Denison Witmer - Walking on a Cloud

An honest songwriter: this is the definition that best suits Denison Witmer, a young American singer-songwriter who paints the emotional landscapes sketched in his lyrics with pastel shades, through delicate acoustic phrasing and dreamy melodies. Discovered by Don Peris, Denison boasts numerous collaborations with a variety of artists, including Sufjan Stevens and Rosie Thomas, as well as, of course, Don himself, the deus ex machina of The Innocence Mission. Ahead of the imminent release of his new studio album, we retrace with Denison more than ten years of a career built on generous, sincere songwriting, steeped in a profound spirituality and an out-of-the-ordinary sensibility, both stylistic and emotional.

You're 31 and already on your seventh studio album. What is the main "engine" behind such intense and prolific artistic inspiration?

I don't consider myself a particularly prolific person. I always have a number of big questions about life running through my head, and music is my way of trying to understand the world around me. I use songs to try to explain myself to myself. In general, my approach to songwriting is a bit like keeping a diary constantly updated, and then adding music to the words.

Looking back over your discography, what immediately stands out, especially to a record-collecting music geek, is your first self-produced cassette, "My Luck, My Love", now a cult item that's virtually impossible to find. The name seems almost prophetic, like a precious amulet meant for the chosen few. Can you tell me about how it came about?

I recorded "My Luck, My Love" during my senior year of high school, as a project for my English class. Everyone taking the course could choose their own kind of project to bring to the final exams; the only real requirement from the teacher was that each project include some form of writing. At first I planned to write a book of poems, but then I thought it would be nice to try recording music for the first time in my life, and I also liked the idea of being able to give my family and friends songs I'd written myself. So I recorded "My Luck, My Love", of which only 250 copies were pressed. Although "My Luck, My Love" is technically my first work, I don't actually consider it my debut album. In my eyes, the real debut is "Safe Away", because that's the album with which I started touring and taking the whole musical thing more seriously. "My Luck, My Love" is little more than a hobby that got a bit bigger.

"My Luck, My Love" has never been reissued. Is there a "sentimental" reason behind that decision?

There's no sentimental reason, more a bit of embarrassment. (smiles)

I was really very young, and I'm not sure I want people listening to those songs. Still… who knows, maybe one day I'll make those tracks available online for free.

Your first album released in a more official capacity, "Safe Away", came about under the best possible auspices, since it had the support—both as producer and musician—of a sacred monster like Don Peris (The Innocence Mission), also kicking off a genuine artistic partnership. Your light, linear songwriting pairs beautifully with Peris's gentle picking, which embroiders the most delicate guitar flourishes onto the fragile fabric of your songs. How did your collaboration come about?

I met Don Peris when I was 16, and he was originally my guitar teacher. After giving me guitar lessons for almost a year, Don asked me if I'd ever thought about recording my music, and offered to help me since he had the equipment needed for recording. Actually, Don also recorded "My Luck, My Love," but on that album he didn't help me with the arrangements or play guitar.

Don is the main reason I can call myself a musician today. He encouraged me to be confident in myself, and from the very beginning he supported me in sharing my music with other people. I'll always be grateful to him, because he's proven to be a kind and wonderful person.

You have collaborated, and still do collaborate, with numerous artists from the American independent scene. Besides Don Peris, it's worth mentioning in particular Sufjan Stevens and Rosie Thomas, to whom you're also bound by deep affection. Do you believe friendship is an important element in collaboration between musicians?

I've known both Rosie and Sufjan for a long time. I don't think you need to be friends with someone to be inspired and have great collaborations, but at the same time I know from experience that it's more fun to work with people you know well and can rely on. As with any relationship between good friends, there's a silent mutual understanding of each other's instincts, both in making decisions and in stylistic and creative choices. Our three paths crossed through music, and what we have has been more an interrelation between friends than a planned collaboration. When we recorded Rosie's latest album, "These Friends Of Mine," we had no plan at all to let other people hear it: we were just having fun. Still, I'm really glad the songs ended up being released, and that the joy we put into this "creature" of ours can now be shared with other people.

