Alan Williams
Currents

This song is the reason this album exists.

I tend to write in blocks – nothing new for years, then a burst. To some degree, I construct this scenario by avoiding picking up a guitar for long stretches, partially in fear that a new song idea will come to me and thus necessitate embarking on yet another recording project. The worst time for a new idea to occur is in the final production phases of an album. It’s too late to be included, and at the same time, the notion of embarking upon a new project is mind collapsing – “what a shame this new song will never get its due….”

Well, that’s what happened with this one. I was in the mixing stages of the Birdsong At Morning album, SIGNS AND WONDERS, when the verse melody and the song title made an appearance in my head while out for a walk. Knowing better, I reached for the guitar to see what key it was in. Once that was established, I kept going and soon the second half of the verse melody emerged. Uh oh, new song for sure. I hoped it might fade away due to inattention over the following couple of years, but alas, I found myself humming it, trying on words and phrases, and dammit… “guess I’m going to have to make another record.”

Not completely sure what all the lyrics are about, but I know the chorus is sung from the point of view of someone with extreme delusions of grandeur. The kind of guy that says, “Only I can solve….” For a while, I thought I had a fairly in/famous person in mind, but while watching the movie I, TONYA in a plane high over the Pacific Ocean, I realized the friend of Harding’s husband that lived in his mother’s basement while supposedly heading an international espionage and security firm was the song’s true protagonist. The previous contender was just some loser on TV….

As is often the case with me, the string arrangements are fairly central to the writing process; they’re in my head even as the lyrics aren’t fully formed. This was particularly true for the breakdown section where the strings swell from nothing and cut off abruptly. I could imagine this as a synthesizer in another genre of music, but for me, there’s nothing like spending far more money than is necessary for a similar effect.

The sound effects that are now crucial to that moment (and several other sections of the album) were a last-minute lightbulb epiphany. During the first year of the COVID pandemic, all my university classes were taught virtually. This was particularly problematic for the ensemble project I had launched wherein a group of music majors would learn and perform two complete albums by an artist or group, one per semester. After an awesome experience doing a couple of King Crimson albums, the following year I opted for Pink Floyd. With the campus closed, I brought the students into my workspace, The Aviary, in groups of five or six musicians and we recorded DARK SIDE OF THE MOON behind plastic dividers. The companion video struck a chord and it has since been viewed over 100,000 times on YouTube. But I digress…. The point being that I was reminded how interesting sound effects could be in establishing atmosphere. Pink Floyd wasn’t the first, but it certainly was the most successful band at weaving found sound into the music. I pillaged several offerings at FreeSound.org, and when I got a train sound to line up with the drum pattern, I felt electrical ecstasy.

Though the pandemic has kept me from performing, something tells me this song would really come alive on stage. Stadium size, even if the audience resembles Pink Floyd’s LIVE AT POMPEII….

Does this sound a little like Joni Mitchell to you?

Well, it should. One morning while preparing a lecture for my course on songwriting, I decided to demonstrate how Joni Mitchell developed altered tunings that allowed for a richer set of harmonic options on the instrument. I tuned my guitar to one of her most commonly used settings and… a new song began to emerge. The countdown to the start of the class was just minutes away, but I explored as much as I could and came up with the basic chord and song structure along with some vague melodic ideas, logging on to meet my students with seconds to spare.

The opening chord pattern was so mesmerizing to me that it was easy to get lost in a time warp. I found myself returning to it over a period of weeks. Too lazy to bother retuning my guitar, it lived in “Joni tuning” for months. The chorus words came quickly and as I prepared to make demos for the album, I made a recording of double-tracked guitar and vocal, the chorus already fixed, the verses a mumbled vaguery. And thus it remained until fairly far along in the process. All the other instruments were tracked, and even the backing vocals for the chorus and interlude that follows.

And still no lyrics for the verses….

