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I Was Doing Fine – Modern Roots Rock by Bill Leyden

October 25, 2026 by Bill

Being fine can become a pretty comfortable habit. Then someone comes along, and suddenly you’re dressed an hour early.

I Was Doing Fine is an eight-track album by Bill Leyden, bringing together modern roots rock, danceable funk grooves, expressive guitars, and close vocal harmonies with falsetto. Its songs follow a man who enjoys his independence—and keeps finding reasons to reconsider it.

Listen to I Was Doing Fine on Bandcamp — all eight tracks, in album order.

There’s attraction, second-guessing, unfinished longing, and the pleasure of being wanted. He can laugh at himself. Sometimes he can even stop talking long enough to notice what someone else needs.

The songs behind the title

The opening title track catches him discovering that his well-organized evenings might have been missing something. I Get Like That follows him home, where he’s still improving conversations everyone else has finished. In I Liked Myself Around You, that restless charm gives way to something harder to admit: he held back because he thought there would be more time.

I Can Be Persuaded brings the teasing back. He’s already found his keys and dancing shoes; he just wants another minute of hearing himself wanted.

At the album’s center, I Might Laugh remembers playing to a nearly empty room—and hearing someone sing his own song beside him afterward. I Can Stay mixes desire with a mother’s warnings about Scorpios, while She Was There Toofinds him missing a woman who’s sitting right there.

The closer, I Like It Here, opens the room to other people. A familiar laugh brings Grandma to mind. An ordinary gathering becomes somewhere he doesn’t need good news to belong.

He almost stayed home. Now he’s in no hurry to leave.

Guitars, groove, and room to breathe

The sound is guitar-forward: biting ES-335 responses, melodic leads, syncopated rhythm guitar, and a thick, moving bass line. The drums have personality, especially in the fills that carry the verses into the choruses. Close, intricate harmonies open into falsetto, while brief melodic bridges give the songs somewhere unexpected to go.

A dry, wide stereo mix keeps the performances close. It’s music made for a drive, with enough movement to keep your shoulders loose and enough in the words to bring you back.

Track listing

  1. I Was Doing Fine
  2. I Get Like That
  3. I Liked Myself Around You
  4. I Can Be Persuaded
  5. I Might Laugh
  6. I Can Stay
  7. She Was There Too
  8. I Like It Here

The album begins with “I was doing fine” and ends with “Think I will.”

Between those two thoughts, he finds a few more reasons to stay.

Hear the full album on Bandcamp

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Explore Bill Leyden’s Album ‘A Little More’

October 6, 2026 by Bill

You can know better and still lean closer.

My new album, A Little More, is about the appetite for connection that experience never quite cures. We learn to manage on our own, choose our words, keep our expectations reasonable. Then someone makes us laugh, and wanting very little no longer feels like enough.

These eight songs begin with a wink. There’s a man hearing more encouragement from his doctor than she probably intended, and another whose good judgment isn’t much help with a woman’s knee against his. Beneath the humor are the quieter admissions: wanting someone to stay, finding a reason to call, discovering how good it feels to be known.

The music is guitar-forward, with hints of art rock and close harmonies that occasionally take an unexpected turn. There’s room for the words—and for what the people singing them can’t quite say.

As the album unfolds, affection takes on the weight of memory. What do we keep of someone who is no longer beside us? What do we hope they keep of us? The humor stays, even when the answers grow difficult. Sometimes laughter and missing someone arrive together.

A Little More makes room for imperfect people who still want to be wanted—and who hope, when their name comes up, that someone might smile.

Listen to A Little More on Bandcamp, available now and coming soon to all streaming platforms.

Have a listen. I hope you find someone you recognize.

Bill

Listen on Soundcloud:

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/playlists/soundcloud%253Aplaylists%253A2310009786&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=true&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true

Bill Leyden · A Little More

Bill Leyden · A Little More

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Away with Words – Dinner Can Wait

September 29, 2026 by Bill

A good line can get you into trouble. Sometimes that’s the attraction.

My new album, Away with Words, lives in those conversations where we have a little more at stake than we’re letting on. We’re trying to impress somebody. Trying to be understood. Trying to say “you were right” without spending another five years getting to it.

These eight songs follow people who can still surprise themselves—and each other. A little charm unsettles a comfortable life. Someone hears a familiar laugh and turns before remembering why he shouldn’t. A woman gets dressed for an evening out, and the man beside her remembers that being worth the trouble requires a little trouble of his own.

