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One More Thing

Posted in Music, tagged , , , on September 9, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , on September 5, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , , , on September 1, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 26, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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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