Skip Ewing, the hit country songwriter behind “Rebecca Lynn,” says he performs by living entirely in the present – “one moment after another” – a mindset he’ll bring to McGee Park on Aug. 14 when he takes the stage with band mates he calls “incredible musicians.”
Speaking from his log cabin in northwest Wyoming, Ewing reflected on a lifelong musical journey that began with a guitar at age 4, wound through Nashville and decades of award‑winning songwriting, and now centers on connecting with audiences in real time.
He likens songwriting to painting – capturing ideas on his iPhone, shaping melodies on his Martin D‑42 and letting the human element guide the art. Ewing’s Farmington show will feature Dobro player Josh Matheny, fiddler Lilly Mae and percussionist Noel Bisesti, offering what he describes as a singular experience: “We’re breathing the same air, and that moment’s not going to happen again.”
Ewing, with his four-piece band, performs at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 14, at McGee Park’s Open Air Pavilion/Food Midway.
“I’ve never known a time that I didn’t play guitar,” Ewing said, adding he had a few lessons but mostly was instinctual and self-taught.
After moving many times before graduating high school, Ewing headed to Nashville and “never looked back.”
Born in 1964 in Redlands, California, he went to South Carolina, to Colorado and back to California.
Ewing said his given name appears on paper but he’s never used it for anything. “Not for school, not ever. So it’s foreign. It wouldn’t seem like me at all,” he added that where exactly “Skip” came from he was not sure.
Ewing, who enjoys his secluded ranch in Wyoming, said he and his wife, Linda, love having horses and thousands of acres of forest at their backdoor.
“We live in … I think some of the most beautiful country in the world,” Ewing said.
His love of horses traces back to his grandfather who raised thoroughbred race horses in California. Ewing didn’t learn how to ride them, but he did learn some basics of caring for horses.
Even though he never got steady guitar lessons, Ewing said he just played and stayed up late at night playing softly to stay out of trouble.
“And so I made a lot of stuff up. I mean, I just tried to tried to play what I heard on the radio,” he said, adding that he “never really thought, ‘hey, I’m going to be a songwriter, or hey, I’m going to be an instrumentalist, or hey, I’m going to be a singer.’ I just did it.”
Ewing said some of his early stuff was probably “terrible,” but he was definitely “creative and expressive.”
“I felt like, you know, I had something I wanted to share and experience, and it just took root and grew my whole life, man,” Ewing said.
With only a couple of lessons when he was very young, Ewing took a few more at a local guitar store later on.
“You know, we moved a lot, and there really wasn’t money to do that kind of stuff,” he said, adding his family “really wasn’t in that kind of space.”
“So I did what I could when I could, and I sought guidance and knowledge … and did whatever I could to try to figure it out,” Ewing said.
The range of musical experiences in Ewing’s background is broad, including classical, piano, five-string banjo, bluegrass songs, traveling doing musical theater — even magic groups, and jazz vocals.
His musical appreciation and influences are diverse, ranging from Merle Haggard to Sting … from Yo-Yo Ma to Genesis.
The summer after graduating high school, Ewing was offered a job singing in a country ensemble in Nashville, beginning a musical journey filled with many awards and accolades.
Ewing said his journey from Nashville to where he is now is a “whole string of nows to me. It’s one now after another.”
For Ewing there was no single inspiration for a first song — only a melody or strumming a few guitar chords and being creative.
“I’m sure by the time I got a little older, I was trying to write songs to, you know, make the girls think I was cool, that kind of thing,” he said, adding “I think of songwriting like painting.”
“A sheet of paper is a blank canvas with all the elements, including the light which illuminates the style of music and its lyrical content,” Ewing said, adding “maybe you sketch a little bit, maybe you throw paint at the canvas.”
His daughter Rebecca Lynn inspired the hit song of the same name Ewing wrote for Bryan White.
Nowadays, he works electronically using his iPhone to capture the lyrics, using memos to record little pieces. He doesn’t demo it, but if he can illustrate it, play it on his guitar and it holds up – he good with that.
For Ewing, it’s never just a song. It’s everything coming together to “express artistically in a way that identifies” him.
The human element is key to his songwriting, Ewing said. His art is his voice and his prized guitar, a Martin D-42, which he just received from Martin Guitars.
Ewing’s song, “Play On,” mentions Martin guitars and is currently streaming on the major internet platforms.
Connecting with the audience in the greatest way, Ewing said, is knowing “we’re breathing the same air, and that moment’s not going to happen again. That moment is for Farmington and the people who are there.”
Visit Skip’s website, skipewing.com to sample his music, including “Me & God and a Fishing Pole.”