Notes From The Aviary

All For One | Apr. 23, 2010

We just wrapped up a recording session for the new record with string quartet. It's an amazing experience to stand in the midst of such beautiful sounds, and have one's vague ideas, sketched out in a series of ink splotches, turned into real music, a realization that exceeds the imagination.

Given today's technology, it might be easier to create these sounds with sample libraries and a computer. And no doubt the results would be pleasant to the ear. But what would be missing is the experience of working with musicians, of laughing between takes at some arcane reference, a mis-timed entrance, the "graceful" sight of my hands waving in the air —"conducting"— only to have said hands knock over the music stand, sending pages flying through the air, and of course adding an unsuitable sound effect to the recorded performance. Etc.

Perhaps it's the most selfish aspect of this project—I just want to do it, to have the experience, to retain the memory. It's a rare and precious gift, and I am immeasurably grateful to the folks that make it so.

I noted how often the collective "we" was uttered by the players during the session. Sometimes addressing the challenge at hand—"we should all slur in groups of two, rather than four." Sometimes in reminiscing about prior encounters—"we could barely fit in the room, but it felt really great." I realized that Birdsong is more than Greg, Darleen, and myself. Now we are an extended (and ever-extending) family.

At one point in the session, Darleen asked for another take of a passage, and one of the string players requested some explanation of what was needed, or what was wrong with the previous attempt. The answer was that there was nothing wrong, but in some indefinable way, it could be more right. Not a particularly useful response, but absolutely accurate. What we seek from musical performance is often intangible, unpredictable, unquantifiable. So with that bit of indirection, we played it again. And this time we got it. Impossible to ascertain why it was better, but we all agreed that it was. You could feel it while it was happening. Pure elation.

In hindsight, I wonder if the success of that performance had something to do with a loss of consciousness of what any one individual is doing, and a heightened awareness of what we were collectively creating. As much of a cliché as it is, in those moments, the music appears to play itself. It's no longer a matter of playing the correct pitch, with the right articulation, in time and in tune, but more like sonic sculpting, crafting an intangible but clearly present single entity, a whole from many parts.

Perhaps that is why these relative strangers have bonded with us so easily. Once people have created that kind of rarefied moment, the feeling continues to resonate long after the session is over—"I know you; we have made joy together." One big happy family. All for one.

– Alan Williams

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Resonance | Mar. 19, 2010

We just played a show to celebrate the release of Vigil, accompanied by a string quartet. What a marvelous sound! It was an amazing experience to stand in the middle of such beautiful tones, and I was reminded of how important the timbre of resonate wood is to our music. Acoustic guitar sits at the center of all of our performances, and even the amplified instruments begin their journey as flesh pressed against metal and wood. The strings are an extension of this aesthetic, allowing us to deepen our sound without the use of electronic keyboard textures. Not that I'm a luddite—the technology used to make our recordings is as dependent upon computer processing and silicon chips as the latest electronica dance mix. But the sound we're after is borne from trees.

The vibrating strings of a guitar or violin initiate sonic energy, but the real fruition of the tone comes from the interaction of this vibration with the wooden chambers that both shape the timbre and amplify the sound. The string is essential to creating the idea of the music, but it's in the wood that the music is realized.

In that same way, I am dependent upon others for the music to come to life. Chris Smither once related to me his emotional response to his first recording session with other musicians—how intimidating it was to have musical giants surrounding his "little songs that I wrote," but also how tremendously gratifying to hear one's creation expanded, deepened, colored with previously unimagined shadings. I know what he means. If I am the string, Birdsong At Morning is the wood.

And of course, we can extend the metaphor. Through chance and design, Birdsong is a community of sorts, comprised of all the creative individuals who have contributed to the endeavor. If you've ever been in the audience for a show and wondered if it was really as much fun for the musicians as it looked—the answer is, "yes, you betcha." But it doesn't stop there. The sound of the musicians moves out across the landscape, encountering its audience, reflecting back to the stage, and emanating out to the cosmos. Like the Clairol commercial of the 1970s, the word is spread by telling "her friends, who tell their friends, and so on, and so on, and so on...." We are eternally grateful to everyone who has come out to a show, or purchased a CD or download. We're also counting on those folks (you) to continue to spread the word. Like string to wood.

