So I thought you were going to play the song first. Oh, no, no, no. You've heard it, right? Oh, yeah.
Bye-bye. Hello, and welcome to WNC Original Music, episode 128, the Envy Jack episode. Joining the podcast this week is Will Easter. Will is a very talented singer-songwriter.
His debut album, released in 2019, is Carolina Home, and his self-titled album was released in March of 2021. You can hear both of them now. We're going to talk about songs from both of them. Will has shared the stage with acts like Time Sawyer, Brooks Forsyth, Danger Muffin, and David Chillers.
All of his stuff, all of his music, and upcoming shows, everything like that, at willeastermusic.com. Will before the pandemic was playing close to 100 shows a year, and he's really starting to get back on track with that right now, so you can probably find him playing somewhere near you. But right now, here is Will Easter. Well, I don't care.
As long as I return to my care, it's not down and going, or fancy guard. It's also to be clear my words, place in this world. And as I look upon, it's so bad I'm out this time, when you're looking big, and the road may seem so low. As long as I return to my Carolina, if it's place, don't want to see a single tear of your face.
Because it might be going for quite some time. The only thing separating us will be miles. And I don't know how it'll come home. I know I'll be welcome here with open arms.
And just look at all this love that we share. In my heart you always will be there. And the road is tonight, which seems so low. I don't care.
As long as I can turn to my Carolina. My uncle, when I lived with him, he always called that kind of my anthem, my first year writing. Whenever I did write it, I was 18 or 19, and had a lot of things changing my life and just wanted to leave home. I think that's at any point when somebody's 18 or 19, they just want to get out of their parents' house and kind of go and do their own thing.
And at the time I never left home at all. So it was almost like I was speaking the future into existence in a way. Because then I moved to Will County, I lived in my aunt, and I was little for a while at school there at Will's Community College, ended up moving for the last, and one part of the song talks about moving towards that westward song and all that. So it's almost like I was seeing the future in a way at that time.
It has a really kind of a fast, has a particular kind of tempo that I'll hear a song like this recorded. And then it feels like it's easy to play too fast or too slow when you play it live. Oh 100%. Yeah.
And it's one of those songs like before, I mean, before everything shut down, it's the song that I would, it was guaranteed to play in a set, you know, because it is before this last time I put out. It was my most streamlined song, you know, it's an opening track to my Canadian album. And yeah, so I played that in many forms and fashions, whether it's with a full band or a trio or just by myself. So it's always changing how I play it.
I remember one particular show, I played, it's called Homeplace Brewing, and I was like, I haven't tried to play fast. I really enjoyed how it turned out. And I think it's important to do that too, playing live, because it does keep things more interesting after people have seen you a few times, but it also keeps it interesting for you as well. Yeah, yeah, to be able to mix it up.
It depends on your mood, you know, that night or something. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, definitely. So all these songs are off, they're off of a couple of albums.
Yes. Yeah. I put out Carolina Home back in 2019. And then over the course of this past fall, I recorded myself title album here and released that in March.
I had a fun song, just a play, it was fun song to write. I actually wrote that, or I came up with the idea of writing it when I worked at a Kaiton canoe river company out in Danbury, North Carolina, at the Danbury Company. What kind of company? A Kaiton canoe.
A company. Yeah. I actually started that job after I graduated from high school, it was going to be a summer job, and I ended up seeing it up for seven years, and I managed the place and all that. But as I was managing the office one day, I was like, man, I don't write something at the river because I spent a lot of time on it, you know, just around it in general.
And a river has a life to itself, whether it's the natural biology around the river or metaphorically as well, how it's flowing. You know, you have your parts in a little bit, but you also have your times where you're just kind of floating there, and it's very calm water. And your trip on the river, you're going to, what do you see the whole time? It's just like, it's always changing.
It's always exciting to just round the band. And are any of these songs that you co-write any of these songs? Everything recorded and released right now, everything I've recorded so far has been, it's all written by me. Now, I've been one to co-write.
I don't know why, I don't know if I'm uncomfortable with it, or I'm not a spatula writer, because some of my friends are, and I love to sit and just sit around a song and look back on a situation and see how I felt throughout the process, at least for me, because a lot of the people that are just autobiographical, and all that. So I've never been able to co-write well, I never really attempted to, this past summer, I did a little bit of co-writing with a body of mine, but yeah, all of the straight up my songs. Have you been in bands before? Like where it's like a group of people?
