Massachusetts has always been aligned with revolutionary thoughts. Anyone paying attention in elementary history classes knows that our very own American Revolution began in Boston Harbor with a little event known as the Boston Tea Party. Just because a thing is a certain way, doesn’t mean it should stay that way forever: that’s Boston, that’s America.
So, how about a revolution against the current state of the music biz? It’s no secret that there’s been a plethora of controversy surrounding streaming versus physical media and also the often unfair payouts that musicians earn. Enter Will Dailey, a Massachusetts-based singer and songwriter who’s decided to explore a few unique ways to share recorded music with his audience.
His latest album, Boys Talking will only be available in physical formats: both on CD and vinyl; but, no streaming. As you’ll hear Will explain, it’s an effort on his part to make a connection with those who love his music, to keep his compositions out of the wind tunnel that the streaming world can often feel like, and - of course - it’s a way for him to keep a larger percentage of the profits that come from selling physical media.
He’s got a keen perspective on these things that sound pleasantly out of step from the norms of the 21st century. In fact, they sound a bit...revolutionary.
Will Dailey: That's a massive (record) collection, man.
Evan Toth: Thanks, man. I appreciate that. Guess what, now you're back there too. Look.
wd: There you go.
ezt: Here you are, Will Dailey. Look, this is great. By the way, I love the graphic design on this.
wd: Thank you.
ezt: It's a really great-sounding record. I was really enjoying it the other day. I took it off and I put something else on. I won't say what else I put on. I was a little deflated by the sound of the next record I put on because this was sounding so good.
wd: There's a lot that goes into that. The low end on the record's incredible.
ezt: It really is. I kept checking my settings to see. It wasn't overbearing or anything, it wasn't a problem. I was like, "Man, this thing sounds great."
wd: Yes. I have been since 2017 using this guy who does all my lacquers. It's an extra spend
on the record. I've had so many, because I produced a lot of other records for other people. I've seen so many things go wrong now. The industry is churn and burn on the vinyl.
ezt: Yes. Everybody's doing it.
wd: Most the artists are just so excited to have it that the critical ear goes away, or you've listened to it so much you don't really drop the needle on it and sit there and go, "How is this to my master?" I use this guy and he's like an Obi-Wan, if Obi-Wan was a little bit crankier, or Yoda.
ezt: Obi-Wan was pretty cranky, wasn't he?
wd: Yes. He is pretty cranky. He goes through the whole process with me from the master. His choice for Boys Talking was to really keep that low end that's on the master and do what he can to just get that vertical sound of the record in there.
ezt: Which on vinyl isn't always easy. Sometimes the low frequencies on vinyl can be tricky if you don't really know what you're doing.
wd: Absolutely.
ezt: Cool. As I said, it does sound great. The title of the album, we've got a lot of interesting things to cover here. The title of the album's called Boys Talking. The first thing, I guess, to tackle is your interesting release strategy, physical formats only. Audience, you can't really stream this. Just talk about your decision to do that and how you think maybe when you-- and answering that. Maybe you could just talk about how that changes your relationship with your listeners in this world where everybody just wants to click play on everything every minute that they wish it?
wd: There's a lot of principles, I think, at the core of it for me. I'm still figuring them out. It's really at first an emotional reaction because every artist I know from top of the heap to the bottom of the heap, we all throw it into that abyss and then talk about this hollow feeling that we have. You feel good about the art being shared and you feel good about it being connected. At the same time, you have thrown it into the tyranny of all our content.
There's something about all the artists behaving in the same way that is disconcerting to me with everything that we're all facing and the lack of true connection that we're all feeling. While at the same time, everyone has a million recipes for why we don't have it. The artist class is the one to help us find the answers. If we're all going to that abyss and measuring our connection through arts via shares, likes, and spin counts, then we've lost the plot. If we're allowing our artists to do that, we've lost the plot. I had to sit there and think.
I don't need to say streaming is bad, or it's not against streaming. I'm trying to be pro connection. First and foremost, I just decided that, you know what, I have enough in life. I don't need to be measured by any of the things that are put upon artists that aren't real. Let's be honest. By asking for less of the things that we assign measurement to, I believe I can add more to the individual connection people might have to this particular album. It's going to be slower, it's going to be quieter. I have to admit, I don't mind those things at all. It's going to be more fortifying at the same time.
