[Editor’s note: You might recognize New York City-based songwriter and pianist Alan Walker as the frontman of NYC’s The Brilliant Mistakes between 1994 and 2011. He’s also since proven himself as a solo artist. On June 28, he’ll release his second solo album, A Little Too Late, via his own label Aunt Mimi’s Records. Walker worked with producer (and bassist/percussionist) Lincoln Schleifer (Donald Fagen, Levon Helm) and a talented group of musicians at Schleifer’s basement recording studio in the Bronx called Lincoln’s Log Cabin.
Walker’s backing band features John Morgan Kimock on drums, Steely Dan’s Jon Herington on electric guitars, and Rob Schwimmer on Hammond B3 and synthesizers. Other special guests on the album include guest vocalists Teresa Wiliams and Lucy Kaplansky, and acclaimed cellists Myron Lutzke and Jake Charkey, among others. Walker also works full time in book publishing as the Penguin Random House Vice President of Higher Education.
Today, Walker pens an essay for us reflecting on his career and new music.]
It’s been more than 40 years since I first started writing songs. Even before that, as a little kid I would come up with hooks and chorus lines in my head, although never anything close to a complete tune. When I first played in a band in high school, I remember writing some “pieces” that were mostly disjointed collections of chords and melodies that severely lacked cohesion. Structure soon revealed itself as we learned to play covers, and it slowly and painfully began to find its way into my novice song ideas. I was eighteen when we first recorded in a small studio in Portland, ME, and it was a moment of revelation. It sounded like music. We could do this thing.
After our first NYC gig at CBGBs in 1985, all I wanted to do was write and play, and for the first time I started to kinda’ sorta’ think of myself as a songwriter. Chords and melodies flowed out of me any time I was alone at a piano, but my lyrics were often not-so-subtle attempts at imitating contemporary heroes like Elvis Costello, Squeeze, Nick Lowe, Joel Jackson, Neil Finn, XTC, and Paul Westerberg. Not bad models to have for sure, but in the end, it was a phase I had to get through to find my own voice. And when I look back on it, that process took years, even decades.
I still often go back to what I call my slush pile of unfinished song ideas from that period. There’s a lot of material still bouncing around my brain (and on decades-old cassettes) in need of a better lyric or maybe that missing bridge that could turn a half-baked idea into something worth putting out into the world.
These days finding the motivation to do that work doesn’t come easy. Unlike those early years, it’s become much more of a struggle to write. My standards have become higher, sure, but also life happened in those forty years, which means that single-minded focus and drive that I once had isn’t always there, not to mention just plain old free time. Sometimes I go to my basement studio, and the last thing I want to do is sit down and write. But I also know how this works. When inspiration does strike, and a song does reveal itself, I can feel that creative desire return. And then I find myself being pulled towards the piano again and again as more ideas start to flow. Before I know it, I have an album’s worth of decent songs. At this stage I typically grow tired of hearing myself play them and start feeling that pull to hear that special magic that other musicians can bring to my material when we collaborate.
This is pretty much how my new album A Little Too Late came about. Some songs were new compositions, and some were updates on old ideas that had never seen the light of the day. The ballad-y single “Mama Kat” is one of those re-hashings, a decades-old verse and chorus that desperately needed a bridge to take the song to a different level from the repetitive feel of the verses. I also originally wrote it in a much lower key which not only made the song hard to sing but also made it far too somber and moody a thing. Each song on the album has its own little origin story I guess, and to be honest, I can’t even remember which song it was that started me on the way to making a full record. I just know at one point I felt the need to record 14 songs on VoiceMemos and send them to my producer friend Lincoln Schleifer to see if he thought I had anything worthwhile. I thought he’d reply with a few that he liked, but instead he came back with production and arrangement notes for all 14, and a budget well beyond my means, so the next step was to cut down to a more feasible nine songs. We’ll keep the other five for a later record.
As for the process itself, I’ve never been much of a buttons guy. I once bought a four-track in my late twenties but sold it a few months later. If I’m going down a rabbit hole I much rather it be the song itself, rather than trying to arrange and produce my own demos or music at home. Just give me a mic, a keyboard, a piece of paper and pen for lyrics (or these days an iPad) and I’m content. For demos I use VoiceMemos on my iPhone. Keeping things simple leaves me open to inspiration rather than being bogged down with drum patterns, EQs, effects, etc.
After all these years, I’m not sure I can put my finger on where the songs actually come from. I know much of it stems from being inspired by other music. But the seed of a song can come from anywhere: a line that pops in your head, an image, something you read or see on TV, an idea, a memory, a chord progression, a life event, a girl. Once a dear friend and bandmate had a line that he thought would make for a good song hook. I tried messing around with some chords, but the idea morphed into a completely different song, called “Crawl Back,” which wound up on The Brilliant Mistakes second album Dumb Luck. I had seen this thing on TV where all these mountain climbers were stuck at the top of the world waiting in line to get to the top of Everest, and it struck me that maybe we’d done everything we could do here on earth, and it was time to go back to the ocean where we once came from. I usually close my sets with this song all these years later, a crowd pleaser about de-evolution! I bring that up because that song reminds me that you can’t force anything, that the best kind of creativity is when you feel like the song is leading you down a path rather than the other way around. The process of letting go is what allows the unexpected to happen. I need to keep reminding myself this.
You can follow Alan on Facebook and listen to his music at Bandcamp.
Alan Walker
Contributor
Alan is a singer-songwriter and pianist from New York City best known as the former frontman of NYC's The Brilliant Mistakes between the early '90s through 2011. He also works full time in book publishing as VP of Higher Education at Penguin Random House.
