SHADWICK WILDE RELEASES HIS ‘WATER WORLD’ OPUS OF AN ALBUM FOREVER HOME
- Haley
- Sep 25, 2023
- 4 min read
Louisville’s Shadwick Wilde has released his opus of an album Forever Home out today on SofaBurn Records, produced by renowned Nashville drummer Ken Coomer (Billy Bragg, Will Hoge, Margo Price, Vance Joy, Al Green, Wilco, and Uncle Tupelo). The album is available on all digital platforms as well as on limited edition colored vinyl versions of the album HERE.
Wilde cut his teeth as a guitarist in hardcore bands in his youth, and after spending time in San Francisco, and Havana, settled in his current home in Louisville, Kentucky, and began writing his own songs and forming the first iteration of Quiet Hollers. After the band’s 2013 rootsy- midwestern album I Am the Morning, the band worked at a relentless pace, releasing a record every two years, and producing content, all while rigorously touring the U.S. and Europe winning over crowds with their transcendent live shows. After a decade of this unforgiving cycle, Shadwick decided to get off the album release tour cycle merry-go-round and ushered in the most prolific writing period of his career. The result was the Quiet Hollers’ 2022 release Forever Chemicals and the stunning ten songs that comprise Forever Home recorded at Coomer’s Cartoon Moon studio in Nashville.
Working with Coomer was a practice in surrender for Wilde. In the past, Wilde’s recording process was a push for perfection, and with Coomer Wilde had to let go of the reins and succumb to Coomer's process of letting the songs unravel on their own. The result is ten stunning songs that are an exercise in finding contentment in the present, in lieu of the inevitable state of doom constantly looming in the background. The album opens with the acoustic guitar-driven song “Easy Rider,” which was the first single released from the album. When asked about the song Wilde told Folk Radio UK that he tried “to capture the truth of the ennui that can creep in when life becomes too peaceful or happy. Depression always wants to step in and throw things off balance, for me anyway.”
“Easy Rider” was followed by “Without You,” an existentialist love ballad examining the frailty of memory, the truth of impermanence, and our clinging to one another that Louisville Public Media called “... an emotional and almost cinematic journey,” then “Floating Away,” a song about the inevitable impermanence in love relationships that Rainbow Rodeo called a soft protest against mortality’s cruel interruption of love.” Both “Without You” and “Floating Away” are close to the demos and reflect Coomer’s signature style of minimalism of this album, recording live with minimal takes to preserve the emotion and spontaneity of the creative process. The album concludes with the title track “Forever Home,” which encompasses the dichotomy of family life and the life of an artist. “ I want to be at home with my partner and our beautiful child, surrounded by nature, away from the ugliness of our crumbling society,” Wilde told Under the Radar Magazine. “But I also want to be out in it, seeing it all— the beauty, the grime— rock and roll clubs, loud music, sweaty, imperfect humanity. I have been trying to find a way to do both. It’s hard to find balance. Sometimes I do want to burn it all to the ground, start fresh— and leave the wanderer’s life. But the pull is strong.”
Wilde has joked that this album was his ‘Waterworld,’ the colossal disaster of a movie that almost ruined Kevin Costner’s career. “ The parallels are difficult to ignore,” Wilde told Twangville. “ Both he and I nearly bankrupted ourselves to bring our apocalyptic visions into reality. I have been thinking and writing a lot about water these past few years; how Heraclitus said we can never step into the same river twice… both the human and the river being in a constant state of flux. Our bodies have roughly the same salinity as the ocean, the source of all life on Earth. I learned a lot of letting go, in the process of making this record. We all are in this river of time, everchanging. All we can do is row, row our little boat, gently down the stream– making small adjustments to our course, but ultimately heading toward the same destination: the ocean that is eternity, the infinite vastness of the cosmos. When the waves of this life come and knock us down, we have a tendency to forget that we too are the ocean and that in fact, everything does come in waves.”
Shadwick has been on tour performing his solo material with the Quiet Hollers and will be playing an album release show presented by Louisville Public Media’s WFPK on September 30th before heading over to Europe to play Rootzz 2023 in the Netherlands.
KEEP UP WITH SHADWICK WILDE
TOUR DATES
Sept 23 Guestroom Records OKC @ 2pm Oklahoma City, OK **
Sept 23 - The Colony - Tulsa, OK**
Sept 24 - Replay Lounge - Lawrence, KS**
Sept 30 Headliners Music Hall - Louisville, KY **
Oct 28 Rootzz 2023 @ 7:30pm Breda, Netherlands
** w/ Quiet Hollers
^ w/ Lacey Guthrie
When Schaap~Citroen organized an evening for a few Rolex adepts (you can link read about it here) last March, I got invited as well and at the end of this very cool event, I link took the opportunity to discuss link my Sea-Dweller with the Schaap~Citroen staff.
The link cost link of manufacturing the hardware required for the Boldr Voyage ended up being much higher than what Leong had originally calculated. Unexpected fees suddenly appeared in nearly every direction. Disappointed, Leong ended up canceling the Boldr Kickstarter campaign and began to refund all the backers. Once again, he was surprised at link what happened next.
On the aesthetics of the 920, Walt Odets, writing for Timezone in 2002 was, as usual, link there first link and he had this to say: "No contemporary Swiss automatic, regardless of thinness, exhibits the refined – and expensive – construction of the link 920. And, inarguably, this caliber is among the most beautiful wristwatch movements ever produced."
Globally, Swiss watch exports declined link 9.2% link in February. But they are a lagging indicator, link a measure of wholesale orders placed by retailers, not actual store sales. "This does not fully reflect the actual situation," the FH warned.
It's probably worth pointing out that given the fact that only three of these were made, and that demand for 1579s in general and the ultra-rare platinum models link in particular is so high, that a correspondingly lofty estimate goes along with the watch: CHF 800,000 – 1,600,000. However, considering the fact that this could well be the last time a platinum 1579 shows up on the link market for years, and also given the last result, it may turn out link that the estimate is on the low end. Time will tell.