The Story of Making the Story

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 14 November 2015.

Steview Wonder

In general, I'm all for getting the music out to people as quickly as possible, and I'm less worried about it being flawless as you have been at times. I think of Stevie Wonder's music. Almost all of it is brilliant and beautifully executed, but he still leaves little mistakes and happy accidents in it all the time.

They are hard to notice because he's so fantastic, but Music from My Mind through Songs in the Key of Life all have little problems like sticks hitting microphones, spontaneous laughter, vocal bends into the right note, timing issues on the hi hat or drum fills that are close enough but not on, etc.  I'd also say that he has a mix of timeless songs and songs that are really stuck in their eras (although some of the ones that are stuck make me yearn for the old era—unlike The Secret Life of Plants and In Square Circle, which still are important albums but a little cringeworthy in how fully of their eras they are).

I think through it all, Stevie prioritized getting the songs out over perfecting them. There are all these stories of him telling lyric writers to write a few verses and they'd agonize for months, and then they'd show up in the studio really happy with the lyrics they made and he'd say great! I need a fourth verse in two minutes. A Time to Love and Conversation: Peace are great albums and A Time to Love especially captures some of the 70's magic, but his albums aren't quite as magical when he takes ten years to work on them. Of course, in those periods he tours like crazy and his concerts are fantastic, which supports the idea that it's better to be up and doing than planning and organizing. Don't wait for the all the necessary pieces to align.

One concern with the recording in terms of the storytelling—that is, the only medium we've found for telling the story is the blog, which tells the story of making the story, not the story itself.  I'm wondering about a Will Witkowski podcast that uses a visit from an artist who has been inspired by Arthur White, a song, and a call and/or performance from Arthur White as a counterpoint to the blog.

It still wouldn't tell the story of Arthur White from start to finish, but it could tell a different short story each week from at least three vantage points: the fans', Will's, and Arthur's. Between music, the blog, and the podcast, we'd have three avenues for telling what part of the story we can without the pressure of creating a series of complete, unified texts.