By this point, I was massaging mixes while on sabbatical in Hawaii (I know, I know…). One night, Darleen said, “Come out on the lanai, the moon is up and the stars are amazing.” As I walked out to join her, she danced in private reverie. I watched her sway beneath the starry sky and the next morning while lying on the beach (I know, I know…), the verse lyrics came to me.

I need to acknowledge Ben Wittman’s awesome percussion tapestry. My dictate was something like, “Uh, some sort of percussion bed. You’ll know what to do….” And of course, he did. What a joy to open up a bunch of emailed audio files and discover… this! The man is a well-documented genius. And he’s also one of the sweetest humans on the planet. Check out the bonus feature audio of just vocals and percussion to really hear his brilliance.

Though one might imagine the strings are going through an echo effect, it’s actually how they are scored and performed. I got the idea while travelling the Saddle Road that runs between two volcanic peaks on the big island of Hawaii (I know, I know…). It’s a singular landscape, ethereal, majestic, mysterious. I imagined the sound of the orchestra bouncing between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Close your eyes and try to picture it.

I used the rich ear candy that is Roxy Music’s AVALON as a model for the arrangement and mix. So many songs on that album have such detailed instrumentation, but the vocals seem to emanate from some parallel universe, floating in and out on radio waves. I’m no Bryan Ferry, nor am I Bob Clearmountain, but you can’t blame a guy for trying. The choruses build on the Roxy lushness with a little more rhythmic pulse. Thomas made the first shift on guitar, and I then added a little King Sunny Ade strumming. Then I went full on Paul Jackson Jr. (look him up!) in stereo, no less. Plus the strings are doing some pizzicato work somewhere in there. A plethora of percolating, plectrum-plucked percussion.

And let’s not forget Brian Wilson on that harmony vocal stack….

Inspired by an extended moment of irritation while lounging poolside in Hawaii (I know, I know). But after the opening lines, the rest is just fantasy projection. I was thinking about how Neil Finn can write lyrics in a lopsided, offhand manner that somehow still make a sort of sense, humorous without being cute, whimsical, or cutting – it’s a lightness of touch I marvel at. Not to mention his deft way with a catchy melody – truly underrated as a world-class writer and performer.

My demo highlighted the weakness in my electric guitar playing (which is to say, not bad for a pianist who pretends to play acoustic guitar pretending to play electric guitar), so I asked a former student and frequent Birdsong At Morning video guitarist, Eric Giribaldi to re-do everything I had recorded. This he did without breaking a sweat. Then lo and behold, he came up with the great solo I only dreamed of. Yes, the shadow of Ric Ocasek looms large….

And here comes the predictable digression.… I “met” Ric Ocasek when I was a teenager. Greg Porter and I, along with our good friend Holden Thorp had leapt a thousand miles from North Carolina to attend a summer session at Berklee. Cut to a late-night moment in the White Hen Pantry on the corner of Mass Ave. and Newbury St. I was attempting to purchase a can of soda with nothing but loose change when I hear a voice over my shoulder, “That’s a lot of nickels.” Yes, the erstwhile Car was waiting patiently behind me in line (their studio, Syncro Sound was just around the corner). My biggest brush with fame since I met the Partridge Family at King’s Island theme park in Ohio. Of course, I didn’t have the nerve to say anything, just nodded, grabbed my Coke, and flew out the door. But my life was forever changed….

So, I guess I feel somewhat entitled to the musical rip-off. And with license to goof, I just went for it with all the vocal layers and little mix moves. And who can resist a bit of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” thrown in for good measure…. A little slice of pop pastiche, and maybe a welcome bit of brightly colored lightness from someone more inclined to ruminate in the dark corners of a rainy night.

And speaking of the Fab Four… It’s no secret that they loom large in my legend. And as Birdsong At Morning established a template for unexpected cover song interpretations, I thought I’d have a go at one of the less hallowed items in their catalog.