I’m interested in that space between knowing someone well and assuming we know everything. There’s still room for a misread signal, an overdue admission, or a look across the table that makes finishing a sentence seem unnecessary.

The music has an appetite of its own: guitar-forward alternative/art rock, winding bass lines, close harmonies, and grooves that leave room for a little mischief. Sometimes the guitar picks up where the singer runs out of words. By “Now You’re Talking,” a deep shuffle and a searing lead have helped turn a discussion about dinner into a question of breakfast on the way home.

There’s hurt here, and affection that has survived a few dents. There’s also the pleasure of discovering that someone can still get to you.

Away with Words is available on all major streaming services. Bandcamp is a great place to settle in and listen:

Listen to Away with Words on Bandcamp

Stay for another song. Dinner can wait.

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Discover ‘There Goes My Reputation’ Album

September 20, 2026 by Bill

There Goes My Reputation

I like the moment when “I wouldn’t do that” becomes “Well, let me have a look.”

A friend has an idea. Someone holds out a hand. There’s something I haven’t quite finished, and I want to see what happens next. My good judgment remains available, although I don’t always consult it.

My new album, There Goes My Reputation, comes from my affection for people who still have something in mind. A little hope, a private ambition, a fondness for someone who knows exactly how to make them laugh.

I’m drawn to how much can remain undiscovered between people, and how much pleasure there can be in knowing someone well. Hearing the familiar story again. Catching the look across the room. Being glad it’s them.

There are eight songs here, with a few questionable decisions and some very good company.

As for my reputation, I thought it was doing reasonably well.

The album is available now on Bandcamp and coming soon to all streaming services. I’d love for you to spend a little time with it.

Listen to There Goes My Reputation on Bandcamp

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One More Thing

September 9, 2026 by Bill

For the love of Art Rock

We can know someone for years and still be surprised by what they remember. Especially when we were there, too. Aging could be a factor.  Ever remember an acquaintance in high school clearly and forget who you met last week?

We tell our stories with confidence, until an old friend starts smiling halfway through. We promise we’re listening, then hear something that reminds us of a story of our own. There’s affection in these exchanges, and sometimes a small disappointment we don’t notice until the other person stops talking.

I’m interested in that distance between people—and the unexpected ways it closes. 

A familiar face can become someone we wish we’d known sooner. A person we barely knew can remain with us for a lifetime. We find ourselves imagining ordinary mornings together, or wondering what another choice might have asked of us. Even a life we’re grateful for can leave us curious about the one we didn’t live.

One More Thing grew from those feelings, and from the pleasure people continue to bring us.

Someone comes along, and suddenly we notice the books piled on the other chair. We consider a shirt we haven’t worn in a while. Nothing has been promised. Still, there’s a little more care in what we do, and we catch ourselves enjoying the preparations.

That interests me as much as regret does: our willingness to make room again.

We carry a great deal into each other’s company. Some of it gets told badly. Some of it slips out while we’re talking about something else. And sometimes we’re laughing too hard at a familiar story to get to the end.

There are people we want to hear from. Things we meant to ask them. We can be certain we know the whole story and still hope they’ll tell us more.

I went guitar-forward on most of the tracks – a throwback to Art Rock.  There is an occasional grand piano and the softness of a string ensemble.  But mostly, I long for that solo guitar, the legendary Gibson ES-335 to lift out of the rhythm to tell its tale.  I hope you enjoy it!

One more thing.

I’d love for you to listen.

Listen to One More Thing on Bandcamp

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Ambergris – A Further Flirt with the Line

September 5, 2026 by Bill

New Alternative/Art Rock Album

There’s a line somewhere between what makes sense and what almost makes sense.

I’ve become increasingly interested in that line.

Not crossing it for the sake of being strange. Not abandoning melody, musicianship, or the pleasure of a song that simply feels good coming out of the speakers. I still want all of that. But lately I’ve been curious about how far a song can wander from the expected and still bring you along.

Ambergris is a further flirt with that line.

I’ve spent a long time building a musical library, and for much of that time songs behaved more or less as songs are expected to behave. They had stories. They had destinations. People arrived somewhere by the end.

I’m less certain now that they need to.

