A New Album Release: Anything With Strings

Dearest Friends, I’m happy to announce the release of my new album, Anything With Strings, available on all streaming services. This is a collaborative work brought into being with the contributions of these brilliant souls: 
- Jonny Daly – production, arrangement, guitars, keyboards, percussion, vocals
- Diane Coll – backing vocals, percussion
- Peter Joseph McDade – drums, percussion
- Thom Bowers – bass, backing vocals
- John Pecak – additional guitars
- Mark McCrite – additional guitars, sitar
- Mike Gamble – additional drumsGreg Wright – mastering
- Pam Shaouy – artwork

Whether you’re a beginner or veteran of a creative art like writing, painting, songwriting, and more, you and I find ourselves in a unique moment with two big challenges. First, we’re ten years into a fascistic era in the United States. At its start I had struggled to write a decent song. I had felt overwhelmingly angry and despondent, and those emotions were the only ones that came from my pen. It made for good therapy but unsatisfying art. My songs had a bitter sameness to them. If you’re in that place right now, we are kindred. 

However, that changed over time. Though I still feel those emotions, at times even more strongly than before, I’ve also felt a growing sense of fellowship with those on the same path, and a surprising onset of hope in witnessing our neighbors care for one another in ways I had never expected. These sentiments have fueled much of my new music once I allowed myself to feel them more fully.

If you’re blocked as I had been, then I hope you too can draw from your whole spectrum of emotions, and not just your most overwhelming one, to get past your blocks. Your work is a natural and urgent response to the moment we’re in; it is humanity in response to inhumanity, and it is humanity’s time to shine in its full expression. 

The other challenge we face together is the digital elephant in the room, AI. Its current rate of progress has some creative people wondering “Why should I bother anymore?”. If that’s you, I ask you to consider this: if you’re in it for the love of your craft, my stance is that AI is not capable of replacing you. 

Yes, generative AI can produce slick, impressive results, but mainly through searching, retrieving, and putting together fragments of what has already been created. In other words, generative AI is a bigger, faster variant of autocomplete. Technologically, this is a marvel, but entering an AI prompt will never be able to match the inner adventure, the self discovery, and the personal fulfillment of having created something by yourself. It is hard work, and it is necessary work. 

Musician Nick Cave views songwriting as “part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value… it is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes in the inner workings of the song their own blood, their own struggle, their own suffering.” To me, this principle extends beyond music to any of the arts. The creative act is more than putting out a product. It is something that changes you, that expands you. The wonder of this is that your internal journey can spark your audience to undergo theirs. This act of mass discovery is something a machine can never touch. 

Wrap up your unfinished draft and put it out in the world. 

Especially now. 

Love to you all, Bill

Listen now:
- YouTube Music 
- Apple Music
- Pandora 
- Amazon Music
- Spotify