The basic idea was to transplant the Indian exotica to Hawaii (I know, I know). So, the opening sitar alap becomes slack-key guitar. I tried to reference the original while gradually moving into more folk guitar kinds of lines; hopefully you can hear the shape of George Harrison’s impressive melody work even in this new guise. And with the harmonic language now more Ry Cooder than Ravi Shankar, I thought I’d push a little harder into the darkness of the lyric (where I discovered some nascent anxiety about aging – a theme I would return to on “Keeping Time”).

Can’t explain the interlude and outro sections. But I like them. Mostly because Ben followed my instruction to, “embrace your inner John Bonham.” By the way, as this is a pandemic album, I should call your attention to how Ben recorded all his parts for the album by himself in his basement in Toronto. We had initially planned to track basics in Boston, but travel restrictions at the time meant there was a strong possibility that he might make it into the US, but not back into Canada. Though I was tempted to put my musical ambitions over the needs of Ben and his family, he offered instead to collaborate via email, phone, and file transfer. First of all, his drums sound great (in addition to his musical genius, he’s also an amazing producer and quite capable engineer). But if you knew the thin, out of tune, out of time performances I gave him to track to, you’d be doubly impressed by the total commitment of his performances. I can only hope the neighbors have forgiven him….

One very beneficial aspect of scoring for strings is that I can craft arrangements that highlight or play off of musical performances so that it seems that all these musicians have rehearsed together and perhaps toured the world a few times, when in fact most of them have never met. For example, Greg’s perfect comment before the vocal re-entry after the middle interlude can now be foreshadowed by the strings, as if he were responding to their call. Or perhaps most dramatically, the strings ascending scale motion in tandem with Ben’s hemiola tom fills, something that looks even scarier on the page than it sounds to the ear. BTW, please forgive the muso terminology of “hemiola” – academic occupational hazard. I could have just said, “the really cool moment where the strings and drums play together,” and we would still be talking about the same thing. But you have to admit, hemiola is a cool looking word.

The guitar figure emerged from a conscious attempt to play something non-traditional while still using standard guitar tuning. That’s not to say it’s very harmonically complex, but the little melody that comes through is based on letting some open strings ring while voicing other pitches higher up the neck. Nothing a thousand other guitar players aren’t doing every day, but a somewhat new idea for me to explore. And I just realized, the whole thing is played on the top four strings. No need to spend money for a full set. Oh, and just so no one from Spirit sues me (let alone Led Zeppelin), the minor descending pattern has a raised nine, so while it might evoke “Stairway to Heaven,” it isn’t “Stairway to Heaven.”

But speaking of the heavens, this is one of many songs in my catalog that mentions stuff seen in the sky (and beyond). What can I say? I was raised in the era of the Apollo moon landing, so looking outward into the universe is kind of my default resting state. Woke up from a dream with the last verse in my head. Lay there and repeated it several times to be sure I would remember it in the morning. The last line doesn’t have a directly clear meaning, but somehow I hear it as heartbreakingly sad. Maybe the melody and the words add up to more than the sum of their parts.

I recorded the guitar and lead vocal very quickly, thinking it would serve as a demo for potential bass and percussion parts. But when I played it for Greg, he pronounced it complete as is. Though somewhat surprised, I took him at his word. For a while. But then, I thought I heard a possible harmony on the chorus, and at Darleen’s suggestion, I tried out some thicker layered harmonies. Again, just knocked them out in a few minutes thinking they might give me an idea about what to actually do when the time came. But Darleen heard them and pronounced them done. I took her at her word.

For a while. But after adding some sound effects to other tracks on the record, I got the idea to insert the ticking clock. Somehow, it really tied the room together for me and I pronounced it done. And so it is. Some people have been known to cry upon hearing this. But I won’t name names.

This song began to coalesce early in the pandemic, but its inspiration began the summer before (and really has roots in hundreds of years of American history). What struck me so often in those days was the seemingly random victims of violence and loss, though, with even a short step back, it’s easy to see these as inevitable consequences of systems not only indifferent to suffering but predicated upon it. That summer the United States seemed to be on fire, whether in protest over the institutionalized murder that had given rise to Black Lives Matter, or the vast swaths of land ignited in the drought conditions and shifting wind patterns brought on by climate change.