Life rarely presents itself in a clean narrative. We remember a face but forget the name. We remember exactly what someone said but have no idea why it mattered. A laugh survives for decades. An expensive evening disappears. Something overheard at the next table becomes more interesting than the conversation we were having ourselves.

Memory seems to have its own editorial department, and apparently nobody is supervising it.

That interests me.

So does the distance between what we observe and what we think we know. We spend an extraordinary amount of our lives watching other people, interpreting expressions, filling in missing information and constructing explanations from very little evidence. Sometimes we’re right. Sometimes we’re spectacularly wrong. Most of the time we never find out.

There’s humor in that, but also something strangely human.

The recent expansion of my musical library has given me permission to leave more of those spaces open. A lyric can notice something without explaining it. A guitar can answer a question the words never quite asked. Harmonies can become a little uncomfortable. Silence can be useful. A thought can wander into the room, stay for eleven seconds and leave without showing identification.

And a song can end before the listener has been told what to think about it.

That may be the line I’m flirting with.

I don’t want to live permanently on the other side of it. The line is interesting precisely because you can still see it. Melody matters. Musicianship matters. Emotion matters. So does the simple pleasure of a great guitar playing something you want to hear again.

But every now and then, I like leaning over that line far enough to wonder whether I’m still writing the kind of music I thought I wrote.

Ambergris leans a little farther.

I think I’ll leave it there.

Bill Leyden · Ambergris

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/playlists/soundcloud%253Aplaylists%253A2294534451&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=true&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true

Bill Leyden · Ambergris

https://on.soundcloud.com/aNIuDRtNxI6qf5yEWv

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Apparently

September 1, 2026 by Bill

Walking Some Lines

I’ve always been interested in the distance between what we see and what we think we know.

We meet somebody, notice a few things, hear half a story, and pretty soon we’ve got them figured out. Sometimes we’re right. Sometimes another detail comes along and the whole explanation falls apart.

That became the territory for Apparently.

The songs move through attraction, friendship, vanity, intelligence, kindness, anonymity, love and loss without asking anyone to be the villain. I was more interested in the little contradictions that make people difficult to explain—and considerably more interesting.

Musically, the record ranges pretty widely: cinematic art rock with an indie feel, guitar-forward arrangements, sophisticated rock, touches of soul and country, unusual harmonies, and plenty of room for the musicians to breathe. There are moments that make me laugh and others that became much more emotional than I expected.

It also turned out to be very good road music.

The kind of record I like when the traffic thins out, there’s some distance ahead, and I can actually listen rather than merely have music playing.

[Insert band photograph]

Apparently is available now on all streaming services.

Turn it up and take it somewhere.

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/playlists/soundcloud%253Aplaylists%253A2292257151&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true

Bill Leyden · Apparently

https://on.soundcloud.com/9Tk7KrEgbYFJDNENdh

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Really: Stepping Over Some Lines

August 26, 2026 by Bill

Every once in a while, it’s good to step over a few lines.

That’s what I decided to do with Really.

I wanted to push beyond some of my usual songwriting habits—to let conversations become lyrics, leave more space between things, allow the music to take some unexpected turns, and trust that a song doesn’t always have to explain itself.

It turned out to be tremendous fun.

Really is probably the most avant-garde album I’ve made, but I don’t think that makes it particularly difficult music. There are still guitars, melodies, choruses and harmonies. There are also unusual modes, chords that sometimes hang in the air, complex vocal harmonies, sustained guitars and moments when silence gets to play an instrument too.

And there are people.

Lots of them.

People who are certain about things. People who remember things differently. Someone who can commandeer almost any dinner-table conversation with a story of her own. A couple eating ice cream while watching something questionable on television, with the dog quietly choosing sides.

There’s a Tiffany lamp bought on a trip to New York.

There’s an old photograph with a man in it nobody recognizes, even though his arm is around somebody and he appears to have been having a perfectly good time.

They decide his name might be David.

Why?

Looks like David’s arm.

That’s about as much evidence as anyone has.

I think that’s where I found the personality of this album.

The songs aren’t really trying to deliver answers. They’re interested in those peculiar little moments when people reveal themselves without realizing they’re doing it—the things we say, the things we remember, the things we get completely wrong, and the shorthand that develops between people who have known each other a long time.

By the time I reached the title track, that shorthand had become the song itself.

It begins with two people trying to identify a glass:

Which glass?