You know what a band is? I wasn't explaining what a band is. It's like a group of people who plays music. I don't know if you ever heard that.
But yeah, what bands have you been in? Or what's been your favorite bands? Yeah, so either at the very end of high school or at the end of the undergraduate high school, I was in a band that was kind of Bluegrass-esque, but it wasn't like Bluegrass songs. One of the reasons it wasn't very traditional is because of me.
And that was called Hills and Hollers. It was my buddy from high school, AJ Bennett, Dustin Nolan. And that's one of the times, I grew as a musician in that band, because until then, I literally, I started writing at 17 or 18, so I didn't have much experience writing or playing at the time. And so I grew a lot as a musician just by sitting and playing with other people.
My buddy AJ, my buddy AJ, the other musician, he's a heck of a musician all around. He's one of those guys who could pick up an instrument and just play it and not even know how to play it. So just be even about him. Definitely help me out.
He introduced me to Bluegrass James and all that, so even after we were practiced, it's a nice first show, whenever we go to Bluegrass James, like right at the road, with his house. He would be like, hey, man, I know you're not very traditional, but they're going to make you play how Bluegrass James worked. Like you had to play it note for note, how the song is. So that kind of like, like, homie into being a little more traditional with picking and all that.
But yeah. That's a great name. Hills and dollars. Oh, yeah, definitely.
So that was out in Soak County. I guess it was named Barry as well. And so, you know, that's in the foothills and the mountains at the same time, because it's the Sartown Mountain Range is right around there, but it's in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. So there's a lot of rolling hills and all that, a lot of valleys.
So we were kind of trying to decide on a band name that we go before our first show. We're like, what do we call ourselves? I kind of look at the window. I was like, what's the whole hills and the hollers?
And that song, the way it was written and how it was released was told. That song was a very slow song when it refers to a very mournful song. But it ends up adding like an eagle's rock and roll sound if you're recording. Yeah, that's not what the eagles.
Yeah. Yeah. And that wasn't even intended, but that's just kind of how it turned out. So we're at the album here in Boone.
We all went out for a beer that night. And we had no intention of recording at all. But like all the guys I was recording with, I went to Boonsaloon for a beer and, you know, we were like, Hey, let's go, you know, try to see how one of these songs worked out with us all playing together on it. Because until then, I presented the song to my buddy Gabe who engineered the album and played drums on it.
And he would bring musicians in and they would record it. So we got to talk about the bar and we were like, let's just go see how this sounds. And it was, I loved it. I think we actually used that recording from us.
Just like, you know, just jamming here as a click on the album. Yeah. Yeah. What's the name of that studio?
Ted of the Co-op recording house. That's in Boone. Yeah. Anyone say just real quick who owns or runs that?
Gabriel Jones. And Will Easter in just a few moments. I want to remind you to go to his website, willeastermusic.com. Also, as usual, there are links to his Instagram and Facebook and all those other sites in the show notes.
So look for that. Also, don't forget to follow or subscribe to the podcast, wherever you get your podcast or at WNCoriginalMusic.com. Also follow the podcast on Facebook and Instagram, where you'll see extras from the show, video clips, a whole lot of nonsense that is only tangentially related to the podcast itself. But that's probably the best stuff really.
Quick correction from last week's episode with Mitch Stewart of Vagabond Crowe, 2-2 and CutTime are the same thing, so we were both right. Hi. This is the amazing, wonderful Lisa Rose, and you're listening to WNC original music. That's, it's always been a favorite of mine.
I wrote that my first year here at F-State, or at F-State. I was kind of writing for a while and ended up writing that and cruising or starting on the two songs within like about a week of each other. And that song just kind of, in a way, like a coming of age, like, you know, in the opening line, it talks about sometimes the drinks you enjoy, just like out to late, which is like, you know, in college. At least that was my experience.
And yeah, it's just kind of a, just people in trucking all kind of thing for me. You know, just, you know, you've got to grow, you have to, you have to change. And, you know, had your ambition to focus on a lot of the way as well. I think a lot of your songs, most of them have, even the slower songs, still have a rhythm, you know, a tempo.
It's hard to, I don't even know if you have like any ballads, but this, even the slower songs have a drive to them. Right, yeah. I don't know if you have, that comes from playing a lot of live shows. How often do you play blutches?
Well, we're now that, you know, things are opening back up. Yeah. We are, we're playing a few shows in June. We've got pretty much having a new band at this point, a new backing band.