I wanted to insert a little more rhythmic energy into my music, so came up with a guitar pattern that had a little propulsion. The light bulb moment came when I realized the rhythm section could play against that pattern, setting up a groove that comes surprisingly close to being danceable (if one ignores the occasional bars of 6/16). I asked Greg if he would deign to slap that bass like it was 1983. He would not. But he was willing to play with a pick on the verses and that gave it all the punch it needed.

I also brought in a colleague from school to jet fuel the rhythmic propulsion. Jeff Fischer is a highly respected percussionist in the Boston area, the consummate professional, and all-round great guy. He brought his congas to the Aviary and laid down the perfect track on the first take. Not wanting him to think I wasn’t taking it seriously, I asked for a second, though I think most of what you hear came from take one. So having spent 15 minutes setting up and 10 minutes tracking, we broke early for a memorably long lunch.

In the odd tuning I’m using, I found I needed to voice the chords higher up the neck, resulting in a sound close to a twelve-string guitar. I was reminded of some of David Gilmour’s work on ANIMALS as I stumbled onto the harmonic underpinning of the chorus. The shadow of a hovering pig looms over several moments on this album…

Another showcase for Ben here – note how well he can groove (even in 6/16). Sonic easter egg: I think Ben tracked this one afternoon when he was shortly due to pick up his son from school. If you listen closely to the drum breakdown, you’ll hear his phone ringing – his son wondering where dad was, perhaps…. I picture him calmly muting the ringer with one hand while continuing to hold down the groove. I wouldn’t put it past him to even have texted a reply to let his son know he was on his way. Kids, please don’t text while drumming.

And as is my want, I love to bring people from various periods of my life back into my musical orbit. For this song, I reached out to someone I knew in high school back in Asheville, NC. Chris Biesterfeldt was the freak virtuoso who was soon playing with the town’s jazz mafia of great players several years his senior. We were friendly but kept a respectful distance musically. Chris, because he was a bit shy and very understated; me, because I was totally intimidated by his talent. After reconnecting via Facebook, I finally got up the nerve to ask him to play on this track. I knew that he had become a very respected musician in New York, recognized by Downbeat, etc. Wasn’t sure if he would be up for cranking up the amp and reverting back to his 17-year-old self. But he promptly agreed to play, and even knew what I was after when I said something like, “maybe picture Allan Holdsworth taking a solo on a Steely Dan song. No such thing as too many 16th notes.” I wasn’t surprised at the blistering speed of what he came up with but was doubly impressed with the musical construction behind the shredding. Can you believe Chris and Warren Haynes were tearing up their teenage bedrooms just a few miles apart? Must be something in the water, though I drank it all my young life and… nada.

Just as the pandemic began to settle in and I was barred from using any campus facilities, I decided I should find a place I could make some noise. While driving out to look over a potential rental, this chorus popped into my head. Alone in my car, I didn’t hesitate to belt it full out, over and over, like a mantra sung by Celine Dion. Must have made an imprint because a few days later, it was still in my head. In the first pandemic spring, I took daily long walks to get out of the apartment and get some air. This proved a great way to write songs – just quietly singing lines, trying out new lyrics and melodic ideas – though it necessitated picking up a guitar as soon as I was back home to figure out all the chords in my head. In that way, this came very easily, even the words. It also seemed the right time to pick up LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, assuming the title would have some resonance with current events. Turns out, it didn’t really. But the romantic unrequited love trope fit in quite nicely to the mood of the melody, and voila – a complete song.

