This Scottish Guy You Should Hear Has an Honest Heart AND a Brain: Check out Withered Hand

Two years ago, I went to Scotland on tour, and a very good friend sat me down and played an EP by Withered Hand (Dan Willson is his non-stage name). The EP blew me away for its songwriting. The singer, whose range is on the higher end of the spectrum like my own, hovers along on a few notes delivering verse after verse of witty, painful reflections from a man stuck in a place and time trying to find the beauty of life and the moment. The constant theme: sacred versus profane.

The first song I heard has been released as one of those cool lo-fi videos:

The lines are stunning right from the opening: “Think me and you could maybe use a lost weekend; I’ve been losing all my friends.” I can’t think of a better, more resonant opening couple lines. The lines stack up like that– each could be a chorus, honestly. Balancing between pathos and humor. He throws out the lines “When every song I sing is in a minor key, I have to write them down, or I don’t remember . . . this isn’t the song I’m thinking I’m not the singer that I thought I was in the solitude before the applause” without taking a breath.

I bring this up for a few reasons: 1) An article two months ago in Seattle Weekly surprised me a little.  In it, Grandy seems to me to point out a generation gap–us old folks need humor to balance emotion, and we need a lot of it. I don’t think that’s the way popular music is leaning. But I do think that if one wants something different, one should latch onto something like Withered Hand as an example of what the ideal might be. 2) There’s a local band here in Seattle that fits this mold too: Virgin of the Birds (never met him, just enjoy his music). And 3) Indie Rooney, who has the same last name as Virgin of the Birds, was talking about the youths and put a Belle and Sebastian image on a post on this very blog. Brought me back to pleasant Scottish memories.