The title of your second album, "Of Joy And Sorrow," is drawn from one of the tales in Khalil Gibran's "The Prophet," where a woman asks him to speak "of joy and sorrow," and the prophet replies: "[…] they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced."

Do you think this inseparability of joy from sorrow might be the real secret to fully enjoying the moments when the scale tips toward the former?

I want to live every single emotion as fully as possible. I don't "construct" my emotions, but I try to take refuge in a mental place where I don't have to hide from my moods and from the emotions I deal with through the ups and downs of everyday life. I don't think people NEED to experience pain… I could never wish pain on anyone. Still, I think every new negative experience brings with it a better understanding and a greater appreciation of the other side of the coin. I believe this is exactly how joy and sorrow are bound together forever. Pain has pushed me never to take my joy for granted.

You come from a family with a deeply rooted Christian tradition, and you yourself describe yourself as a believer. In your lyrics there's a strong presence of a spiritual dimension that nonetheless lacks any specific religious connotation, a kind of "universal spirituality," far removed from any kind of catechistic intent.

How do you experience your faith in relation to your music, and how do you view so-called "Christian music"?

Each of us has our own "beliefs" (sometimes called religion), and it's assumed that the convictions behind those beliefs influence our everyday decisions. But those convictions don't always necessarily drive our choices and behavior, especially at work. Take a plumber, for example: if the pipes in your house burst and the plumber who comes to fix them is Muslim, that doesn't mean he'll fix the pipes in a "Muslim way." He'll do his job regardless of his personal beliefs.

I'm a musician. My job is to write songs. I think people can sense the presence of deep convictions in my personal life through some of my lyrics, but my beliefs don't make me a songwriter. I don't think "Christian music" exists. I think music exists. I think sometimes people of Christian faith make music. I know a lot of people who make music, and they're people of every faith (and of NO faith). I think everyone has the right to be creative in whatever way they wish to be.

Your third album, "Philadelphia Songs," is dedicated to the Pennsylvania city where you chose to live several years ago, and it was written during your very first period living in Philadelphia. Far from any celebratory intent, or even just a "touristy" descriptive one, this album is a very intimate narrative, a portrait of the city filtered through the eyes of Denison's soul. How has your personal relationship with Philadelphia evolved over the years?

The best answer to this question would be the lyrics of "Sets Of Keys," the first track on "Philadelphia Songs." I moved from a small town, a fairly "predictable" environment, to a big city where I felt anything could happen. Philadelphia was the perfect city for me to come to terms with the shifting moods of my young adulthood, and in fact I immediately felt a strong resemblance between this place and my own personality: Philadelphia is a city that's constantly looking ahead, thinking romantically about what to do to become a better place, and yet it often ends up making decisions that hinder or dramatically slow down its own progress. I think I have the same approach when it comes to my own life, and honestly I think that's true for a lot of people. Maybe it's a silly metaphor, but I find that all of us are a bit like cities when it comes to ourselves: in our minds we all have a neighborhood, a nice place to be, full of art and venues; we all have rundown districts, where we feel wretched and confused; we all have tree-lined avenues with colorful buildings and beautiful people, but we all also have an area on the outskirts where foul-smelling garbage bags pile up along the road.

I was 20 years old the first time I went to Philadelphia, and at that time I was very emotionally lost, and I didn't know how to handle the "city of my mind." What redeems Philadelphia is its ability to always stay calm, to learn from its mistakes and then try again with a better attitude. Every year Philadelphia tries to improve its own organization and take care of itself. I've always tried to be like that in my own life too: I've always wanted to look ahead optimistically and hope for the best. I try not to blame myself (too much) for the wrong choices I've made. It's a cliché, but you can't expect to change what's already happened: each of us is responsible for the decisions we've made, but even more so for the ones we're going to make.

