A Chat with Austin Willacy (05.04.24)
For over 20 years, singer-songwriter Austin Willacy has entertained audiences, empowered individuals, fought for change and made a difference with his moving music. From his voiceovers on Guitar Hero to his critically acclaimed releases and performing with icons like Bonnie Raitt, Willacy is a powerful force in the arts world. We speak with Austin Willacy about his new EP Gonna Be Alright, future plans, experiences that made him feel old, and much more.
OSR: A bit cliché but what drew you to music? Why did you decide to become a musician?
Willacy: This is not at all cliché. What drew me to music and why I decided to become a musician are a bit different.
I’ve always loved music. Good music is magic! It expresses things that can’t be said any other way. It makes the impossible feel attainable. It rekindles hope in people who didn’t think they had any left. It makes people jump and wiggle and shake and shout. It helps people find themselves through laughter, tears, introspection, singing, shouting, and twerking. It’s passionate and sensitive and sensual and intimate. It makes time stop. It’s brash and badass and subtle and delicate. Who wouldn’t want that?! I went to a music preschool when my mom was in law school. Nerdy as it is to admit, I remember the way I felt playing recorder duets with my dad at that time. It was beyond fun. It felt important. I took piano lessons and played clarinet and saxophone, but I didn’t get that same feeling, so I slowly quit.
I think I decided to become a musician after singing brought that feeling back, though I flirted with the idea of being a lawyer, a professor, or a psychologist. I sang one song in a barbershop a cappella octet my senior year of high school. I wasn’t expecting it, but that feeling I thought I’d lost came back. When I saw the Aires – my college acapella group – perform I knew I had to be a part of it. Freshman year, I started taking music theory classes so I could learn to arrange music for us to perform. Sophomore year, I wrote a song with one of the guys in the group who played piano. Junior year, I joined my girlfriend’s rock band. Senior year, I started my own rock band and an acoustic trio with 3-part harmony. My post-graduate year, though I was dreaming of being a musician, I decided I was gonna play it safe. I took the LSAT and was planning on going to law school until my best friend and my mentor both essentially said “Law school!? What the hell are you doing?!” Their tough love intervention made me realize I needed to at least try.
OSR: You’ve been on the scene for a while as part of bands and a solo artist. What do you believe are the pros and cons of being a solo act as compared to being in a band?
Willacy: The biggest pro of being a solo act is total autonomy. I can do anything I want. I can write whatever lyrics and melodies I want. I can accompany myself with whatever instruments I want. I can record and produce and mix my music however I want. I can do whatever I want with all of the outward-facing stuff: social media, branding, photography, merch, artwork, gig booking, etc. I can take credit for all the accolades and can pocket all the money I make. Being a solo act has been incredibly helpful for me in figuring out what I want to say and how I want to say it. It’s helped me figure out who I am in the studio and when I’m onstage and how I want to relate to an audience and how I want them to relate to me. It challenges me to stretch, grow and learn.
The biggest con of being an indie solo act is that I have to be the driving force behind everything, and there is an ever-increasing amount for an artist to do in this era. It’s not just writing, recording and performing. It’s a full-time job’s worth of work to be done without necessarily paying full-time money.
The biggest pro of being part of a band is getting to collaborate with other people who help breathe life into everything – the music, the performances, the recordings, social media. It’s wonderful to be a part of a team and to have other people who are pursuing the same dream. It’s also great to be able to share the workload. Maybe someone loves doing the thing I hate doing and vice versa. That way we both get to do what we love and everything gets done.
The biggest con of being part of a band is managing an entity; communication, interpersonal dynamics, decision-making, division of labour, and finances can suck the joy and/or viability out of the whole experience.
OSR: What is the most exciting thing about being a musician?
Willacy: I think finding a flow state is the most exciting thing about being a musician. There’s nothing like the experience of being totally immersed and completely focused on a task without thinking about myself, or how well I’m doing. Sometimes it happens on stage, sometimes it happens when I’m writing or when I’m in the studio. However it happens, I am deeply thankful every time I find that place where I lose track of time and feel like something is guiding me.
OSR: What can you tell us about your EP Gonna Be Alright? Is there a particular theme or backstory to it?
Willacy: Gonna Be Alright is about embracing hope in the face of hardship, perseverance, dedication to dignity and embracing the beauty of lessons learned through loss.
