CROSSROADS, CONVERSATIONS AND FIRST CONCERTS WITH WILLIAM AUSTIN
William Austin is at a crossroads in his life — an “Intersection” detailed in his recent single of the same name.
Stuck, clashing within a relationship that had once been so cohesive he had to stop to ask himself: “What am I going to do about it? Am I accepting that this relationship is something I want to still pursue?” Finally deciding to give their love another chance.
“I usually just write really fast, because, to me, songwriting is capturing a very specific perspective, and a lot of times, I only even have that perspective for like an hour,” Austin explains. “I put a capo on, started playing E Major, and just started singing the first line of the tune. It sort of just fumbled its way out of my mouth, wrote it down real quick, made a voice memo.”
Although “Intersection” is a new release to the public, Austin has been sitting on it, playing it and revising it over the past year. It marks the first time he picked up a guitar (well three months after, but who’s counting), the first time he feels his music is truly genuine and a shift of his sound from alternative to the folkier music he’s tapping back into after growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
He credits the success of the song on his two favorite things: having fun and finding the good by getting the bad out. The fun part comes mostly through his collaborators and friends, Zach McCoy, Trafton Welsh and newfound producer Ben Coleman who he found through fellow Brooklynite Susannah Joffe’s work.
“I brought the song to Nashville and played it for two of my friends there who helped me make sort of the full version of the instrumentation,” Austin said of his partners who helped him on the song before bringing a producer in. “Our big challenge was we knew we wanted to find a producer who could capture the essence of what we all felt, but also hang out and we wouldn't have to be that serious around.”
Since writing the song he has bought his own guitar, played the song every day for a year straight and completely changed the third verse at his first live show in New York City just months before its release.
Austin has had some time to think since making his decision, stuck at an intersection. Through the lens of characters, based on his life, making their way through a small town, based on his hometown, loving, learning and leaving. “Intersection” is the first folky taste of what is to come with the new music he can’t wait to put out in the world.