I've already noticed that. It's completely in stealth mode. I don't even have a lot of splash. If you go to my website, it's elusive. You can find it in the store. I'm just letting that happen until the end of the year. I just did a run in the Northeast, Toronto, New York, New England. Just went to France, did 14 dates there. Boys Talking was with me each step of the way. I have the room to talk about it every night and allow people to get a piece of music that's just theirs.
ezt: As you saw my records behind me, and I've had my collection going before streaming existed, and I always loved being that guy to say, "Oh, you can hear it here. Listen, I got it right here on the shelf. I'll pull it down and we can listen to this thing." In the 21st century, obviously, this is different. How do you respond? I'm sure people come up to you and I can relate to all the things you just said. I'm sure people come up to you and say, "Eh, it's a Luddite thing. I get your point, but don't you want more people to hear it? Don't you want more ears on this thing?" How do you deal with people that approach you like that, or maybe they don't?
wd: I am dealing with people like, "You want to do what? Okay. How do we do it? It's hard. What's the actual release date?" Those are all things that serve the business of music. I don't think they serve the music.
ezt: Right. Why do you have to be so difficult? (sarcastically)
wd: I'm saying I want to add value to you. I want to add value. I've gotten so much value out of making this. I'm going to have so much value out of performing it. I want you to feel value. You specifically, Evan, to feel value of, hey, look how seriously, just like you said, your backdrop, you take this, and you deserve to have value with it. It's not just another record. Go check it out. It's awesome. I think the one thing we know by the world and the problem on our hand is how amazing everybody is, how special everyone is.
I think our actions need to not treat each other like numbers in data, but that I believe you're special. I made this and I think you should have it and feel special by having it. I think that's a value that if it's confusing for people or I'm being a pain in the ass, which I am a pain in the ass. I need to be myself because artists have to be themselves. I want to feel good at the end of the day too about the product and about how I share it. Because look, honest, man, if this came out last week, it'd be over.
ezt: Right. It would be behind you. "What's next?" That's what people would be saying. That is the way it goes, sadly. I do remember the wind getting sucked out of my sails when streaming happened that each one of these records, "Oh, wait a minute, that one's streaming too? Wait, hold on. Not this one." You go, "This one is not. Oh, that is too." I remember feeling a little devaluation of my own collection at that time. This thing that I built that was so special is pretty available to-- now everybody has it in their whatever they're listening to it. There is that part of it.
wd: "Make Another Me" is on Spotify and Apple and YouTube. The first track's there. It's a little bit longer version though, on the record. It's still a little bit more special. Then what I'm going to do next month is shoot out a social media post and email to everyone who has Boys Talking and say, "All right. What song do you think I should release second?" Over the course of 2025, I will release six more of the tunes, but not all of them, or maybe it'll be remixes or a live version. Maybe the album that appears at the end of it all at the end of this cycle that I'm making a cycle to protect myself as an indie artist too.
Because like you said, it'd be over, it'd be behind me. The whole record's in front of me. I'm going to keep it in front of me the whole time until I am done doing my work. Which I need to go out and connect with people. I have a job to do that is pretty ancient, and that comes down to live music. The cool thing about Boys Talking is the album has pretty much got band in a room tracking it live. The vocals are overdubbed, the guitar solos are overdubbed. Everything else you're hearing is live and it's a performance.