Resonance.

– Alan Williams

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No Place Like | Mar. 7, 2010

Home.

A few months ago, we lost our rehearsal space, the Aviary. After the living room sessions that gave birth to the idea of Birdsong At Morning, it was in this place that the vision was realized. It was a luxuriously sized playpen in one of the thousands of old mill buildings to be found throughout New England. I always likened it to the apartment on Friends—only on TV would one find something so open, so airy, so tastefully appointed. Well, if there was a sitcom about a band creating their art (and I'm well aware that all bands resemble sitcoms to various degrees), the set would have looked like our space.

Sure, it was barely heated and the woodworking shop below us coughed up a non-stop mist of dust that coated everything in a fine gauze, not to mention the tendency to fire up the big saws just when I hit the record button. But it was home, and we will always remember it fondly.

So it was somewhat traumatic to get the notice to vacate. We were in the last throes of mixing Vigil, so while I waited for the computer to render sound files, I began the process of disassembling the studio. Nothing like working for four hours on a seven minute song about the loss of connection, only to turn around and disconnect, pack-up, and in general whisper an "au revoir" as you walk out the door.

With no alternative, pieces of the studio ended up in the barn, in the garage, in the dining room, in the living room, in the mud room, under tables, and precariously balancing in closets. In short, the band was nowhere, rootless, homeless.

But... ah!, as spring begins to seep into the air, we have just moved into our new space, the reconstituted Aviary. It's a bit cozier than the Aviary Mach 1 with essentially a similar layout to the original, but with much better heat and windows that open (!). It feels good, and I'm feeling giddy about finally getting to work on the next record. To top things off, a new song emerged the other day, and unlike the bulk of what I've been working on, it came with half of the words as well. Seems like a good omen.

So after a period of migration, the birds are back in their nest with several new eggs to brood over...

– Alan Williams

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Hibernation | Feb. 17, 2010

After a few false starts, winter truly made an appearance in New England yesterday. Now the skies are clear blue, and the landscape is postcard stunning. A beautiful winter day. Got me thinking about hibernation, laying low for an extended period to wait out the storms and recharge the batteries.

And that's where Birdsong has been for the last few months—hunkering down, making plans for the new year ahead, re-energizing.

We've just come off a fantastic Valentine's Day show—an intimate in-the-round performance with our special guest Stephanie Winters on cello. Ah, the joys of making music with and for a gathering of friends. And as spring promises to overtake winter, we're about to reappear on several fronts. The next month will see the release of two recordings—one a guest appearance on Patty Larkin's new album of duets, 25, and our third album, Vigil, both recordings completed a season ago, as the last leaves were falling from the trees and crystallized water droplets began to float through the air.

Frankly, the change of pace has taken me somewhat by surprise. I've had the experience of waiting to go onstage, getting caught up in a conversation with another musician or crew member, forgetting the time, and realizing with a shock, "oh hell, I'm supposed to be on stage — NOW!" Breathlessly trying to focus, caught up in the momentous rush of walking into the stage lights, while the mind is still finishing a thought about the movie under discussion just seconds before. It's a jump cut from one scene to another. Somewhat dislocating—is this a new scene, is there a reel missing, did I fall asleep, what just happened? A feeling both terrifying and exhilarating.

Then I get my bearings, find the focus, and start to sing. So, with new songs to play, and new audiences to reach, we bid adieu to the cave, and greet the new world, temporarily blinded by the light, but exhilarated by the fresh air and warmed by the promise of what is to come.

– Alan Williams

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Ebb and Flow | Feb. 9, 2010

So, as we elders are coming to terms with the Internet, I find myself increasingly reliant on the "new," some piece of information, updated every morning, to brighten my day. Recently, my hunger has been sated by a string of good news—a nice review, winning a listener poll, being featured on a radio station thousands of miles from home. But good news can be addictive; it's easy to wake-up and expect to find out the world loves you a little bit more. Which is why it's so devastating to discover that some mornings the inbox is empty, Google search reveals nothing new, the CD inventory is unchanged—"What? No nibbles of interest from Armenia? I can't go on."