But the shadow of Celine Dion loomed large. I came close to leaving this off the album several times, thinking it might be a bit too big and bombastic. I just pictured her trademarked fist to chest to sky move at several junctures during the song and though the royalties would be welcome, it’s just not a role I envisioned for myself. So, the quandary – how to honor the romantic spirit of the lyric and the obvious hook of the chorus, letting the song be what it wants to be without stepping over into melodramatic theatrics. The solution – horns. I started thinking about how Otis Redding or Aretha could go for some pretty big moments without a whiff of Vegas and realized the horns were giving them both the added power to support their voices AND the sense of grounded reality present on all the best soul records. But that decision led to a new quandary – how to write a horn arrangement. I spent several weeks writing and deleting phrase after phrase. I think what I ended up with works, but I attribute that more to the spot on playing of the musicians rather than the notes on the page. Garrett Michaelsen is a colleague from the UMass Lowell music department (in fact all the horn players are from UML). Theoretically, he's a theory teacher, but the evidence suggests he’s really a masterful improviser on the trumpet. For some folks these are not mutually exclusive concepts. I marvel at my incredibly good fortune in finding myself surrounded by astoundingly good musicians.

And as my sister pointed out, I do make the rare appearance as a pianist. My weapon of choice growing up, I had a crisis of faith upon entering a conservatory, and for all intents and purposes ceased tickling the ivories from that day forward. So, what might seem like just another musical color is actually a monumental leap forward in reclaiming my complete musical identity. My electric guitar part is in homage to the late Jimmy Johnson, a member of the Muscle Shoals “swampers,” and someone I had the great good fortune to work with for two glorious weeks in the early 1990s. He played on all those great Aretha singles and engineered the Stones’ “Wild Horses,” and so much more. He was always quick to dismiss his playing as just “whacking the backbeat.” Well, even if that were true, he was the best backbeat whacker of them all. Seek out his credit list online and be prepared to pick your jaw up off the floor!

And Celine, my bank account and I would be happy to have you cover this tune any time….

Right, so then there’s this one.

I was a little nervous about this song being overly ambitious, perhaps over-reaching. But Darleen had a very positive reaction to it (and she has an allergic reaction to most things prog).

The guitar pattern emerged quickly, and perhaps surprisingly, so did the form. Even including the whole acoustic guitar slow-six-becomes-twelve section. Clearly, an epic in the making (which is how it is labeled in my computer audio workstation). But what was it about? That question left me somewhat perplexed. For some reason, my mind recalled the Ambrose Bierce short story, “Occurrence at Owl Street Bridge,” and I thought perhaps I would develop a parallel story located on the Rourke Street bridge in Lowell, MA (where the video for “Season of the Lottery” ended up being shot). I began to imagine ways to incorporate the flowing water of the river below with the reimagined horror on the bridge from Bierce’s story. The aforementioned acoustic guitar section actually developed lyrics first, working the old trope of river flowing to sea, etc. So, Ben and Greg recorded their parts thinking the song was called “Occurrence.”

Eventually I let go of the whole Owl Creek Bridge construct and the title no longer made sense (if it ever really had). But like much songwriting, the sounds of the words suggest other words, and the obvious “Currents” still connected to the river/sea theme. Hmm…. And then, it hit me – the powerful memory of watching someone drown in a very turbulent ocean, the helicopter arriving too late, the small speck of a figure no longer visible in the waves. And so, the second verse emerged. But where to go with it…?

I began to consider all the possible meanings behind the title, certainly reflecting the forces of nature (water, wind), but also notions of time, paths of electricity, movement and commerce tied together (the “trade winds”). I wanted to weave all of these perspectives together, allowing each verse to set a specific scene, then letting the shared characteristics overlap.

As a recorded performance, there are some interesting things going on. For example, check out Ben’s superb drumming throughout, but particularly in verses 3 and 4, where there are two performances panned left and right. This is a true testament to Ben’s incredible sense of time, as well as an insight to his thought process as he plays. I’m especially fond of the moments where single snare hits ricochet between performances or where one musical thought appears to answer a previous one. Note that Ben just played the song a few times – he did not listen to other takes while he played and had no idea I would create an audio clone from his DNA. At first, I just thought I would see how chaotic it might sound, but when I opened up the two performances, I was shocked at how well they locked. This is a fun listen particularly in the instrumental mixes where the listener can really focus on the great drumming rather than be distracted by that guy going on and on about various currents.

