A Conversation with William Fitzsimmons – HuffPost 6.6.11

Mike Ragogna: William, your album Gold In The Shadow landed on the U.S.’s Billboard‘s Heatseekers, Digital Albums, Folk Albums, and Top 200 charts, and in Canada, you also made a strong impact. What are your thoughts about these chart successes and were you surprised?
William Fitzsimmons: Well, I’m honored any time something I do is met well by others, and I’m definitely continually surprised by how broadly it seems the songs have spread over the past several years. I’m proud of what I do, but the truth is I never would have figured there would be this many people who would find connection with this type of music, especially given the dark tone of some of it.

MR: Did you write all the songs for Gold In The Shadow specifically for this project?

WF: I did. I’m not the type of writer who can sit down and write a song on a whim. I really need to be motivated and mused by a very specific subject or theme. I need to build up momentum and spend time putting myself in the necessary emotional and effective place before anything good starts to come out. When I write, that’s all I’m setting about to do. The same goes for touring and recording. I’m rather jealous of my musician friends who can take a bathroom break and come back with a beautiful chorus, but that’s not me.

MR: It took many years before you began songwriting, what’s the reason?

WF: The Beatles. I figured they pretty much covered everything better than anybody ever would, so what was the point in trying to second that? Truthfully, I just never felt when I was younger that I had anything of worth to say or add to the catalog of wonderful art that already existed. It wasn’t until I was older and actually lived through some difficult things that I started to feel compelled to get some of those things outside of my head.

MR: Does your experience as a psychologist enter into your creative process?

WF: It is the primary thought and concern with every word and melody I write. I don’t want to be the type of musician that simply entertains someone, I want someone to hear these songs and be able to find some sort of catharsis or universality through them. I want a real emotional reaction, I think that’s the reason why I was given the opportunity to do this in the first place. Music, at its best, is an incredibly therapeutic tool, even when you don’t realize it consciously. I want to be as intentional about that as I can. In that sense, I never really left the work of therapy, I just practice it in a slightly different modality.

MR: Wonderfully put. I want to approach this delicately, but having had two blind parents, communication must have been challenging growing up. Do you feel comfortable going into how this may have affected your communication skills and how that affects your creative process to this day?

WF: I think the most difficult part of growing up with disability in the house was not being able to experience the world in the same way my parents did and vice versa. I think we forget how primary vision is to us and how we use it to filter and comprehend nearly everything we come across. When you remove the eyes, the ears truly become the most important connection with the physical world. So, yes, there are areas of “disconnectivity” that we’ve had to struggle with as a family. But my parents used music from a very young age with me to bridge the gap that our physical differences caused. It’s a language unto itself and it was something that we could all experience on a level playing field. The dearth of focus on the visual world effects mostly everything I do and my approach to understanding and writing music is much more about speaking a language than giving pleasure. Sound, to me, is the way in which the world makes the most sense.

MR: In creating the album, what was the recording process like?

WF: It was actually rather different than the recording of the first few records, which are admittedly all rather darkly themed. I wanted this record to be free of the constraints and unyielding specificity that I put into the previous ones. This was much more about laying a song out and spending however much time it took to figure out where it was the song wanted to go. I have a penchant for over-controlling situations and a deathly fear of letting things happen as they may. So, as challenging as it was to chase something freely, it was very rewarding.

MR: Can you go into the backstory of “Let You Break” and how Julia Stone became involved?

WF: I’ve come to have a great distaste for the death of sincerity that has taken place in art and popular culture in the last couple decades, to the point where irony is so salient it’s difficult to even know what someone really means when they speak. I think sincerity goes hand in hand with effectiveness in communication, and I honestly just wanted to write a song that was so clearly and unashamedly about rescue, commitment, and protection that it would cut to the crux of those themes without any distraction. I’ve written a great deal about how diseased relationships can become, it was very cathartic to sing about the converse of that.

Even though my vision for the affectivity of the song was clear from the beginning, I wasn’t pleased with any iteration of the song we tried over the course of several months. I’ve been a fan of Julia’s for a little while and we’re on the same record label, so it was just a passing suggestion that someone made and, of course, I was open to trying it. She was kind enough to record on the song and when I heard her take for the first time I knew the song was complete.

MR: Of all the songs on the album, are there any that were the most challenging to create either from an emotional or technical perspective?

WF: I won’t ever release an album without completing what I call an “anchor song;” a song which encompasses the broad story the overall record is meaning to tell and, without which, the record would not make functional and fluid sense. For my first few records, those songs came early and in the midst of the writing. But for the new album, it wasn’t until all the other songs were recorded and mixed that it I was able to develop the right direction I needed to go. The song “Gold in Shadow,” to me, is that song, and even though it’s basically just one guitar and vocal, it took me longer to record that one than any of the others. I think the ones that are the most personal and vulnerable are the most difficult to let go of. There’s a part of you that wants to keep those ideas and ghosts to yourself.

MR: Will you be touring to support the album?

WF: I’m just finishing up a US tour at the moment for the new album, and will be heading overseas to begin touring it in a few weeks. But we’ll be doing more touring both in the States and abroad throughout the remainder of the year as well.

MR: Do you have any advice for new artists?

WF: The best words I think I could give to anyone getting started as a songwriter is to commit yourself to writing and singing about things you actually care about in a way that you can look back and be satisfied with. What does it gain someone to have success and be surrounded by creations that you don’t have a real connection with? If you make songs that have substance and purpose for you, regardless of the reception or outcome, you’ll have nothing to regret.