Stepping back, it's actually quite remarkable how much flow there is compared to the ebb periods. The fun is in learning to ride the waves, to recognize that the surf is always more exciting when the outgoing current pulls against the incoming waves. A little vigilance pays off—knowing when to push off from the bottom and ride into shore, or when to let one go by, patient in the knowledge that something better will come along shortly. But also recognizing danger, watching for sharks and jellyfish, careful not to crash into a rock you know lies somewhere just below the surface, and of course getting caught in the rip-tide, helplessly pulled out to sea.

I'm beginning to realize that I am far more susceptible to the shifting tides than I would have assumed. Prone to letting the currents take me, only to panic when I discover how little control I have over my situation. Turns out, much to my surprise, I have the fragile ego of an artist. Not that that's a one-to-one corollary, but I had always thought I was immune to such unabashed need. So one day, I'm convinced this whole endeavor is simply a vanity project, doomed from the start. The songs underwhelm, my fingers stumble over strings, my voice constricted in my throat.

And then, you get a nice note from someone in Topeka, and you have the strength to carry on. (Thanks, Topeka!) It's all a part of the great cycle, the ebb and flow, blah, blah, blah. As long as you're riding the waves and not getting tossed around like so much rootless kelp. As long as the cycle feels like a rhythm, a hypnotic groove rocking back and forth, as opposed to a closed circuit prison, with each moment completely predictable, and no hope for the "new." Sometimes cycles need to be broken.

This morning, it all came down to a fresh set of strings. Untarnished, crud-free, simply begging to ring out in dulcet tones and tintinnabulation. Joys to be discovered, the same song heard anew. Effortlessly riding the waves of sound. Surf's up!

– Alan Williams

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A Blank Canvas | Jan. 30, 2010

As in, "nothing more terrifying than."

More often than not, a song begins to form when I'm getting reacquainted with a guitar. Remembering where fingers go, deriving satisfaction from the feel of steel against fingertip, following the sound where it leads. Suddenly, aimless wanderings point to a destination, vague notions become concrete ideas. Yes! There's creative life in me yet.

Damn! Another unfinished song. Like a squirrel in autumn, I seem to horde unfinished fragments like so many unblossomed acorns. Some Birdsong At Morning songs have been around in incomplete form for decades. Often, they are complete in structure, and in my mind, full arrangements encircle their distinct melodies. But it's the words that fail me. So they are added to the pile of unfinished songs that I could perform start to finish sans lyrics. After a while, this stockpile becomes so massive, so daunting, that a deep depression sets in. It's not that I'll never write a song, it's that I'll never complete one.

That's what I'm facing at the moment. With a new record on the horizon, I have one finished song. One. Plus our requisite cover (a relatively obscure Christine McVie tune from Fleetwood Mac's Tusk). That's it. What remains are nearly a dozen incomplete contenders. And that's not counting the pile of songs begun before the Birdsong era. To give you an idea of how complete these incomplete songs are, most of these songs exist as recordings with drums, from the sessions we did with Ben Wittman in August of 2008. The structural form, the melody and harmony, even the shape of the arrangement were already fixed before that session. Ben endured having to play to guitar tracks with scatted vocalese, nonsense syllables that communicated nothing of the (as yet undetermined) meaning behind the song. The tracks came out great, but to this day, no words have arrived to fill the void. As we worked on the earlier records, incomplete songs either received some lyrical attention, or were pushed aside as problems to be solved on the next record.

Well, the time for that next record is here. I'm so terrified of starting another unfinished fragment, that I have avoided picking up a guitar. Instead, I'm just made rough mixes of the guitar and drum tracks so that I can listen to these beasts on endless repeat as I drive down the road. I've made a pact with myself—no new music for driving until I have words for each of these half-baked morsels. The first new car I ever owned was Geo Metro with no radio (or air conditioning). Without external aural distraction, I found that songs just came to me. Melodies, chords, and WORDS! So, I thought I'd try to recapture that approach, only now I've got a canvas—pre-measured, coated with base primer, and with the oils already mixed. In some ways, it's a paint-by-number project, with clear outlines to be followed and filled in, though the numbers are a little difficult to discern.

Sometimes a lyric fragment is attached to the music. This can be a gift, though most often it's a burden. An idea leads nowhere, or a rhyme scheme paints itself into a corner. Yet, it's so hard to let go of the only bit of language you've got. Abandoning a bad idea is far more difficult than dreaming up a new, untested one. Paul McCartney (who is making frequent appearances in these postings—can't help it, those formative years and all...), once woke from a dream with the melody for "Yesterday" in his head. No words, just tune. So as breakfast was the next item on the agenda, he quickly came up with, "Scrambled eggs, oh my baby how I love your legs." Fortunately, he was able to revise this direction, but if it had been me, I would have been unable to get around that opening line. Belaboring the rhyme with "coffee dregs, dog that begs, etc."

So, I'm erasing all previous attempts at lyrics, or at least making a valiant effort to do so, and opening my mind to what comes. Kind of a Zen thing. Being in the moment, ready to receive, waiting for a word to set me on my journey. Please, oh please let it not be "scrambled eggs."

– Alan Williams

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Investment | Jan. 21, 2010

Last night I watched the new DVD of highlights from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. It was actually comforting to see so many seasoned professionals stumbling through under-rehearsed performances. Yet, often despite the shaky starts, the time would get a little steadier, chord changes be remembered, vocals find their pitch; the music would come into focus and something would happen. The version of "Let It Be" that followed Paul McCartney's induction was a case in point. "Let It Be" is an anthem. It's designed to be anthemic. And thus it lends itself to big event finales like Live Aid, the Beatles' career, and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony.

The band hits the intro, then the verse changes follow. No vocal. Who's supposed to be singing? Who knows? McCartney's nowhere to be found. The chord changes come around again, and Billy Joel, seasoned professional, fills the void. But it doesn't really sound like he finds himself in times of trouble, unless salvaging an induction ceremony performance counts. He over-sings, nearly shouting to be heard. Not really into the song, but absolutely into saving the show. Finally, McCartney finds center stage, just in time to hit the chorus. But he seems no more connected to the sentiment of the lyric than Billy Joel. And you gotta wonder—just how many times can he sing this song and find any real meaning in it. An old friend of his once sang, "All I can tell you is — it's all showbiz," and maybe that's all any of this is.

Except other faces on stage convey something different. People are moved. By the song. But not just the song. By the singing of the song, by the presence of the singer of the song, by the moment itself. And a strange thing begins to happen. McCartney becomes invested in that moment. He seems connected, if not to the song, then to that moment. I see him speaking to the power of his immense fame, of the ability of recorded music to reach so many people at so many different times, in so many different ways. At how those experiences unite his audience with one another and perhaps even surprisingly, to himself. The show's organizers designed the moment to be anthemic, and by God, it is.

So as I'm contemplating the next phase of Birdsong At Morning, I'm thinking about investment. So much energy, time, money, and most importantly, dreams are invested in this musical venture. Not television dreams of wealth—swimming pools, movie stars—but visions of music existing, a song as an entity. Complete, yet incomplete. Enacting the song, blowing wind into its sails, breathing life into it. Those kinds of dreams.

We're about to embark on another recording. It's a big ocean, and if not exactly uncharted territory, we're working with a pretty sketchy map. There are so many elements to sailing on the open waters, a sequence of events that make the voyage possible. First, you gotta build the boat. But even before that, you've got to convince somebody to front you the money to build the boat. You've got to describe the boat and the adventure. You've got to wow them with tales of daring-do, and islands bursting with riches. Once the money is in your pocket, you have to turn it into planks, bows and sterns. Carefully measuring, cutting and re-cutting, sanding, polishing, making things shiny and watertight. Eventually, the big day arrives and you try to summon a full wind, fill the sails, and set the boat on its course. The trick is to remember why you built the thing in the first place, to find the energy to set sail when you've been up for three straight weeks sawing and sanding. To remember the dream, to be invested in the moment.

So as I begin drafting a business plan for investors, investigating new spaces to set up shop, delving into the recording process, and planning for the release, the challenge will be to maintain the connection, to envision the dream, to be invested. I'll let you know how it's going, and maybe these postings can serve as a reminder to myself about dreams, moments, and investments. There will be an answer...

– Alan Williams

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Birdsong At Morning founder Alan Williams periodically documents creative processes, production challenges, and business endeavors.