SingleTracks is Released!

After a long summer and fall of recording, mixing, re-recording, re-mixing, and mastering, Willard's highly anticipated sophomore effort "SingleTracks" is finally released!

Featuring 9 all-new originals and a live cover, the album showcases a wide variety of styles, from acoustic to electric, from folky to rocking!

Also, keep an ear out for special guest musicians Darin Rieland and Erik Sherburne!

You can listen to the album on the player to your right!

You can check out the album artwork here!

More to come in the ensuing weeks!

Get It Goin' B-side!

Every good album single is backed by a B-side, right? Well, Get It Goin' is no different!

Recorded live in the basement of Syrinx Studios, Get It Goin' is backed with a cover of Warren Zevon's 1987 tune The Factory.

While the original is upbeat, I thought it would sound cool as a slower, more somber tune...

I did some unique things in the recording process, check it out and see if you like it!

You can listen below, at YouTube, over to the right, or on the Willard Facebook page!

Let's Get It Goin'!

Alrighty! Here we go!

Here is the first track off my upcoming album "SingleTracks," to be released in October...

The first track is called Get It Goin' and is an energy-filled blast of sonic awesomeness. If it doesn't get you up and rocking, have 5-6 more beers and then play it at twice the volume...

That's me on the drums, bass, guitars, aux. percussion, and vocals. And that's the one and only Erik Sherburne on the rock organ. Bang!

Check it out below or on YouTube or at the Willard Facebook page!

New Album in the Works!

This post is being posted mostly as a tribute to my blog's most diligent "checker", Jim.

"Holy shit! There's something new! Linnea come quick! Bring the camera!"

I have been working on a new album this summer... So far it is vastly different than last summer's in that it is entirely more electric and includes 4270% more drums (check the math on that one).

Drum tracks have been interesting and frustrating to record. I've not had too much trouble with getting the *sound* I want, more the press-record-then-walk-around-the-drumkit-and-play-along-then-make-one-small-mistake-and-then-have-to-get-up-walk-around-the-drumkit-and-stop-recording-reset-hit-record-go-back-around-the-drumkit-and-play-again kind of trouble. The iPhone app "Free Mouse" has alleviated some of that annoyance/time wasting, but it still takes a while.

I envisioned, at the beginning of the summer, an album full of 60s garage rock... As the summer progressed, however, I found myself branching out a bit more. There are a lot more varying styles, which is probably good for the listener! I've also consciously tried to make the songs short and to the point. (Perhaps next summer will be the 20-minute-long-songs prog-rock record)

I have the talented-yet-not-oft-recorded Erik Sherburne coming over to lay down some organ/piano tracks on a couple songs. Should be a nice way to add some variety. Hopefully he doesn't try to "Jazz-it-up" too much... You know him, adding 9ths and dim aug 11ths all over the place...

I'm hoping to lay down the final tracks soon and then finish mixing up before the start of school... But we all know how that goes. Last year I finished it all up over MEA break. We'll see.

But stay tuned for some new tunes soon!

Make Me Smile!

Just a quick post for a quick recording I did recently!

I did a cover version of Chicago's "Make Me Smile" on my acoustic. The video was shot with my iPhone! Check it out below!

Track-by-Track: Sunnin' Myself on a Cold, Cold Day

Let's take a close look at track #7, "Sunnin' Myself on a Cold, Cold Day"

This tune started out when I was taking a look at the old bluegrass standard "Bile Them Cabbage Down." I took the chord progression (which is a pretty standard one), added some 7th notes to blues it up a bit, and slowed the tempo down.

The lyrics came together after a big re-write. I had the complete song written out before I came up with the chord progression, so once I had the chords, I had to switch up the entire song. I was imagining a bright shiny day in the middle of winter, (perhaps because it was the middle of crazy hot July) and (as the title implies) the warm sun shining through a porch window.

I wanted the song to sound like it was recorded on a front porch, like it was happening spontaneously. So I recorded the main acoustic rhythm guitar and vocals together with just one microphone. The mic was a ways away from me and set pretty wide open so it would capture some of the room sound as well. I was extremely happy with the sound of that track.

After that, I tried my hand at the solo sections, but I couldn't get the feel I wanted for the solos. Perhaps it has something to do with my limited soloing ability. Perhaps. So I knew I would have to do some outsourcing on the song.

