Will Orchard, a southern New England-based folk musician, put out his first record under his own name earlier this month. His music sits comfortably somewhere between traditional folk and folktronica, incorporating analog and digital textures to create rich, yet minimal soundscapes as if world-building for his narratively driven lyrics. He weaves intimate portraits of places and people with touches of the magic and surrealism that pervade the everyday. Though only in his early-twenties, Orchard has already released more music than many artists do in a lifetime, and he is just getting started. Double Negative caught up with Will Orchard on the road between tour stops in St. Louis and Chicago. Orchard is currently touring in support of his latest record, Old Friends on the Mountain, self-released January 3 and available for listening and purchase on Bandcamp.
Old Friends on the Mountain is a fresh start for Will Orchard. Though in some ways a debut, it is by no means his first release. With more than 100 EPs on Bandcamp Orchard is nothing short of prolific. Beginning in high school, with his project Littleboybigheadonbike, Orchard challenged himself to release an EP every week. The project was meant as an exercise in creativity and an attempt to overcome the self-criticism and over-editing many artists struggle with when putting their work out publicly. “I just wanted to be more prolific and be less critical of myself and see where that would take me,” Orchard stated. “It got me into a way of writing that was a little bit more meditative and got me into this philosophy of mine, to never say no to an idea. And to never say no to a song.” He has released hundreds and hundreds of songs over the years, giving into what he calls the “mystical element of songs,” saying, “They just come sometimes and you can't explain it. It's just there and you can either do something about it and write the song, or ignore it, or be critical of it and shoot it down and try to modify it to the point where it doesn't have the same beauty. And it got me into the idea that I'm just never gonna say no to a song. I'm always gonna just write it. And even if I hate it when it's done, at least I wrote something.” This philosophy has created not only a huge body of work from Orchard but work that is truly as impressive in sound and content as it is in scope.
Will Orchard has grown into both the clarity and brevity of this latest release through the massive volume and the breakneck pace of Littleboybigheadonbike. He found the challenge of keeping to the one EP per week schedule sometimes became obsessive, putting himself under a “silly amount of pressure” to keep it up—but through the process, it all became natural. With hundreds of songs released over the years the rhythm of writing and releasing material became second nature as he embraced the ideas that came to him. He continues to write songs at the same pace, but no longer feels the need to release them all, answering this question he posed about the end of the project: “Do I really need to force myself to show them to everyone in order for me to feel complete or good about myself as an artist or something like that?” It was this new approach that brought Orchard to his new project and the release of Old Friends on the Mountain.
Though Littleboybigheadonbike was the project of Will Orchard, there was a certain distance between himself and the music he was releasing, “I almost didn't want the listener to necessarily associate it with a person,” he explained. But this new project is different. It is more directly personal. Old Friends on the Mountain bears both Orchard’s name and face, a leap from the moniker and more abstract artwork of his previous releases. “With this one, I want it to be this person's record, as opposed to all these ideas,” Orchard said. He wasn’t sure whether Old Friends would be released as his own debut or as something of a comeback record for Littleboybigheadonbike, but it seems to occupy a space as both. The record itself carries with it the style he developed with Littleboybigheadonbike, but it has something new about it as well. There is a cohesion of both narrative and sound on Old Friends that has not been central to either Orchard’s previous albums, Big Blue Butterflies and god damn wonderland, though not to the detriment of either. “I wanted to give this record what it needed in terms of songs, and nothing more. I wanted to be consistent, I wanted to tell a story, and I wanted to say something,” Orchard said about Old Friends, “I think a lot of what this record was about was just being okay with minimalism and subtlety.”
The record was self-recorded and produced by Orchard and mixed by Jeff Prystowsky of Providence, RI’s The Low Anthem, a band that has inspired Orchard for years. It stands firmly grounded in the tradition of folk music, with light, story-driven vocals, and centered acoustic guitar, but the production of the record remains incredibly fresh. With analog and electronic textures layered on the acoustic instrumentation and the inclusion of the occasional, well-placed horn, Old Friends on the Mountain is more than meets the eye. Orchard has drawn in a number of elements to create a richly layered sound that is warm and well worn, but also alive with the magic of the unexpected. He described wanting to create a sound for the album that reflected where he was when writing it, describing this place as, “this sort of mystical bubble.” With drum machines, horns, and the recorded sound of a two-track tape machine whirring like crickets in the background, Old Friends offers a subtle but complex listen that compliments the sparse, but deeply compelling lyrics of the record.
Old Friends on the Mountain was primarily written while Orchard was living in Connecticut between a farm with a group of friends and the house previously home to Soul Mountain, a writers colony formed by the former poet laureate of Connecticut, Marilyn Nelson. He writes and sings about this time and group of people in a way that is deeply affected by the place. There is a sense of nostalgia that pervades the album with the depth of sound and narrative that drives the listener through the record like a memory. Orchard said, “The house impacted the songs because any time I was there, I just felt a little bit like I was just in a bubble in space and time and I felt very separate from anyone that I knew or anything that I had done. And I think it allowed me to look at my whole life through the lens of nostalgia.” He continued, “I would almost feel like whatever had happened before was so long ago. And it allowed for this sort of bubble of comfort in isolation.”
This feeling of connection, despite distance, dances through the record with lyrical references to things lost between people, to time or space, or to oneself. Some are found again and some are seemingly gone for good, but not always for the worse. Orchard speaks about these songs as moments that stick in his memory, each carrying with it a story, some as simple as sitting by a window in the kitchen or reflecting upon the weirdness of being free at four o’clock in the afternoon. Other tracks recount nights with friends, the pain of missing someone no longer there, or weave a funny tale of self-acceptance with a stomach full of flowers. Old Friends on the Mountain is an exercise in subtlety, but not one that leaves its result lacking. Full of joy and sorrow and self-reflection, this record is a triumph for Orchard as he begins a new project and steps out from under the moniker Littleboybigheadonbike, and onto the scene as himself.
Follow Will Orchard on Facebook or Bandcamp to listen to or purchase his record and check out all his previous work as Littleboybigheadonbike.
Listen to Old Friends on the Mountain on Bandcamp:
