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Posts Tagged ‘Storytelling’

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

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , , , on August 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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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That’ll Do

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 15, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Some albums begin with a big idea.

This one begins with a cup of coffee.

Over the past several months, That’ll Do slowly became something I hadn’t planned. It started as a collection of songs about ordinary moments, but somewhere along the way those moments began talking to one another.

A grocery store aisle.

Three green lights in a row.

The same coffee cup every morning.

A nickname between two people who know each other well enough to laugh without explaining.

A walk back through a hometown that no longer looks the way it did—and somehow feels exactly the way it should.

Musically, this is probably my most guitar-forward record yet. It leans into melodic roots rock with Americana storytelling, weeping pedal steel, conversational guitars, and songs that trust the listener to discover their meaning instead of announcing it.

I found myself writing less about lessons and more about recognition. Not everything needs fixing. Not every misunderstanding needs correcting. Sometimes the best thing we can do is notice what’s already there.

The title That’ll Do isn’t about settling.

It’s about realizing that an ordinary day, shared with ordinary people who are doing their best, can be more than enough.

I hope these songs feel like someone saved you a booth by the window.

The coffee’s still warm.

The guitar’s within reach.

And life is still going on outside.

That’ll do.

Listen to the album:

https://bill-leyden.bandcamp.com/album/thatll-do

https://on.soundcloud.com/wCTK8QxDaZwDruedqZ

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Just Beyond

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 18, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Just Beyond is a record about how connection begins — and how it deepens.

It starts small. A glass set down carefully. A breath that lingers. Two people standing close enough to notice the quiet between them.

Across eight songs, that quiet opens into something steady and alive.

There’s a hardware store at the end of the day, dust suspended in late sunlight.
A bargain bin with the same squeezy toy in two different hands.
Dogs that recognize each other before their owners do.
A courthouse lawn on a Saturday afternoon.
An evening porch with the windows open and warm air settling in.

The dogs appear again and again — leash to leash, nose to nose — moving toward each other without second-guessing. They become a quiet reminder that instinct often arrives before certainty. While the people measure their steps, the dogs simply know. Their ease becomes the thread that pulls the story forward.

Each moment builds gently on the last. A sentence is spoken. A habit softens. Space turns into presence. What begins in pauses learns to grow. What grows begins to bloom.

By the time the porch light comes on, the story feels complete — not because anything was forced, but because something real was allowed to take root.

This album means a lot to me. It’s about discovering that closeness can unfold naturally, that warmth can deepen over time, and that sometimes the most powerful step forward is simply saying the first word.

Just Beyond begins in restraint and ends in connection — guided, in its own quiet way, by two dogs who were never afraid to walk toward each other.

You can listen to the full album here:

👉 https://bill-leyden.bandcamp.com/album/just-beyond

Thank you for listening — and for being part of the journey.

— Bill

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