I'm bringing almost like a bootleg to the show of the show you're going to hear, and the whole thing's in front of me. I get to, with everyone else who has it, select the songs that come out. It'd be really cool if at the end, the Boys Talking that's online is just a little different than what you have there on vinyl. Everything is special and I'm protecting myself and I'm protecting myself emotionally, and I'm protecting myself as an artist with a business, and also what my job is, which is really just true connection. I don't know that another million spins is going to do anything positive for the world that we're in right now.
ezt: I guess this maybe is a take-off of this other idea that you had a few years ago, the $10 song experience. Maybe you could explain for the audience what that was, how that worked, and maybe how it relates to releasing things physically now and skewing the streaming world for now. Was there a connection? Did one thing kind of lead to the other?
wd: Absolutely. I had recorded this song. The song was called Cover of Clouds, and it came out in 2023-- it didn't come out. I recorded it. It was pretty much the first thing I recorded once you could be in a room together after lockdowns with masks on. It was like a therapy session to like, "Do we even know how to do this anymore after what's happened?" [chuckles] I finished a song and I was like, "Who's going to listen to a six-and-a-half-minute song?" Had an overture and an outro. It was an adventure. I thought my own mother will get a text message before this song's over and get distracted. I just sat on the song for a while and then decided, "Hey, I can do whatever I want."
I was on the road and I just started bringing around a CD player and headphones and a black book. You open up this black journal, the lyrics are in there, and the credits are in there. People pay $10 to listen to the song one time in their life. They can write or draw on the book as it goes while they sit and listen. It's not like the most brilliant idea in some clubs or some nights managing a CD player and headphones that got stolen one night in New York City, of course.
ezt: Of course.
wd: Man, night after night I'm having powerful exchanges with people about a song that it recorded. It's not a comment that I'm liking and saying thanks online. It's people having profound experiences. I think, sure, I could say, "Oh, it's from the song." I also think and I know just from the conversations that I've had for over a year and a half, because the song lives on my merch table, that's where it exists, it doesn't exist anywhere else, the project is infinite, was that a lot of the comments were, "I paid $10 to listen to one song."
I put my phone away. I told my partner, whoever I'm with or my friends, to leave me alone. My brain did not ask what genre it was or what it reminded me of. I just listened, and people got a little messed up by the fact that they were questioned if they'd been listening at all. Some of the intensity that came from fans, like, "This is your best song." It's like, "Yes, but do you really think that, or is it just the situation that's creating that?" Music situationally is important. You've put on a song while you're driving and it's great. You're home and you're cleaning, it's not, all these things.
It just informed so much. It was a slower build. I was lying in bed at night, like, "Shouldn't I just share this with everyone right now? But I know what would happen if I did that." Then I was like, "What if I don't release my next record like this?" [laughs] It was so rewarding emotionally. It was rewarding as a business, too, because it brought new people in. It was interesting when I was out opening for the wallflowers and audience was fascinated by it, and I had a line of people waiting to listen to this thing.
ezt: Isn't that crazy? Time is money. as they say. Nowadays, especially with inflation and the return on your dollar is so low, it's so many things. If you want to buy a banana, you're going to spend $2. To have that experience if you're into music and you enjoyed your show and you're there, you say, "What the heck? Why not? $10 bucks makes sense." It's something to talk about too. Did you feel like people talked to-- Then maybe your audience was people who have heard this song and people who haven't. You're not really cool enough because you haven't heard the song yet.
wd: 100%. I've answered like, "I can't listen yet. I'm just not ready. I'll do it the next show," and people who have done it four or five times, that at which point I'm like, "You can just listen again right now if there's no line." [chuckles]
ezt: Do you say the name of the song or are you allowed to say the name of the song, or that's part of the process?
wd: No, the name of the song is "Cover of Clouds." The whole song ended up being about finding out that Joni Mitchell painted her own covers, and then it just spiraled into this sense memory of when art is given to you throughout your life. She found out about the project. That was pretty cool.
ezt: Oh, that is really cool.
wd: Someone told her about it in a bar and she-- not a bar, but a nice jazz club in Los Angeles. Then someone else who knows her team was like, "Send us the song." I was like, "I can't break up the-- I can't send. I'll send her a CD player. If her team wants me to send a CD player and headphones, I'll do that. I'll fly it out.
ezt: Not even for Joni Mitchell?
wd: Let's be honest, if an email came, "This dude wrote a song about you," it's not getting to her ears. There's probably 20 of those a day.
ezt: Too bad. Too bad, Joni.
wd: It's just going to end up in the junk pile. I figure, "He wrote a song about you and won't send it," might be a better shot on goal. Honestly, like you said, there's just so many things going on. The return on your dollar. By saying my song's $10, or I believe my album enough not to release it or whatnot, is that adding value to ourselves in a time when it's been removed from artists and everyone's saying, "What do we do? What do we do? We got to fix the system. We got to make Spotify change."