Muso terminology alert – the bridge contains some mild metric modulations. The guitar arpeggiation implies a 3/4 feel until the drums enter and lean more towards a slow 6/8. But then, the drums shift to the more upbeat 12/8. 12/8 is a beautiful time signature as it allows for the presence of simultaneous divisions of 2, 3, 4, and 6. So even though the drums change their pattern, the guitars never do. Yet it feels like the whole band lifts into something bright and beautiful. It's a rhythmic juxtaposition meant to reflect the tonal shifts between water as cleansing calm and water as murderous force.

Also of note, the sound effects scattered throughout, continuing the template established by “Think of the Night.” I had a great deal of fun constructing these sonic landscapes, each particular to the scenario of a particular verse. Many of these come from the generous community of FreeSound.org. But a few are of my own recording, including the waves crashing with great force in the last verse, a sound recorded during a rare appearance of a (thankfully mild) cyclone on the eastern edge of the big island of Hawaii, not far from the beach where the drowning that inspired the song took place. Never underestimate the power of nature.

Seeing one human within a much larger system and considering how these systems exert great control on individuals, systems and forces so massive as to be overwhelming, leaving us feeling isolated and helpless, like the refugees doomed to perish in turbulent seas of the final verse, a scenario that continues to play out in every region of the globe. I will leave you to interpret the details for yourself.

A meditation on aging told from the perspective of an increasingly outdated and irrelevant troubadour. Picture Jeff Bridges in CRAZY HEART or Bradley Cooper in A STAR IS BORN. I’ve known a few of them in my lifetime, and though I’m reluctant to admit it, I must confess to feeling this one fairly directly. It’s a character study of a self-portrait. The last line came to me in a dream; the first lyric to emerge. Had to write the rest of the song to lead up to it.

In my ongoing quest to both expand and simplify my arsenal of altered tunings, I thought I might see if I could make some small adjustments to existing ones. So, this is a modified drop-D tuning with both top and bottom E strings tuned to a D. Why should you care? Well… these tunings tend to make immediate suggestions for melodies and this song is no exception. One challenge for me was that while the A section vocal mirrors the guitar part, the B section was far too much of a leap up for the vocal. So I ended up singing something in parallel, a fourth lower. This means that what might seem to be a harmonic counter line in the guitar is really the initial melody, and the vocal takes the harmony during that passage. Of course, that’s only in my own head; the rest of the universe will hear the vocal as the melody from start to finish. I’ve been singing it long enough now that I even hear it that way most of the time now.

Love the vibe on this, starting with Ben’s laid-back pattern quietly moving the song forward. But it’s the incredible heart in Thomas and Jacob’s melodic interplay that brings a smile to face. Every. Damn. Time.

Thomas thought slide would be right for the atmosphere, and following my request, he left a lot of space. In retrospect, I realized I had asked him to leave too much space. So, somewhat at the last minute, I asked Jacob to add some violin lines. Of course, he effortlessly commented on both my parts and Thomas’s, making the interplay seem much more organic and spontaneous than the overdub process used to achieve it. Both of these guys are such intuitive, giving musicians – they really delivered something here beyond my ability to conceive. Oh, and Jacob is actually an even more acclaimed pianist, so one more reason for me to step away from the 88-keyed vehicle. Truth be told, on my worst days, I feel so intimidated by every one of the musicians on this record that I assume they agreed to play with me by accident. Swiping left when they meant to swipe right. In a healthier light, I register their presence as a supreme honor. For which I am eternally grateful.

As I am to you for making a space in your life for my little songs. It is a joy to share them with you – please accept my heartfelt thanks.