I enlisted the help of my father-in-law's good friend Tom. As an experienced guitar soloist, I knew he could come up with some great stuff to add to the track. After discussing it, we agreed we'd try a high-tech, internet-enabled, Garageband track swap.

I emailed the song to Tom so he could import the track into Garageband and do his solo over it. Then he exported his solo track by itself and emailed me that file. I put it into my original Garageband project, adjusted the levels, and Bang! Awesome solo track.

I like the tune a lot, and I'm especially proud of the e-collaboration that allowed it to happen.

Check it out here on YouTube!

Track-by-Track: Until I'm Through

Alright, here we go!

The second track (in chronological order) is "Until I'm Through"

Musically, the track was heavily influenced by the amount of Vampire Weekend I was listening to over the summer, which was quite a bit.

It's the "fullest" sounding song off the album, having a bass and drum track, as well as an electric overdub. And while some may say it doesn't "fit" the style of a mostly acoustic album, I say "Pshaw!" Instead, I see it as a peak or summit as Track #5, with the acoustic music on either side as leading up and away from it.

I was still in the "simple chords" phase I was in for "Days to Begin," so the verse is pretty simple, with more focus on the funkiness. I like the "riff-y-ness" of the chorus. It's rare for me to do a riff, and I think it turned out nice. A wah-wah electric lead adds to the funkiness, methinks.

Lyrically, I'm not sure what I was thinking about. A love that hasn't had a chance to come full circle? A wronged person who wants to forget but can't? No idea. I did flip the chorus lines around in the recording, I think the focus on the "until I'm through" line (in the chorus and in the title) tries to keep it from focusing on the "love" stuff. Keep that mushy stuff at bay!

I had a solo recorded with the same wah used in the chorus, but I'm terrible at soloing electrically, so I chopped it out. I think the song is better overall without it.

The drums are a Garageband loop during the verse, and then the chorus is just me using the old "Keyboard Typing" to play a bass drum, midi-style.

The acoustic guitar is the Hummingbird mic'd acoustically. Bass is my Geddy Lee Jazz plugged in directly to my Tascam pre-amp with minimal effects. The electric is my Epiphone LP Gold-top plugged directly in as well, with the Garagband auto-wah effect. Maybe a phaser?

Overall, I like this one. I wish I had the time/means to record the drums myself, but I guess that gives me a way to expand in the future. I'm thinking my next batch of songs may lean more this way, at least in arrangement. More full band kinda stuff. Electric.

Anyways, check out the tune here on Youtube: Until I'm Through

Track-by-Track: Days to Begin

I promised to blog about each track individually, and here's the first. I figured I'd write about each track in chronological order, rather than album order.

The first song recorded was "Days to Begin," and I scanned in my notebook where I wrote the lyrics:

The idea for the music side of the track came from my good friend Pete Hemberger. He had sent me an email about how we should try to record songs that were "simple and clean" and used "C, F, and G."

I took his advice quite literally. Those are the only 3 chords in the song.

For the lyrics, I wanted to play around with the idea of setting out on the task of recording a song. (You could see this as a lyrical homage to "25 or 6 to 4," that is, a song about writing a song.) I had set a goal of writing one song every day this summer. That goal quickly fell through, but at the time of these lyrics, I had that idea in my head.

I'm a big fan of puns and the "dazed" vs. "days" in the lyrics vs. title I thought was very apt. I was extremely dazed by the idea of writing a song a day, and it took me literally days to begin the process of writing songs.

I quickly did realize that I had "overfill[ed] [my] cup" in song writing, but, like the song says, I kept "going on."

On the recording side of things, the song was a strange process. I initially recorded the guitar and vocals at the same time, with the acoustic being recorded with the built-in pick-up and the vocals through a separate mic. The vocals sound whispered because 1) I think it fits the feel of the song, and 2) I recorded this one really late at night while Emma was sleeping.

I went back recently and re-recorded the guitar track. I wasn't as pleased with the initial one when I went back and listened to it closely. Of course, Garageband (have I mentioned that it's the greatest piece of software ever created?) made this easy to do.

The outro guitar melody was just the acoustic recorded through the pick-up with a slight phaser effect on it. Nothin' fancy.

So now that you know way more than you ever wanted to about the song, check it out at the link below (I've posted all the tunes on YouTube to facilitate a better listening experience):

Days to Begin