Our daughter arrived three weeks early, last Thursday, and it’s the most beautiful time of year. I am endeavoring to spend as much time as possible outside, spending time with her, Blair and our family, and taking the extra hour here and there to work on finishing building my study/office/home studio in our basement, so that I can help make room for this new life in the rest of our home. I will be away from performing for at least a few months. In short, I hope I won’t be on here much, but please text or email if you need me. Sending love to everyone!
((Will Stratton)) dropped by The Local to play a new, unreleased song “Driftwood” ahead of the free, all ages ‘Local Waves at The Local’ concert this Wed night, with @meglui
7PM doors, 7:30 show, you can RSVP (in bio) to hold a spot but it’s ok to just roll up as well. Video of the full song is up on Chosen Family YouTube!
@willstratton@thelocalsaugerties@wgxc_90.7fm@chosenfamilypresents
Spring is almost here, and I’m coming out of hibernation (sort of!). I’ve been mostly off of this app for a little while, which has been great for my brain, but duty calls. This run of shows in the Hudson Valley in March and April will be something special. I’ve been slowly working on a new collection of songs which I’m excited about—the new material is slow, exploratory, intuitive, and very fun to play. I’ll be playing at least a couple of these songs for the first time at these shows.
These shows will also be the last times I perform in public for a long while—Blair and I are expecting a new human in our lives in May (!!!), and I’ll be taking a roughly six-month hiatus from performing to start to figure out how to be a dad, and how best to balance it with work and music making. I hope to see some of you before this life-altering, exhilarating, mind bending event.
Experimenting to see if playing a song to my sweater makes it dry faster. Ending up in kind of a Ken Burns Civil War world, musically. That can’t always be avoided. #kenburns
I hope everyone is staying sane and healthy out there. Here’s a song I wrote this weekend on my yard sale guitar while watching Jeremiah Johnson (1972). I’m pretty happy with the guitar now that I’ve removed and reglued the bridge and filed down the saddle, and I’m also happy with the song.
I’m still struggling with my voice, I think due to CPAP usage—I’m having to contort it in new ways in order to avoid a sort of Chewbacca-like flutter in my upper range. I saw an ENT and they didn’t see anything amiss, so I’ve been trying to do occluded vocal tract exercises to build up some strength. I may try to see another specialist soon. If anyone out there has advice, let me know. Anyway, I hope you like the song. I’m finding myself more attracted to kind of plain Jane traditional sounding melodies these days, and it’s freeing to no longer be working on a concept album.
This weekend I’ll be playing bass on some tunes by my dad and my brother’s father in law in Collingswood NJ as part of their Porchfest, as well as playing a few songs of my own. And then a week from today, on Monday, I’ll be at @theyardbeacon with @kristindaelyn and @adeline.hotel . 🫡🤙
Update: the Monday show has been postponed! Details for the rescheduled date to come later
I bought this extremely lovely 1967-68 Goya G-13M at a yard sale outside Poughkeepsie this weekend. It sounds and plays beautifully. The only thing wrong with it is the bridge was coming unglued, and so the action was too high. I was going to hand it over to @unionfrog for a professional redo of the bridge, and I may still, but something got into my head about trying to DIY it for fun first. I’ve removed the bridge with a putty knife, put it in the microwave for fifteen seconds, weighed it down for a few minutes with an axe head to undo the warping caused by however long the bridge has been under tension while compromised, and now I’m strategizing about next steps. The thing is, the tension from the strings is significantly lower than on a steel string guitar, so perhaps some scraping of the finish, Titebond, and lengthy application of strategic weight will be enough to make a lasting repair. We will see!
Just announced: a night of fingerstyle guitar and indie folk with Will Stratton, Adeline Hotel and Kristin Daelyn. September 29 @ The Yard! Tickets on sale now!
UK tour with @jhammond_trippers.and.askers has come to its end! I didn’t take many pictures, and have swiped one or two here from our compatriots. It was very dense, like most tours—long stretches of monotony dotted with moments of transcendence and euphoria. I’ve already said a lot of individual thank yous but one last collective thank you to everyone who helped us along the way with booking and routing this quixotic July jaunt—especially @mrsimonraymonde , whose counsel was crucial. I am completely spent, but nothing that a long bath and a good sleep can’t fix. Thanks everyone 💜
