"I come from the nutritional theory of music," says Willy Porter. "You are what you hear." If that's the case, then Porter has about as well-balanced a diet as you could want. Although he is a guitarist, singer and songwriter, he's not necessarily a "singer/songwriter." At least, not in the usual coffeehouse folkie sense. This singer/songwriter can plug into the dance grooves and ambient electronics of modern rock, and a few minutes later reel off a slide guitar solo right out of the tradition of American folk guitar heroes like Leo Kottke and John Fahey. The result is a vitamin-rich, high-protein blend of pop, folk, and rock. Who knows, it may even be good for you.
Falling Forward is Porter's third recording, and his first since the surprisingly successful Dog Eared Dream. That 1994 record was picked up in 1995 by a major label (Private Music), spawned an unexpected alternative radio hit (the song "Angry Words") and led to a series of tours opening for major acts like The Cranberries, Tori Amos, and Rickie Lee Jones. It was a long way from the clubs in Madison, Wisconsin where Porter started, but Willy found it a journey of discovery. "I learned so much about performing," he recalls. "And I learned a lot about the business too. Opening for big-name bands is fun, but it's easy to lose your place and get lulled into a false sense of success." That's a lesson Porter evidently learned quite well.
Falling Forward is true to Porter's own musical voice: it picks up on the boundary-busting arrangements and warm, husky vocals that marked his earlier songs; but the new record is more polished, and reflects Porter's omnivorous listening tastes. Falling Forward is, to stretch the analogy a bit further, a veritable smorgasbord of popular musical styles. "Tribe" is a groove-based, highly-produced track that wouldn't sound out of place on a Peter Gabriel album. The very next song, "Hard," uses piano and harmonica for a particularly American flavor - one that echoes the music of The Band, or more recent acoustic pop acts like Wilco. "I let the song tell me what it wants to be," Willy says.
Sometimes, as in the album's opening track, "Mystery," the song wants to be an unlikely blend of finger picking guitar and a deep dance groove. A song with enough hooks to keep the "don't bore us, get to the chorus" crowd happy. And sometimes, the song wants to be something even stranger. "Sowelu," for example, is the one of the ancient Norse runes, denoting such positive forces as the earth goddess and the sun (as well as the letter S). Porter wrote the song after the death of the singer and songwriter Jeff Buckley. "I don't really know what that song's about," he admits. "It wrote itself." Whatever styles they draw on, Willy Porter's songs have an openness, an emotional honesty. This was something learned, in part, from the late guitar legend Michael Hedges. "I was on the concert committee in college and saw one of his early performances," Porter explains. "So I got to drive him around for a day or two and went to his sound check - and I was blown away. His approach to the voice, the guitar... And his performances were so present and so open. He was really able to hold an audience."
Porter became, like Hedges, a virtuoso guitarist. But he's let some of the technical concerns go in recent years, in favor of finding his own blend of words and music. This pays off handsomely in songs like "Infinity," where a bed of atmospheric electric guitars supports an introspective song for voice and the acoustic guitar; and in the album's closing song, "Somebody Else," a poignant, evocative blend of words and melody in one of Porter's most "unplugged" arrangements. That doesn't mean Willy can't still impress with his guitar work. The album's lone instrumental track, "Road Bone," is a moody piece of slide 12-string guitar that Porter describes as a tip of the hat to one of his earliest influences, guitarist and songwriter Leo Kottke. "I think I was the only kid in sixth grade who thought that Kottke's 6- and 12-String Guitar record was earth shaking. My friends thought I was crazy."
It was Kottke's playing that got Porter to move from his original instrument to the guitar. "My first instrument was the viola," he says. "And after a while my parents said, you know, it's really great that you picked up an instrument and you really wanted to play it, but we think it's time you tried something else." (Seems like Willy may have picked up a little of Kottke's legendary storytelling ability too.) If there's a reason why the singer/songwriter label might have stuck to Porter, it's probably in the musical tales he tells: songs of love, and especially of love lost, of difficult relationships and the dislocation of modern life. But what about all that heavy-duty rock touring? Pop and rock are on his resume; are they in his blood? "Well, I'm not writing traditional folk music," he says. "But I'm also not writing obvious, brazen pop. It falls in between. I'm happiest there; I wouldn't be happy at either end." The reality of the music biz is that music that's "in between" often falls between the cracks.
After a couple of years spent extracting himself legally from what he termed "the Major Label Letdown," Willy chanced upon Six Degrees. "They allowed me to make the album that I heard in my head, with the people I wanted to work with. It is the music-based relationship that I have been searching for." Porter has already proven that his distinctive songs can reach a wider audience, and he's already got a backlog of new material that he'll be introducing on tour later this year. "We'll road test a few things," he says. "The songs, particularly the musical component, are a work in progress - even after the recording. They're constantly evolving and changing through the improvisation and spontaneity of the live shows." The songs on Falling Forward were up to four years in the making, and reflect Porter's appetite for different musical styles. The result is a vitamin-rich, high-protein blend of pop, folk, and rock. Who knows, it may even be good for you.
