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
- I Was Doing Fine
- I Get Like That
- I Liked Myself Around You
- I Can Be Persuaded
- I Might Laugh
- I Can Stay
- She Was There Too
- 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