What do you think of the Pennsylvania singer-songwriter scene?

I wouldn't know. I never really got deep into any particular music scene, because I started touring quite early on in my career. I like a lot of other Philadelphia-based bands, but I don't think I prefer them over bands from other places. Sorry, I know this isn't much of an answer…

Don't worry, it's not a problem.

I read an amusing anecdote online about the making of "Philadelphia Songs", involving a whole charade staged at the Ritz Carlton Hotel downtown, just to record a grand piano solo for one of the songs on the album. Can you tell me exactly how that went?

I wanted to close the record with a song called "Saint Cecilia". It had been written for piano, but I'd spent the entire budget I had for studio recording, and there was nothing left to record the piano. My friend Devin and I suddenly had this strange idea: we decided to pretend to be piano tuners and went to the fanciest hotel in downtown Philadelphia to record the song there. We dressed up as if we were piano technicians (though honestly, how are piano technicians even supposed to dress?) and headed to the hotel's lobby, telling the bartender to turn off the background music because we needed to inspect the piano. Everyone bought our little act and left us there to "work" on the piano for about 15 minutes… We recorded the song, closed the lid of the grand ballroom's piano, and told the bartender we'd fixed the problem. The funniest part of this whole story is that, in our planning, we could only pull off the project during dinner hour, so you can hear a lot of background noise in the track: waiters dropping plates and cutlery, people talking pretty loudly, and if you listen closely you can even hear footsteps echoing across the floor. I think it all gives the song a real character of its own.

Among your various works there's also a beautiful tribute to Seventies singer-songwriter music, "Recovered", where, paying extremely close attention to the nuances of the original versions, the songs are revisited with great care for detail, keeping a strong continuity with the era they belong to, all in Denison Witmer's own distinctive style. Which artists left the biggest mark on your musical growth?

Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Graham Nash, Leonard Cohen, Fleetwood Mac, Nick Drake…. I listen to a huge amount of music from the past.

Speaking of Nick Drake, the late British songwriter could be seen as something of a "great absence" among the artists honored on "Recovered". A striking cover of "Northern Sky" does appear, however, on your alter-site "Happy Birthday Denison". What's your relationship with Drake?

When I started planning "Recovered", I felt I couldn't pick songs by Bob Dylan or Nick Drake, because on one hand Dylan felt too "obvious" a choice, and on the other Drake was going through his own rediscovery and renewed popularity right around that time. I didn't want people to think I'd picked one or the other just to make myself look good. To be honest, as I also explain in the album's liner notes, I never intended to use any of the artists featured on the record to show off. I just wanted to pay them a grateful tribute, singing their songs as sincerely as I could. As I said, I love Nick Drake a lot, and I've always loved his "Northern Sky". I've played that song at my shows several times, so when I decided to create the "Happy Birthday Denison" site, I wanted to include "Northern Sky" in the project too. I have a strange relationship with Nick Drake, but that's too long a story to get into in this interview. If you want to dig deeper, though, you can download a podcast on "Happy Birthday Denison" where I talk about the story of my relationship with the English songwriter.

Having briefly touched on it, I'd love to dig deeper with you into "Happy Birthday Denison".

happybirthdaydenison.com is a site that gets enriched with new, freely downloadable songs every November 4th (your birthday). This website is also a wonderful social solidarity initiative, since on the site's homepage listeners are invited to make free-will donations in exchange for the songs available as free downloads, with the option to choose between two organizations involved in patient care. How did the idea for this site-project come about?

I've always wanted to help people through my music, but I never quite knew how to go about it. Of course I know very well that music connects with people on an emotional level, and I know that in itself it manages to be deeply helpful to just about everyone, but if you can't convert that kind of "help" into some form of spendable currency, how can you think of helping people beyond the emotional level?

