SONG PREMIERE: Assorted Orchids Crafts Subtle Yet Poignant Folk with “The 4th of July”

Photo credit: Michael Winters

Land of the Honeysuckle Wine (due out November 4th) is the sophomore album from Assorted Orchids, the alias of 37-year-old Massachusetts native T. McWilliams.  Written and recorded in the mill town of Lowell, near McWilliams’ childhood home, Land of the Honeysuckle Wine is a continuation of – and companion to – the singer-songwriter’s 2021 self-titled debut on Whale Watch Records. Although largely inspired by the ornate fingerpicking patterns and fragile vocal performance of Pink Moon-era Nick Drake, the music of Assorted Orchids is equally indebted to the urbane melancholy of Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Leonard Cohen and the wide-eyed wonder of Devendra Banhart’s Niño Rojo. McWilliams, however – a self-taught guitarist playing exclusively in non-standard open tunings – creates folk music so unencumbered by convention that it verges on outsider art in its intricate idiosyncrasy.

T. McWilliams recorded his first album in 2020, already aged 35, filled with pent up ideas from nearly 16 years in perpetual migration. Born and raised near Boston, McWilliams left home at his earliest opportunity: first to Los Angeles, then to New York, then to Edinburgh, then to points around Europe and East Asia for shorter spells, then finally to Shanghai where he lived for two years before returning home to Massachusetts in 2019. It was there, home again, that Assorted Orchids took root.

Recording sessions for the self-titled album were complete in late 2020, but McWilliams returned to Wonka Sound Studio in late 2021 with new songs already finished. This time he enlisted percussionist Derek Hayden, the string duo of Lilly Innella (violin) and Natalia Jean McDermott (cello), plus studio engineer Bob Nash on an unplugged electric guitar. The resulting album, Land of the Honeysuckle Wine, is a hypnotic and layered evolution from the desolate starkness of its predecessor. The title is a reference to a lyric from “The Mighty Kingdom,” that first album’s penultimate track, in which McWilliams sings from the perspective of an explorer who discovers a lost civilization, long since abandoned, save for a solitary orphaned child. Land of the Honeysuckle Wine is an epilogue to that story – written from the perspective of that child, in that place.

Today Glide is excited to premiere the standout track “The 4th of July” ahead of its official release on October 3rd. Though he may have gotten his start as a songwriter later than some, McWilliams displays the kind of wisdom that one might expect from an artist who has spent decades toiling away. His soft and calming vocal delivery serves as the ideal compliment to his ponderous and vivid lyrics. Accompanied by little more than his acoustic guitar and the subtle atmospheric textures of a cello, McWilliams crafts a moving work of competent folk music.

McWilliams describes the inspiration behind the song:

Written in a Cambridge, Massachusetts sublet while fireworks popped and fizzed outside, “The 4th of July” is about being a stranger on native soil, romanticizing escape but acutely aware that doing so won’t solve anything. In the world of this song, freedom is a double edged sword.

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