Look, Spotify's going to be gone in X number of years. Just like Tower Records has gone, the places that hold the music go away constantly throughout time, not just in the past 50 years, but the music doesn't. I'm more worried about and focused on the value of our connection, and having the whole process feel as powerful as it does when I write the song, when I record it, and when I perform it.
ezt: Your album has some pretty serious topics that you're talking about. The title, as I said, is Boys Talking. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the themes that exist on this record. It's an interesting angle.
wd: The whole thing started with, I lost two close friends and they were-- one to cancer, one to suicide. That was within the last four years. They were friends who one was an artist, like an Obi-Wan figure to me as well, and could really help validate the path that you're on. At a time when you're always-- in this business, you're always told you're not enough, no matter what.
You have to be a little bit insane, especially in America, to keep doing this because you're always being told you're not enough. This was a friend who just helped you elevate beyond those measurements. I would say that relationship is indicative of how I ended up on this path with the $10 song and the album I'm not releasing. The other one was the one who was like if I dropped a song or an album and I woke up the next morning, there'd be a dissertation in my text messages about it.
ezt: He was really listening. He was your buddy who was really listening.
wd: A lot of the songs and the songwriting started with the meditation on that, on I would say just grief in general and the inability to navigate a lot of those things. Then when my long-time music partner and I, Dave Brophy, were sitting there editing these songs and-- snag, I don't know what to call this record. I was going to call it maybe one of the song titles, but that always makes me feel weird because it adds so much of a spotlight on one
song.
ezt: A lot of pressure on one song.
wd: It's a lot of pressure on one song. I said, "I don't know man. It's like every song is just boys trying to talk, boys talking. This whole thing is just boys talking." He is like, "Dude." It was one of those very boys' kind of conversation. It was one that just fell right into place and it really is. We're in the throes of it right now of just how we are all communicating and hearing different types of communication and different stories right now from other people that we might not know of their experience. It's all super overwhelming. The individualism of each of us is challenged by the multiplicity of all of us. Sometimes the worst voices are being amplified at all times. It's hard to be a voice of common reason and understanding and empathy right now.
ezt: Well, it's interesting, the male perspective, which you could argue there's too much male perspective and maybe you could also argue there's not enough male perspective or the male perspective that counts.
wd: Right.
ezt: Have you ever felt that from other artists? I don't know. Springsteen comes to mind like, what do you call, "State Trooper". It's like this is a guy, he's a little more nefarious here, but describing these guys with these guy problems that are sometimes difficult to talk about and maybe people don't appreciate so much. There is that push for the man wants to have a job, and especially, back to Springsteen, maybe these factories are closing and what does that mean to the people, the men, and they can't provide for their families. Is there anyone else that comes to mind for you when it comes to that sort of a thing?
wd: Oh, absolutely, but that's a great one because he embodies so many stories and perspectives. For me growing up, it was definitely Eddie Vedder just because he could have a lot of empathy with the male energy. It mixed into it. I've been able to play with him a bunch of times and have beautiful conversations with him. He embodies that honest empathy while--
ezt: "Jeremy," right?
wd: Yes, then hearing other people's story or even better man about a woman who's in an unhealthy abusive relationship and the ability to write from other people's perspective and stand strong in front of 30,000 while doing it and how to treat other people, how to treat other musicians. Meeting someone like him and playing like him, it was just so strange how I just met him as an equal. He set that up. There's great ones I'm always-- I love Rufus Wainwright. His records just sound astoundingly good. Especially, Unfollow the Rules was really beautiful-sounding, wonderfully engineered, but--
ezt: Yes. Really raw in what he shares too. "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" is always one of my favorites. I really love that song.
wd: Yes, that album set me on a path, man.
ezt: He's being honest. He's like, "Hey, this is who I am. This is what I am." There's other stuff too that's not good that I'm not going to talk about. [chuckles]
wd: Right.