When I was 29, it occurred to me that I could create a special website where I'd give my fans a big gift for my thirtieth birthday, by giving them some recordings of my songs. Then I decided to invite site visitors to leave money donations in exchange for the songs. As rightly mentioned in the question, the songs can be downloaded for free (and always will be), and the basic idea is to let everyone donate whatever amount they want (or nothing at all). Through this initiative I've managed to turn my music into something tangible, like medical care for a needy child living in Haiti, or a CD that someone can listen to in a hospital. I've always felt like a poor musician in a rich country, and I've always wanted to give more than I could actually afford, so it's wonderful to see that in the end my music can help others in more than one way. I hope this doesn't come across as bragging or being proud of myself, that's really not the impression I want to give… I'm genuinely just trying to say that the very spirit of the people who donate gives me great strength of heart, and that I'm deeply moved by people coming together to help those in need. My fans have given me a lot of courage through their generosity.

You're directly involved as a musician with "Musicians On Call", one of the two non-profit organizations chosen for the "Happy Birthday Denison" project: through "ad personam" live performances, you bring your music into the rooms of bedridden patients. Presumably, all of us, at least once in our lives, have found some relief through music, even just a fleeting one, in a difficult moment. In certain circumstances, the musician is, in a sense, a kind of "healer of souls", or at least their songs take on the role of a balm for whoever listens to them. What do you think about this?

The first time someone came up to me after a show and told me, "I wanted to thank you for your songs…. They're moving, they give me intense emotions", I realized that those were pretty much the same feelings I had toward the audience, and that in that moment I could just as easily have been the one expressing my gratitude to him. I felt part of something much bigger than myself.

People sometimes forget that the musicians they watch or listen to are themselves, in turn, listeners. We're LISTENERS too. I've been the listener many times in my life, and I'll keep being one. I recognize that music has helped me a great deal, and I just hope I can help people in the same way. I don't feel like a "healer of souls", since I can't control how others react to my music: they may relate to it or they may not; I try not to worry about it too much, and I just do my best to simply be sincere and full of gratitude.

Besides being a listener (as many of us are), you're also a musician, which means you're lucky enough to find yourself on either side of the "giving coin". So trying to look at this musician-listener exchange from the opposite angle, what does a musician receive from his listeners?

Having been a listener myself, I know very well how much music can help you get through all the ups and downs of life. Knowing you're on the giving side of that relationship is a very special feeling, and it's something you can never take for granted. I think we're touching on a very delicate, sacred subject here, and it's hard for me to talk about it without sounding evasive. I'm sorry, but the best I can do is describe it as a silent, mutual understanding between people, like an old married couple sitting together in silence because each of them already knows what the other is thinking. There's no need to speak: it's all understood, and that's what makes it special. I try not to think about this side of things too often, since it could end up influencing my behavior, and that would be a disaster, because it would immediately destroy the relationship. I always try to be honest with people, and at the same time I expect honesty back from them.

Your latest album, "Are You A Dreamer?", besides the standard edition, was also released in a limited edition featuring, alongside the record, a beautiful acoustic EP. The EP contains the original title track from "Are You A Dreamer?" reworked as "Are You A Sleeper?", a question that also gives the whole EP its title.

The two titles face each other like the two faces of Janus, and by setting sleep against dreaming they seem to pose an almost philosophical, metaphysical question to the listener. Sleep or dream, as if to say: concrete or abstract, reality or fantasy, material or spiritual, earth or clouds. Do you think there's a point of balance (or at least a compromise) between these two sides?

If we look at the lyrics on my latest album, I'd say a good part of them deal with exactly that compromise you're describing, between the concrete and the abstract. I've always felt that music was a way of escaping the material side of my life. Sometimes, both when I'm writing and when I'm listening to music, I feel like I'm almost in a dream state. There are moments when it's as if time passes me by without my even noticing... After all, 2+2 doesn't always have to make 4: I'm able to slip into the songwriting process and stay there for hours, and when I'm done composing I wake up as if I'd been inside a dream the whole time.

