Tim Easton photo by Madison Thorn
Tim Easton Gets More Personal For Find Your Way
Globe-trotting troubadour Tim Easton will be releasing new album Find Your Way on May 17th, 2024, via Black Mesa Records, and this collection represents something distinctive for him in terms of the way the album was made and how it sounds. The songs on the album spring from a time of more focused and productive songwriting than previously, and Easton’s approach, going up to Canada to record live with friends and colleagues, also represented a departure for him, albeit a plan he’d long hoped to implement.
The songwriting resulted in a handful of more personal tracks mixed in with intriguing story songs and even a love song or two. That personal approach was freeing for Easton, and it coincided with a little bit of letting go when it came to sound, too, allowing a great set up of live musicians together to take their course. For someone who has released many albums, Easton consequently feels the freshness and excitement of Find Your Way that makes it all worthwhile for him. I spoke with him about the features of his life that allowed these new experiences to come about for him and why there’s always room in the world for one more love song.
Americana Highways: Does this particular collection of songs hail from a certain period of time, or are they drawn from an ongoing process of gathering songs?
Tim Easton: I would say that the pandemic has slowed us down, but in the songwriting world, it got me to focus a lot more on it. I started a Patreon page, where I established that I was going to turn in at least one new song a month to my patrons. I started getting into it and then I didn’t want to give them a crappy song, so I started working harder on songwriting. I did kind of up my game in that department.
This album has a few songs that were written during that time, but what it also has is a mix of a few songs that are really personal about my life, like the title track. That’s me I’m talking about. Sometimes when someone sings in the first person, they are doing a character. As in the case of the song “Little Brother,” that is a character study. I am a little brother, actually, as the youngest of five boys and two girls in my family. But I wanted to write Bangor, Maine into a song. I wanted to play something that started in the Northeast and have it stretch out, with a bit of tragedy and darkness, and like a short movie in a song. But all of these songs were once demos that I gave with my Patreon page, and then took them up to Canada and recorded them there with the Canadian band Leeroy Stagger.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zoin2Rwg4pk%3Fsi%3DRIX_4-a0QuuZRO_l
AH: Do you think that it was a positive thing that Patreon gave you a renewed push for songwriting? Are you happy about that?
TE: Very much so. That’s actually my favorite part of my job. These are fans and friends that truly want to help me and also want to hear about what I’m doing creatively. They are into the deepest aspects of it so they are getting the clearest vision of my creative process. I try not to bombard them too much, but I do send them a lot. I didn’t know that was going to happen, that I was going to become a workaholic on Patreon! [Laughs] I do show up for work there and turn in a good amount of stuff.
It’s really a great way to support what you love. I’ve been a full-time songwriter for quite a while now, eeking things out and getting by, without a lot of major hits, but a few songs in film and television, and of course, gigs. I travel a lot. I don’t have business advice for artists, other than just write the best songs that you can!
AH: How comfortable were you sharing so much from your own life on Patreon? Some people struggle with that. I know you’ve been interacting with people your whole life, whether as a storytelling performer, or even busking, though.
TE: No, I feel like it comes naturally to me to talk about some of the heavier aspects of personal stuff about the songs. I don’t feel like I have anything to hide, really. It’s part of who I am to be real in that department. It helps me complete the circle of not just songwriting, but being of service to someone who is maybe experiencing a similar thing and might need a little bit of a light shone on it or a little bit of guidance. I feel really lucky that I can write songs and have a cathartic release through it.
AH: How did this end up being “the Canadian album” that was recorded up north?
TE: That was a very fortunate thing. My mom was Canadian, so I was able to connect with Leeroy Stagger, who owns a beautiful studio in British Columbia, up on the island of Vancouver, in British Columbia. I was able to connect with him, having worked with him previously, and he wrote the grant, pitching that he wanted to produce me. That I had a Canadian mom was part of it. Basically, I got to fulfill that dream of coming up to Canada, in a beautiful location, and making a record in my friend’s studio, called Neighborhood Recorders. He put together a band. We all got together in a room and made a record and it’s very much the sound of acoustic instrumentation played together in a room. That is certainly what we were going for and that’s what we ended up with, plus a little more magic than we expected!
AH: Yes, there is significant magic on the album. It’s very polished for a live recording. It sounds incredibly focused and clear.
TE: To me, it doesn’t sound like a Nashville album made on the grid. It’s the sound of musicians playing together in a room and that’s what happens when you get a bunch of musicians together in a room who do this for a living, which is the case with these guys. Leeroy knew that we were going to deliver this Folk-stew of a record with its own vibe. This is different from anything else I’ve made, and I’ve made quite a few records, so it’s nice to have something that jumps out and is sonically different than the other ones.