ezt: I think that's my favorite line of the song. There's those other things we will not mention over there. Yes, just, "Hey, I'm a person working on myself." It comes across there too for sure.
wd: Sharing vulnerability as strength, which sounds like a paradox, but it's really not.
ezt: You mentioned the track that's available online is "Make Another Me", which I guess is what we would call the focus track on the album. Why don't you just talk a little bit about that song in particular? It's a great song and you've got some special guests on there. Of course, as you mentioned, you recorded a lot of this. I guess the whole album you recorded all in the same room. Back to the way the recording sounded, it's not a messy-sounding mix or anything like that. It sounds excellent, but tell us about that song a little bit about and who's your special guest there. I'll throw you a little--
wd: That one, I just felt like it's a great way into the album. I was just excited to share it because I was so excited about my special guest. Juliana Hatfield who is just a hero of mine, a songwriting hero. Her 19th album a couple of years ago called Blood, it's probably my favorite of hers. That fact alone that I'm already a fan. I already love so many of her songs and her approach to songwriting and who she is as an artist that her 19th album was like, "I think this might be my favorite one."
ezt: Right. Finally got it-- The best one was 19, yes.
wd: It's so hard to do. It's so hard to do. I've toured with her and pals a little bit, but it just took a lot of like that thing in my brain. "Just send the email. Just send the email and the demo. You can do it." It's like a month of like working on the email and then a week of like, "It's not ready yet. I won't send it yet."
ezt: Hit it. Hit it. Click it.
wd: Then, I soon as I sent it, she's like, "Absolutely, I'm in."
ezt: I should've sent this a month ago. It would've been done already.
wd: I know. I know. We went in, we tracked without her. All the lead vocals are overdubbed, but that whole thing, the whole track is just the band in the room. There's an extended dreamy slide solo that we overdubbed afterwards. I remember having the song just buttoned up, lead vocal done, solos done, I'm just saying, "Man, I don't want to have her in yet because I think this song, it's just not coming together. It's not working out." Dave, my co-producer is like, "Dude, you had a vision. Let's get her in here. See what happens when she comes in."
She came in, got behind the mic, start singing, and I just collapsed to the floor. It's like, yes, that's why I wasn't done, because I had a vision for how this song should sound and be and it's just her timbre just gluing the whole thing together and the Pink Floyd-ish dreamscape of the song. Kicking off the record, it's a song about just being lonely in a world that we know we've given all our information away. If you've done 23andMe, you've given your biological information away. Every company in the world knows what you love right now and what your opinions are, and yet we're all so lonely. I was like, "All right. Well, maybe there's someone in a room." It's just like, "All right we'll just go in and make my clone now so I have someone to hang out with."
ezt: It's interesting that, yes, you bring up that clone concept there because how about those DNA companies that tell you your genetic background? They have everybody's DNA, by the way.
wd: I know. I haven't done it. I'm just too scared and I don't want to find out who's-- I don't want to find out who-
ezt: I don't want to know.
wd: Well, we already know we're all related.
ezt: Right. It's so strange that they have all this amazing trove of really personal information about people. Back to "Oh, gee, my record collection isn't so special anymore because everything's streaming." What about that? What does that mean for humanity?
wd: Again, that's why like the $10 song in this album, it's like the AI in every algorithm doesn't know the information of these songs. It knows Make Another Me which I think is hilarious, right?
ezt: Right.
wd: For the exact reason we're talking about. It's almost like a troll to the idea that all this data is going to be quantifiable so quickly soon. I believe it's going to be so exciting to share things amongst each other that isn't in this stratosphere and can't be quantized into all this data. That's what I love about what I'm doing right now. It's like all those records behind you are online except for the one you held up.
ezt: Right. It's interesting you talk about the algorithms and the playlists and stuff. I've been speaking recently that the algorithmic playlists, they all stink. I don't know. I guess it depends on how much you love music and how invested you are, but when I listen to those things, man, I get through about 20 minutes, I'm like, "This is pretty good." Then, it just starts going downhill. It just turns to garbage. I'm like, "This is no good. This might as well be a jukebox on autopilot would be better than this." It's really not as as finely tuned as they'd have us believe.