The information age we live in brings with it a lot of very concrete pressures: "Be sure of what you're saying"; "Give us all the evidence"; "Is there scientific proof behind your answer?"; "Could you somehow be proven wrong?" - this seems to be how we relate to one another these days. And yet, if you ask anyone you know, I'm sure they'll tell you that's not how life actually works. What's concrete always slips away from us, and for every answer we get there's always a new question, or more than one. Don't get me wrong: I love answers, I'm always looking for answers, but over time I'm learning to accept the possibility of getting answers different from the ones I expected. Life is more interesting when your curiosity gets satisfied by something unexpected.

Leafing through the booklet of "Are You A Dreamer?", which features the album's front cover and the song titles knitted in, you can read: "The artwork you are viewing has been hand-knitted [...] by the patient and never sleeping Kaleen Enke. Additional simpleton knitting by Denison Witmer". So we discover you have an unusual pastime, which might well be the tip of the iceberg, perhaps hiding a broader interest in arts and crafts. How and when did this passion start?

I started knitting because I wanted something different to do besides reading when I was in the tour van. I like keeping myself busy with some kind of project, and I love activities that leave you with a finished product you can actually see. A friend of mine was knitting (it seemed to be a bit of a craze here in the States about two years ago) and it looked interesting, so I gave it a try and really enjoyed the process. It's very meditative, like counting rosary beads or something like that... Meanwhile I can just tune everything out and sit there thinking. It's also nice to be able to make your own gloves, hats, scarves and socks. (smiles)

As you got ready to record your new album in the studio, you decided to interact with your fans by regularly updating a Flickr profile created especially for the occasion, posting photos from the various stages of recording. What was that experience like?

I have a feeling this answer won't be all that interesting to you. (laughs)

Unfortunately I was so busy recording that a lot of the photos from the recording sessions were either never taken or haven't been posted to Flickr yet. I love photography and I have a huge collection of cameras. I created the Flickr page mainly to post all my tour photos, the recording photos, and more generally photos of moments from my life. Once I get a quiet moment, as soon as I manage to set aside a whole day for the computer (which I have little patience for, since I hate staring at a screen), I'll upload all my photos to Flickr.

Can you give us a preview of the new album?

The album will be called "Carry The Weight" and will include two different versions of the title track: one with the full band and one acoustic. Overall it's a very much a "band" album, with a somewhat fuller sound, but still very close to that of my last album, "Are You A Dreamer?". I recorded it in Seattle, with producer and friend Blake Wescott (Saltine, Damien Jurado, Pedro The Lion). On drums is my friend James McAlister (who played drums on "Are You A Dreamer?" and also plays with Sufjan Stevens), while Rosie Thomas joins me as a solo guest on most of the tracks. "Carry the Weight" will be out this September or October.

To wrap up, I'd like to ask you for a little gift, if I may be so bold. Today isn't your birthday, or mine, or probably that of most OndaRock readers. But taking a cue from "Alice in Wonderland", I'd love to celebrate this "unbirthday" with something special. Could you give OndaRock's readers one of your unreleased live tracks, as an unbirthday present? I'm sure that would make this day sweetly bright and unforgettable.

Sure. Right now I'm on tour in the States with The New Frontiers, my labelmates. I'll get them to help me record one or two live tracks during this tour and we'll send them your way. (smiles)

Epilogue.

Denison kept his word, and on June 30, 2008 the gift for OndaRock's readers magically materialized: two unreleased tracks, exclusive to OndaRock, recorded live at a show at the Southpaw in Brooklyn on June 11, 2008.

Happy non-birthday (or birthday, as the case may be) from Denison Witmer.

Denison Witmer – Carry The Weight (live @ Southpaw)

Denison Witmer – Life Before Aesthetics (live @ Southpaw)

(10/07/2008)

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google