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Alan Williams
Writing The 2-Hour Song!
Songwriter’s Monthly - Feb. ’11, #133 http://www.scribd.com/SongwritersMonthly
Bob Hannan
Imagine, if you will, a remarkable Songwriter’s Monthly: This is a big
convergence of lush, patient music and project!
intriguing poeticism performed with
conviction and grace. Now, picture this Alan Williams: (Laughing) You didn’t
exquisite magnum opus bound in strain anything lifting it, did you?
artwork so fitting that it gently radiates
the same tender glory as the music. SM: When did you know it was going to
Stop fantasizing and indulge be a boxed set, that wasn’t the original
because . . . it’s real! intention, was it?
with disc
[Lumens]. For
4
life when you soverwhelmed
tuff is often
by the
example, the opening
track on disc 4, are forming who m o r o s e s t u f f
amount of more
Anne Ruthmann
hopefully the
fluctuation is
there, but in a
pleasant way.
SM: Each EP
contains one
cover tune,
how did that
come about?
AW: I’ve
always been
intrigued by
cover versions,
especially when
they have some
interpretation
AW: I love records where I can hit the that lets me hear the song in a different
start button and kind of sustain a mood way. In fact, when I was in my
all the way through rather than having undergraduate days at a conservatory,
a jarring sort of juxtaposition. I love we had to do this big senior recital and
being able to hit play on ASTRAL WEEKS what I did was I tried to condense the
[Van Morrison] and just know I’m in history of popular music — not the
that groove from the beginning till the Richard Thompson version, but the
end. There is supposed to be a little bit post-rock history of popular music — to
of fluctuation within each chapter, but it tell a story about a relationship that
needs to be a fluctuation that adheres had gone bad. I didn’t do any original
to the internal logic of each chapter. It’s compositions, but I radically rethought
a weird thing . . . there’s a Kate Bush most of the material that we did. I did
record, H OUNDS OF L OVE , and the lots of Ives-esque mash-ups . . . and
second side is this long, tied-together this was in the days before the “mash
suite that ends on this upbeat note of up!” So, covers have always been a
the sun coming up. That song was part of my musical world.
always so musically jarring for me that
I didn’t want to hear the track, I would The first cover we did [for the project]
almost run over and hit stop before it was “Dreaming.” That came about from
got there. I know she wanted to end on just noodling on the guitar and
an upbeat note, the long dream/ stumbling on the little opening riff and
nightmare is over and here we are, but realizing it was a Blondie song. I
I was content to stay in the dream/ started playing through the chords and
nightmare. I wanted to have our singing it and I thought, “Wait a minute
records not have that jarring moment this works, this really works!”
Songwriter’s Monthly - Feb. ’11, #133 http://www.scribd.com/SongwritersMonthly
Covers are also a way of trying to they represent me as much as anything
define yourself as an artist. You can talk I would write, myself.
a lot about how important musical taste
is and how we use music to identify SM: Non-musicians do that, too. They
find songs that resonates within them
and those songs become the
“Most of us are soundtrack that they carry with them
throughout their lives. I know a lot of
really reluctant to people who secretly enjoy a certain
style or genre of music from when they
expose our true were younger, but they are afraid to
admit it, they feel a need to represent
feelings about themselves through “serious” music.
SM: You use a lot of science words in SM: Concerning the titles of the EPs, I
Bob Hannan