wd: Right. Streaming is in the era of when Best Buy or whatever the mega record stores became boring because they each became homogenized from city to city instead of being unique for the city that they were made in. At the end of the day, it's just boring. I utilize streaming as like a reference library. I just listened to the new Father John Misty and the new Kendrick Lamar and I was like, "Okay, I got to get these on vinyl." Like, "Great. I know what. I've got to go down to the store this week probably and pick them up and I probably won't listen to them on there again."
ezt: Do you have a reasonable collection, I guess?
wd: I do, yes. It's not what you got there, but I feel like it's out of control. I take it seriously and I keep it all recorded on my Discogs.
ezt: Oh. Yes, good. You got to. You got to.
wd: I can tell you what I'm looking for. I can tell you what I'm hunting around for. That's what I prefer. I prefer it, like I said, for Boys Talking in all my records, I invest in the quality of it, but I mostly appreciate it for the ritual in the commitment to listening. Back to where we started, it's the artist's job to safeguard our humanity and our connection to one another. We cannot just get stuck in this, no pun intended, stream where we're all just going in it complaining this sucks while we're being thrown down river to nothing, to nothing.
Great music isn't just great music. It's art that's had time to root itself in our hearts and minds. What we're all doing right now is trying to skip that part and think that an algorithm is going to do the job for us. We have to do the job and believe in other people's time, other people's hearts, and other people's minds as artists.
ezt: Finally, there was a guy that was going to do something about it. (sarcastically)
wd: I'm not going to be the one because I'm a little too small and I've been doing things that are going to ensure that I'm an independent artist for a very long time.
ezt: One guy finally said enough is enough. (sarcastically)
wd: You look, man, anybody we've talked about, they're going to-- someone's going to be like, "Hey, we're just putting out the vinyl for the first six months." That's the thing.
ezt: Now that's the next temptation for you, right? Now, you sound like a passionate, committed guy, but so this is out on vinyl. As you say, there'll be maybe another version that lives online, but it could be easy for someone to flip the switch and just make it available.
wd: Yes, it is. I'm also working on the next record right now too. I think we'll put out like five to six songs of Boys Talking. I want Evan's copy at the end of the day to have a couple tunes on it that aren't out there. I want the thing that you have to have value in your collection too. Also, you have some people over, what are you listening to? Check out this. I'm the only one who has it. You can't listen to this anywhere.
ezt: I do have a friend who if I go to his house for dinner, I'll say, "Oh, put this on," because he's streaming something. Now I can't do that with you, but maybe I'll digitize it and I'll have to bring it over and just listen--
wd: You have them play "Make Another Me" and then, "You can't listen to the rest. Sorry. I got it."
ezt: You got to get your own, pal. You got to get your own. I can hear a lot of influences when I listen to your music, but I'm just curious, I know we were talking thematically about Springsteen and Rufus and those guys, but do you have some other influences that our audience might feel is interesting, or maybe people that they if they like you, they should check out some other people that are your favorites?
wd: I feel like one of the biggest influences on me is Fugazi.
ezt: That's interesting.
wd: I think some of this behavior is directly what I got from growing up thinking they're the greatest, like they're my Beatles in a sense. They're not really [unintelligible 00:33:31], but the choice to manage themselves the way they did add value to only themselves. Thereby creating connection and value with everyone around them.
ezt: It's interesting that you mentioned that. I don't know if you've seen this documentary (Salad Days). It's all about the Washington, DC hardcore scene, and of course Fugazi and all those guys play a major role there. When I was watching it, it's just so interesting to think back to a time before streaming and all these things that we're talking about, and yet how they did it. They rented like a business. It was a business, "This is our product." They were very aware of it. It wasn't an accident like some band who just had a product. Black Flag had their logo and it was just like AT&T in a way. It's really interesting that you bring them up, because I enjoyed their music when I was younger, but I was reminded of their ingenuity as far as being young business people during those times.
wd: They had a beautiful evolution, did what The Police did. The Police and Fugazi's evolution, the early record's great. Then they ended on these intensely beautiful height of the vision albums. Synchronicity and then End Hits and The Argument are just amazing caps to careers. I love Fiona Apple. I love Joan Armatrading a lot. I love Joan Armatrading's songwriting pluralism. Your sound is whatever song you need to write, and I've struggled with that my whole career. When I was on major labels it's like, "You got to pick. Do you want to be like male singer songwriter? Do you want to be the next Tom Petty? Do you want to be an indie rocker? Maybe you could just be a dude with an acoustic guitar."