Two of the songs are a collaboration between me and Grammy award-winning producer Rich Jacques, who I met at a songwriting immersive after the 2022 Hawaii Songwriting Festival. We bonded over breakfast and geeked out about music and travel. Rich asks deep questions and is an incredible listener. ‘Saw You in the Light’ and ‘Gonna Be Alright’ came out of the first two conversations we had when we were hanging in the Bay.
I produced the other 3 songs, ‘Better Days Are Gonna Come’ (which I wrote with Patricia Bahia), ‘No Apologies’ (which I wrote with Colin Egan), and ‘I’m Not Gonna Stop’. It’s kind of my coming out party as a producer and feels incredibly empowering.
OSR: If you could change anything about Gonna Be Alright, what would it be and why?
Willacy: I love this EP! The only thing I think I’d change right now is that it would be #1 on Billboard for a year or two. 😄
OSR: I see that you’ve accomplished quite a lot in your time as a musician. From features in Rolling Stone, your music being used in film soundtracks, singalong voices on games like Guitar Hero, and winning various awards. Taking all of this and everything in your life, what do you consider to be your greatest achievement?
Willacy: I think learning to trust and believe in myself has been my most important accomplishment.
Everything else has stemmed from that. It’s allowed me to be a self-starter. I’ve never taken voice lessons. I’ve never taken guitar lessons. I never studied audio engineering or production. But trusting myself to know what I wanted to do and believing I could do it is the most liberating accomplishment because it’s helped me get out of my own way. There is a quote I love that goes something like “Your greatest self has been waiting; don’t make it wait any longer. Get out of your own way.” Words I try to live by.
OSR: I also see you are an organiser and facilitator of the YES! Jam sessions. What can you tell us about this organisation?
Willacy: YES! began as an environmental organization that was founded by two teenagers in 1990. Over the years, its work has broadened and deepened into resourcing leaders and changemakers in exploring healing, learning, and connection through creative expression, collaboration, and action at the internal, interpersonal, and systemic levels.
YES!’s programs are called “Jams,” which are gatherings of 30 people for 5-7 days and are focused on a region, a theme or an identity. YES! Jams happen in many different parts of the world (the US, Canada, Mexico, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Morocco). What we jam are our hopes, our fears, our questions, our challenges, and more. I find this work incredibly powerful, meaningful, and rewarding
OSR: Random questions: What recent experience made you feel old?
Willacy: A friend told me Andre 3000 was putting out a new album.
I said, “Dope! What’s it called?”
He said, “I don’t remember, but the first song is called ‘I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album I Swear but This Is the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time’.”
I said, “Wait, what?! It’s not a rap album?!”
He said, “Naw. He plays the flute. He’s actually pretty good.”
I said, “You’re joking…”.
He said, “Nah. He’s actually a good flute player.”
I said, “So it’s really not hip-hop?”
He said, “Naw. He says he’s too old to rap because nobody wants to hear a song about ‘I got to go get a colonoscopy.’
OSR: What were you afraid of when you were younger, and do you still have that fear?
Willacy: I was afraid of trying to learn music engineering and production. I thought it would have too steep a learning curve and that it would be incredibly frustrating, demoralizing, time consuming, and that the level of technical and technological savvy required would make me feel stupid. I no longer have that fear; however, I do have a healthy awe for how much there is to learn and how much I don’t know.
OSR: What can we expect from Austin Willacy in the future?
Willacy: More EPs! I have a lot of new songs I want to get out in the world. Some of them are already recorded and mixed. Some of them I’ve performed but never played. Some of them are somewhere in between. In addition to new music solely under my name, you should expect to see some collaborations between me and other amazingly talented artists, musicians and producers.
OSR: Do you have a message for our readers?
Willacy: Do whatever it takes to hold on to your creativity. Brené Brown speaks about how our unexpressed creativity is not benign, it’s toxic. She says it lives in us until it’s expressed, often as criticism, judgment, and disrespect, neglected to death or suffocated by resentment and fear. Please don’t carry that around. Life is too short and precious to waste and too long to hold that in your heart, your mind, and your bones. Invent a new word or a new dance, even if it’s just for you. Love yourself enough to get out of your own way. Thank you for the gift of your time and attention.
Many thanks to Austin Willacy for speaking with us. For more from Austin Willacy, check out his official website, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.
This artist was discovered via Musosoup #sustainablecurator