AH: Were you surprised by the outcome? Or did you try not to have expectations?
TE: I didn’t have any expectations. I just tried to let go. Leeroy had a vision. We played the songs three times, maybe, and we recorded the album in three days. There’s a little bit of overdubbing, but it’s pretty much that sound. I have these dreams about albums. Most obsessive songwriters, like myself, have ideas bubbling in their mind, like “Down the line, I want to make a Memphis album.” Or, “I want to make a Cajun album with Cajun musicians.” In this case, I wanted to go make an album in Canada and I didn’t want to guide them and tell them what to do. We were just jamming together. The results were very pleasing because I didn’t push anybody in any certain direction.
AH: The songs on the album each have a different flavor to them. One that’s really in its own world is “By The End of the Night,” which I think is the last track. To me, it has real 1950s vibes and reminded me of my parents’ and grandparents’ generation. The sound and the way it comes together are really special.
TE: I am so proud of the tune itself. It really did come from a place of The Everly Brothers and a classic crooner kind of song. I wanted to write something that sounded like a standard. Wouldn’t that be something, if it became a love song standard? I hope someone discovers it and takes it to a different place. In my limited singing range, I took it where I could, but I wanted to write a love song that a great crooner, like Harry Belafonte, could sing. I was really going for that.
I found my bag of cassettes during the pandemic, and I found one line on a cassette that became that song. There was one line that went, “By the end of the night.” That’s all it was. I finished it quickly. We recorded it, and we kept it very minimal, with a kind of a Latin vibe to it.
AH: I feel so reassured by the language you’re using because I thought of it as a crooner song and that it had a Latin feeling.
TE: It’s a song that also jumps out on the album. On the album, there’s some reassuring language for those who might be suffering, then there are some out-and-out story songs, then there’s this love song. Where did it come from? It did come from a real place of love. You don’t hear those kinds of songs often anymore. I tried to write a song where you couldn’t tell when it had been written.
I learned that from The Beatles, because the majority of their music was positive love songs. Sure, there’s “I Am The Walrus” or John being intense John, but the majority of it really comes from a place of love. Like Paul [McCartney] has said, the world can handle a few silly love songs. I don’t have that many in me, but another one that I play in a set is called “Next To You” and it was in a film and TV show. People invite me to sing it at their wedding. This one sounds like a wedding dance song.
AH: You have another love song on the album that’s kind of an anti-love song, called “Here For You.” Your vocal style is totally different on that one, too.
TE: Yes, I hear a little bit of attitude coming through on that one. I wrote that one at my dining room table, looking out one morning after a restless morning of not being able to sleep. I looked out and saw someone walking their dogs past, and this song came out of that moment, just post-divorce, but also from a place of therapy. I felt that life was too short to be agitated and angry, so I just wanted to establish that, “Hey, I’m here for you.” In a way, I see it as also a loving thing, too.
AH: That’s a very family thing to say, acknowledging that someone is still family, even if relationships change.
TE: My daughter is in that song as well. That just came out and I didn’t try to stop it. There’s that line, “We have our daughter, she’s mostly water,” which is kind of a tip-of-the-hat to Loudon Wainwright. I am really into that idea that we are 4/5 water, and the Earth is 4/5 water and we need water to survive. It’s part of my spirituality to be around water, getting on rivers, and the way that rain turns into rain, rivers, oceans, and then becomes rain again. What I wrote for that line that morning was, “She’s mostly water, and vinegar, too.” I had apple cider vinegar on the table.
Then I thought, I’ll go the James Taylor route, and write “fire” instead. Her mom’s a red head, a fiery red head, so I wrote that into the song. It’s nice to be real and write your own life into a tune, and not feel ashamed or embarrassed. I’m saying, “This is what happened, and we’re going to be okay.”
AH: The song feels somewhat like an exhalation, breathing out. I think part of that is that a lot of the lines lead onto each other, almost like a stream. That also goes with the watery feeling, too, which you were talking about.
TE: I do a lot of that, where I do a stream of consciousness thing, where I end a sentence with one word, and then ask, “What phrase starts with that word?” Something like, “Under the weather’s always changing.” I hear a little bit of everything in that song. I hear a little bit of Dylan in that song, like a song from Blonde on Blonde.
AH: I felt that it had more of an overt folk, bluegrass, roots aspect than some of the other songs.
TE: Yes, the melody can go either way on that one. I could yell it, I could soft sing it. That version was the one we went with.
Thanks so much for chatting with us, Tim Easton. Find more information and his music here: https://www.timeaston.com/
Enjoy our previous coverage here: Key to the Highway: Tim Easton