I was like, "I understand what you're saying. It's called marketing, but I can't--" I wouldn't be able to write, I wouldn't be able to make up my mind. One thing I did do with Boys Talking is there was another five songs that we kicked off, but they just had a lot more punk rock energy. I was like, "All right, that'll be the next thing." I did get a little bit more focused like that because I always felt my records were somewhat all over the place. Sticky Fingers was all over the place.
ezt: A lot of the best albums were.
wd: It was my favorite kind of records, but when you're an algorithmic landscape. I had a song I did very well in Spotify and Apple that was a banjo. That was the only song I'm ever going to write on a banjo. I'm not picking up the banjo to write more songs. I was like, "If the whole thing was banjo, then I'd be in the banjo algorithm."
ezt: All banjo only available on 78 rpm on shellac.
wd: [laughs] The list goes on and influence is abundant. I'm influenced by the things I hear that I don't like too.
ezt: Right. Don't do this, I won't do this. Looking ahead, you've got a tour coming up with Low Cut Connie and your solo shows, you just finished in France of course. What's next? Where else are you taking this? It sounds like you're taking it a lot of places, but at this time in your timeline, what's the next plan? You said you're working on another record or thinking about it.
wd: Yes, I'll quietly work on that all next year-- I guess not quietly, but I've found that so much of hustling your records, you get so stuck and thinking about it. I'm trying to reorganize my brain so I can have a creative lane the whole time. We got two year-end closers happening December 27th and 28th in Somerville, Massachusetts. Then really planning 2025 and exactly how to not release an album.
To your point and to the whole thing is, how do you not do something? How do you do something where you constantly have to explain it? I still contend that it is better than throwing all that hard work and something I believe in into the abyss and saying, "Please click on it this week. Hopefully this week and hopefully--" then it keeps going. That would just be the definition of insanity to me and not mentally healthy. I get to go around and share this album extensively always in front of me. I'm just excited about that.
ezt: Usually, this is the time in the interview where I say, "You can find the album-- I hear It is on vinyl, but you can find it on your usual favorite streaming places." If someone really does want to get a copy of this, why don't you tell our audience what they should do? What should they do?
wd: You go to willdailey.com, D-A-I-L-E-Y. The vinyl's up there, the CD's up there, the tape cassette's up there. We will have a download available in December on Bandcamp, but the only song that's available will be "Make Another Me" and then you'll have to download it to hear it. That's going to be how it is for now. I do think people who have it, once you have it, if you have a favorite song, you can let me know. That might be the one that we-- We're going to take a vote, because I can't decide what song should be the single. I don't have that objectiveness with it. I'm going to let everyone who owns it help decide which songs are released next year.
ezt: Will, thanks for this thoughtful conversation and this unique perspective on the music business, which as time goes on, may not be so unique. Maybe this is something people will do because everyone will get tired of the way that we're doing it right now.
wd: Then you and I can come back to this conversation and be like, "Yes, but I did it first."
ezt: Or we'll be like, "Oh, I just make everything streaming now. I don't do that anymore."
wd: Why would I make physical? Everyone's making physical. The wait time for vinyl's two years to have your vinyl made.
ezt: I used to have to put all that stuff in my trunk and now I just put everything-- oh, streaming. It doesn't matter.
wd: I don't even record it anymore. I just play the stuff live.
ezt: That's it. Hey, that's actually the next step, right?
wd: That'll be it. That would be it.
ezt: That would be the next step. Just you want to hear it, you come out to a show. That's it. Will, this was a lot of fun. I really thank you for your time and thanks for the record and the great music. It sounds so good, and it's a really, really good record. I hope people take the extra step to buy the darn thing and play it on some machine in their home or their car.
wd: Thank you very much.
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