The one on the left.

This one?

No, your other left.

The vessel with the pestle?

That’s the one.

Get it?

Got it.

Good.

Eventually all that playful certainty and uncertainty comes down to one much simpler exchange:

You happy?

Yeah.

You sure?

Yeah.

Really?

Really.

That felt like exactly the right place to end the album.

Making Really took me outside my comfort zone, but in a way I thoroughly enjoyed. It reminded me that experimentation doesn’t require abandoning the things you love about making music. Sometimes it just means giving yourself permission to approach them from a different direction.

Eight songs. A few peculiar people. Some questionable memories. One unidentified arm.

And, really, a lot of fun making it.

Really is available now on Bandcamp.

Listen to Really on Bandcamp

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Every August, I Start Thinking About Winter

August 24, 2026 by Bill

Every August, usually right in the middle of the summer heat, I start thinking about winter.

It happens almost every year.

Maybe it’s because winter still feels far enough away in August that you can remember the best parts without having to scrape ice off anything. Or maybe I’m simply looking forward to that first unmistakable change in the air—the moment you realize another season is on its way.

I love what happens after that.

The evenings come earlier. Lights begin appearing around town. Windows glow against the cold. People who normally take the quickest way home sometimes find a reason to take the long way.

And familiar places become different.

There’s something about coming into a warm house when it’s cold outside. Something about the quiet after friends and family have gone home. Something about looking out a window late at night when there’s snow on the ground and wondering why the world seems so much quieter than it did a few hours earlier.

I’ve noticed that the holidays give us permission to feel things we might otherwise consider a little sentimental.

We remember people.

We miss people.

We gather.

We go home.

And maybe, somewhere underneath all of that, we allow ourselves to wonder again.

I like that part best.

The possibility that an ordinary evening might hold something extraordinary. That lights along a familiar street can still make us slow down. That despite everything we’ve learned and everything we think we know, there might still be a little mystery left in the world.

Those are the feelings that found their way into my new album, Love the Season.

Maybe that’s why I start looking forward to this every August. Winter is still months away, but for a little while I get to visit it early.

And remember why I love the season.

— Bill Leyden

You can listen to Love the Season on Bandcamp:

Love the Season — Bill Leyden on Bandcamp

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Only for a Select Few — A New Album by Bill Leyden

August 12, 2026 by Bill

There’s an old sales trick called the takeaway.

Tell somebody they probably can’t have something—or perhaps it’s intended for someone a little more discerning—and watch how quickly “I don’t need it” becomes “How much?”

That little piece of human nature became one of the threads running through my new album, Only for a Select Few.

But somewhere along the way, the idea got bigger.

These songs are about the things we buy, the things we believe, the impressions we maintain, and the wonderfully questionable decisions we make while trying to convince the world—and occasionally ourselves—that we know exactly what we’re doing.

There’s pride here. Romance. Bad judgment. A little swagger. A working band that keeps showing up even when somebody in the audience starts throwing beer bottles. There’s even a man who walks into a store wanting absolutely nothing and leaves with two crocodile attaché cases.

He rides home on a bicycle.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Maybe We’re All Making It Up a Little

What interests me about these characters isn’t that they’re foolish.

It’s that they’re recognizable.

The person who appears completely self-assured may be improvising. The person everybody wants may wonder whether anybody actually knows her. The fellow who thinks he’s immune to a sales pitch may be the easiest mark in the room.

And sometimes the person sitting at the head of the table—the one everybody expects to have an answer—has simply lived long enough to get a few more things wrong.

That thought eventually became the album closer, “If They Only Knew.”

It also changed the way I thought about the album’s title.

We spend a surprising amount of our lives imagining that somewhere out there are people who have been let in on something the rest of us missed: the masters, the insiders, the discerning few.

Maybe there are.

Then again, maybe they’re looking around for the select few, too.

Listen to Only for a Select Few

The album moves through Americana, country-pop and alt-country, with conversational storytelling, guitars, pedal steel, close country harmonies, humor, and enough rhythm to keep all this introspection from becoming too respectable.

Mostly, though, it’s about people.

People bluffing. People wanting. People falling for things. People learning. People laughing at themselves.

And people still showing up.

Listen to Only for a Select Few on Bandcamp

Spotify: only for a select few

Maybe it’s not for everybody.

Only for a select few, you know.

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