Events
Valley Maker
- 8:30pm Sunday, September 27, 2015
Valley Maker, the musical nom de plume of songwriter Austin Crane, will be playing in support of the new album When I Was Out A Child (Brick Lane Records).
Recorded in Crane's home state of South Carolina and the seaside town of Anacortes, Washington, When I Was A Child is a collection of 12 intricately introspective songs. Anchored by Crane's delicate fingerpicking and emotive vocals, the tracks reflect his travels throughout Kentucky, Colorado, Bulgaria, and the Ukraine and his worldly insights on love, discovery, past lives, and pain.
Stereogum premiered the video for Valley Maker's gorgeous new single "Only Friend," which you can watch here.
Biography:
Life rarely provides obvious answers. But if you appreciate the beauty and wonder of exploring its complex mysteries, then Seattle's Valley Maker deserves your undivided attention. Recorded on opposite ends of the country, and composed during a nomadic period spanning two continents, When I Was A Child features twelve originals that contemplate life, love, and death, faith and doubt, time and space.
"Songwriting is a way to approach unanswerable questions, these experiences that don't have easy conclusions," says Austin Crane, the 27-year-old multi-instrumentalist and songwriter behind Valley Maker. "It's a way to dwell on history and ask these big questions with other people."
Distinctive finger-picking, unconventional tunings, and plaintive vocals anchor Crane's music. Throughout this record, longtime collaborator Amy Godwin intertwines her voice intuitively with his; the end result sounds less like two individuals harmonizing than one who sings with astonishing depth and dimension.
Despite being recorded on different coasts during concurrent summers, ambient noise imbues When I Was A Child with cohesion via a sense of being in the same room with the musicians. This immediacy particularly enriches "By My Side," which began life in Columbia, South Carolina as a skeletal figure repeated on fourstrings. When Crane and his friends reconfigured the song between sessions at Archer Avenue Studio in Columbia, SC and at the Unknown in Anacortes, Washington, it blossomed into the version heard here.
Music opened up the world to Austin as he approached adolescence. "My dad gave me my first guitar when I turned thirteen, and I started playing in bands with friends almost immediately." Initially fixated on keeping abreast of the newest indie music, his tastes settled and matured as the Internet directed him towards key influences like Bill Callahan (Smog), Will Oldham (Bonnie "Prince" Billy), Chan Marshall (Cat Power) and Jason Molina (Songs: Ohia).
Valley Maker began in 2010 as Crane's senior thesis project at the University of South Carolina. He'd achieved a modicum of local popularity fronting a band that bore his name, and needed a moniker to distinguish his new material, eventually lifting one from Callahan's "Say Valley Maker" (on Smog's 2005 album A River Ain't Too Much To Love). "For me that song paints a picture of floating down this river as part of your life, and you know it's going to end, and you're facing that futility and figuring out what it means to respond to it."
"Songwriting is a way to approach unanswerable questions, these experiences that don't have easy conclusions," says Austin Crane, the 27-year-old multi-instrumentalist and songwriter behind Valley Maker. "It's a way to dwell on history and ask these big questions with other people."
Distinctive finger-picking, unconventional tunings, and plaintive vocals anchor Crane's music. Throughout this record, longtime collaborator Amy Godwin intertwines her voice intuitively with his; the end result sounds less like two individuals harmonizing than one who sings with astonishing depth and dimension.
Despite being recorded on different coasts during concurrent summers, ambient noise imbues When I Was A Child with cohesion via a sense of being in the same room with the musicians. This immediacy particularly enriches "By My Side," which began life in Columbia, South Carolina as a skeletal figure repeated on fourstrings. When Crane and his friends reconfigured the song between sessions at Archer Avenue Studio in Columbia, SC and at the Unknown in Anacortes, Washington, it blossomed into the version heard here.
Music opened up the world to Austin as he approached adolescence. "My dad gave me my first guitar when I turned thirteen, and I started playing in bands with friends almost immediately." Initially fixated on keeping abreast of the newest indie music, his tastes settled and matured as the Internet directed him towards key influences like Bill Callahan (Smog), Will Oldham (Bonnie "Prince" Billy), Chan Marshall (Cat Power) and Jason Molina (Songs: Ohia).
Valley Maker began in 2010 as Crane's senior thesis project at the University of South Carolina. He'd achieved a modicum of local popularity fronting a band that bore his name, and needed a moniker to distinguish his new material, eventually lifting one from Callahan's "Say Valley Maker" (on Smog's 2005 album A River Ain't Too Much To Love). "For me that song paints a picture of floating down this river as part of your life, and you know it's going to end, and you're facing that futility and figuring out what it means to respond to it."
As his travels continued, so did the music. "Songwriting became a way to stay in touch with other aspects of my experiences and my interior life. It would be disingenuous to say I never intended to record or play these songs live, but I really didn't have a concrete plan when I wrote most of them."
After completing his master's degree at University of Kentucky in Lexington, Crane entertained several possibilities for his PhD. The vibrant music scene of the Pacific Northwest influenced his decision to choose University of Washington, where he recently completed his course work and will begin research in Human Geography - a field which happily affords him more opportunities to ask big questions. Balancing the two disciplines suits him fine. "My two favorite things to do are write and play music and to think, learn, and have conversations about social and political issues that matter for people's lives."
For now, Crane is excited to invest more energy into sharing Valley Maker with the world. And the open-ended nature of this songwriting project permits him to showcase it live in different configurations: solo, in a duo with Godwin, or as a full band. "My hope is that there are more Valley Maker records to come, and some of those may be stripped down and sparse, and others built-out and full. It's nice to be able to shape-shift a little." Because as When I Was A Child affirms, when the questions you ask - and the art they inspire - remain fluid, moments of great truth and beauty ensue.
For now, Crane is excited to invest more energy into sharing Valley Maker with the world. And the open-ended nature of this songwriting project permits him to showcase it live in different configurations: solo, in a duo with Godwin, or as a full band. "My hope is that there are more Valley Maker records to come, and some of those may be stripped down and sparse, and others built-out and full. It's nice to be able to shape-shift a little." Because as When I Was A Child affirms, when the questions you ask - and the art they inspire - remain fluid, moments of great truth and beauty ensue.