So, you know, June, we were going down to Raleigh this Friday to play a bowstring pizza and brew yard, and then I'm doing a show in Elkin, the night after that. So we're kind of getting our, when our feed again, it comes to shows, and a lot of this has happened very fast because, you know, back in the winter, a lot of folks that I'm learning now, we're looking at a lot of shows from the summer. We were still recording and working on the album. So, you know, we were a little bit late to the game when it comes to booking, but, you know, I end up working on all the trudges for shows for the guys, because, you know, if you don't have them fed, they'll go find somebody else to play.
You know, so, but in 2019, I think I played radio shows and live shows and all that, close to 90 shows. No, but not mistaken. Yeah. You know, those were in breweries and bars, but we ended up getting to get close.
I played Ram Cats and Winston Salem and the poor house, the Carolina Theatre and all that. So, like, I had so much momentum coming out of 2019 and I had in 2020, I thought I was like, I'm going to do a full time, I'm going to do a full time, I'm going to do a full time, and make music full time. Obviously, that didn't work out, but I'm hoping to, you know, hit the ground run in the summer. I think I wrote that whenever I moved to Wilkes County.
Yes, yeah, because that was in the, in the winter of 2015. And apart from that song talks about my card breaking down. And so what that was, I was hanging out with one of my best friends from back home. He is his girlfriend, now fiance, and downtown Winston, which I hadn't seen in a while.
I want to hang out with him. I called right down the way there. It's cold winter and all that. And so that's really how that song started out.
Kind of coming, not necessarily from a very dark place, but coming from a time of hardship and trying to see the positive, or at least being optimistic about where you go, you were going from there. But yeah, that's, yeah, I love that song. I used to be very hesitant to play that live, but that song is actually had one of the best responses from the album. And I've actually had that happen a lot.
Fall breeze, one of the songs on Caroline home, I almost didn't put that on the album, but basically I had a time. He was like, maybe you just recorded the song, even if you don't even put it on there, just record it. That's another one. I wasn't going to put it out.
And it ended up like people were just like, wow, like, it's the response always amazing. Why you did not put it on the album? Do you think you didn't like it as much as some of the other songs? I just didn't think it was high energy enough.
And I was based on that off of playing live in the response, I would get playing live. People tend to play a more upbeat song. They're going to be more responsive and attentive to that. You can kind of see it dance around a little bit.
And it makes me feel like that's the one to put off on record. Right. Yeah. Have you gotten any kind of, what song do you get the most feedback on when an individual song?
Possibly. Or negative. Yeah. Yeah.
I think that fall breeze is always one that's just like, wow, like, and that's, I don't know. You can just kind of just see people watch, especially the full band show. It just gets people's attention. I don't know why, but it does.
And same like, go back to the self research. It's here recently when I play it in folks. And it could be that I've instrumentally have grown. I do a little bit more picking on it.
It's so just strumming. But I think it's a matter of delivery for those two. But yeah, I guess the reason they say that in my mind is because they surprise me the most. I'm still surprised.
But I guess if the song's good, it's good. Okay. One more time. I want to thank Will for being on the show.
Again, you can find his music at WillEasterMusic.com and check the show notes for other links to his music. And also don't forget to follow him on social media so that you know where he's going to be playing next. It gets a really great show, just a really exciting time. You can tell by the music on the podcast and it's even better live.
Also, wherever you live, go out and enjoy local music if you can safely. We're kind of in between place right now where you might live in a place or you might have a place that you can enjoy music safely. And maybe not, but be safe wherever you are, but try to enjoy some local music live or recorded or any way you can. The closing song this week is from Iris Marlow.
She's a singer-songwriter from Chicago, Illinois, My Home Town. She's been playing and writing music since she was three years old. She has two albums out already and she is working and releasing songs from her next album, which is inspired by spaghetti westerns and The Occult. She was nice enough to send the first song from that album, which is called Home, for us to listen to this week.
Links to her music in the show notes or you can find her by searching Iris Marlow on Spotify. Here's Iris Marlow, have a good week. You can drag me through the fires but I'm never coming home. I can leave the past for honey cause I'm never coming home.
I'm never coming home. I'll come back to your arms, I feel like a ghost who was there. A someone who I used to be, it's not your fault to see since change the sun would go down on me. Everything I once put me drag me through the fires but I'm never coming home.
I can leave the past for honey cause I'm never coming home. They took black eye look way beyond it and they finally feel so free. Yeah, you hear this, Logan? Mmm, there's so much CBD in this building.
Do you guys want some more CBD or are you full?