird Soul gracefully puts on display the results, the title track echoing Blues on an arrangement existing of a bass line and electric guitar notes as Brigitte DeMeyer encourages to pay attention to the quiet and hear the ‘whisper of your mockingbird soul’.

Let’s be straight: I don’t like Will Kimbrough. Will Kimbrough is just too talented and inspiring. I know it is irrational jealousy as I have no musical talent, and I am sure I am better at a couple things that Kimbrough is—not much market for ability to recite random facts from the backs of 70s O-Pee-Chee hockey cards, though.

Brigitte DeMeyer and Will Kimbrough have been singing and playing together for several years. They have collaborated on each other’s records and performed in concert as a tandem. But Mockingbird Soulmarks the first time the Nashville-based musicians are co-billed on an official release.

Though we didn’t even know it, we have been waiting for the new collaboration record from Will Kimbrough and Brigitte DeMeyer. It has been a wait because the duo began playing together more than five years ago, and have only just now decided to make an album. And it is a low key beauty that will sneak up on you in the cold, dark, end of January.

Somebody should record a remake of Delaney and Bonnie’s 1971 country-blues extrapolation Motel Shot, and I’m certain Brigitte DeMeyer and Will Kimbrough could pull it off. Raised in San Diego, DeMeyer moved to Nashville in 2010 and worked with Kimbrough on a couple of full-lengths before cutting this year’s Mockingbird Soul, the duo’s first true collaboration.