With the release of his third album, and recently in the country as part of Mumford & Sons and Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros nationwide tour, Willy Mason is embracing life on the road once again.
Mason’s latest, and his first through Fiction Records, Carry On was primarily recorded without being attached to the label, giving the young musician newfound freedom. “It was great to be able to just work with a producer and we were just responsible to ourselves,” begins Mason, “it made it really easy”.
The new album has been a long time coming, after Mason took some time away from touring following the release of 2007’s If The Ocean Gets Rough, with this forming the basis for the majority of the lyrical content on the new tracks.
“After the last album I made the decision to take some time off the road, so I was back home doing other things,” he says. “The songs sort of came out as a by-product of what I was up to.”
Mason describes the lyrics as forming around himself attempting to find his place in a community that he has been absent from for the best part of seven years, after beginning touring in his teenage years.
“A lot of it had to do with me not being on tour. I started touring when I was 17 and spent a lot of time on the road. To come home as a 24-year-old and live in a small town, there were a lot of things that I had to get used to and a lot of things that were harder because I wasn’t just jumping around from one place to the other like Groundhog Day,” Mason continues. “[There’s] a little bit of clockwork in it, it’s got like a mechanical heartbeat going through it (the new album).”
“It was like the decisions I made one day would follow me the next day, and also, trying to find my role in a community.”
After attracting the attention of Sean Foley, an associate of Conor Oberst (the man behind Bright Eyes) Mason was quickly signed on to Oberst’s Team Love label, subsequently released a debut album, and embarked on a long tour – all at the young age of just 17.
Mason describes this as a thrilling, albeit daunting process. “It was a really exciting time,” he says. “I hadn’t really expected to start touring and making records that soon, so that was a really exciting time for me, and I learned a lot from them.”
Mason’s first album was recorded in his producer’s make-shift home studio in Catskill, New York, a process that he describes as not too different from that of recording the forthcoming third album.
“It wasn’t too different, the studio is Dan Carey’s, which is in his house. We’d record all day, then go upstairs and have dinner with his family,” he explains. “I was staying in a youth hostel across the street at ten dollars a night, and I could see the studio from the window.”
Mason has strong family ties within the music industry, with brother Sam providing drums for most of the recordings as well as on tour, and both parents being folk singers. Mason describes this upbringing as being a huge influence on his current musical career.
“My parents played a lot of music around the house. They’d have parties… where everybody would play old songs in the living room, and I was pretty young at the time so I would just sit and listen to them. They left a big impression on me.”
The new album marks somewhat of a new direction for the alt-country, folk rocker, featuring layered, textured sounds that didn’t appear so prominently in his other releases.
Mason describes the new sonic direction as having “a little bit of clockwork in it, it’s got like a mechanical heartbeat going through it.” He also describes the influence that Alan Lomax had on this direction, an “American audio-documentarian” who would “just go around and knock on doors and find out the singers and musicians in the town and record them with a big old analogue machine.”“Everyone seemed to know all the songs, and they came in at all the right times and they were in tune. I guess I don’t need backing singers after all.
Mason describes his recent visit to Australian as “really rewarding”, although not without it’s challenges. The tour has seen Mason playing stadium shows around the country, something that took a while for the singer-songwriter to adapt to.
“It’s a bit of a big jump, I have to adapt,” Mason explains. “I was nervous about the idea of playing to so many people by myself… the crowds have been really good, and they kind of surprise me every night. I’ve got a lot of confidence from the Mumford shows.”
As part of the Mumford & Sons tour, Mason also took part in the Gentleman’s Stopover in Dungog, NSW, saying he has “never seen anything like it.”
“That was a really cool gig,” he continues. “We got there a day early, and the town was pretty sleepy. I walked down the main street and saw the excitement building, you could just feel it all throughout the town, and the next day a whole small city of people showed up.”
While in the country, Mason also played two solo, intimate shows in Melbourne and Sydney, shows that took “a slightly different approach… being so close to everybody, so close to a crowd and being able to see them so clearly.” Mason seems genuinely humbled by the reaction to his solo shows.
“It was nice to be playing for people in a small room, it was like everybody was on the same page together. Everyone seemed to know all the songs, and they came in at all the right times and they were in tune. I guess I don’t need backing singers after all. After being away for so long, to come back and have that, I feel touched.”
As for a return to Australian shores following the release of Carry On, Mason is cautiously optimistic. “I hope so, I’ve been starting to talk to people about it a little bit, but I’m not sure when, hopefully soon. I’d love to.”
Carry On is out now through Fiction Records. Check Willy Mason’s website for a free download and future tour dates.
