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.
Bill Leyden's Blog 