Singer, songwriter and producer Billy Raffoul recently released his EP, I Wish You Were Here, via Nettwerk and completed a rather substantial tour in support of American Authors. For Raffoul, unveiling the songs on the EP and gathering feedback from audience reactions had been a gradual process that impacted recording choices. Though the song-by-song approach to communicating with fans is somewhat new to him, it’s been very rewarding as a way of gaining immediacy and sharing his own excitement about the songs with fans more directly.
The songs on the EP are carefully constructed for emotional impact, both in terms of lyrics and in composition and that stems from an original experience of writing and demoing the song that Raffoul is hoping to preserve all the way through the process of recording and release. The title track ‘I Wish You Were Here” is perhaps the most emotionally raw in that respect, but even more upbeat songs like “We Could Get High” channel a kind of wild joy that would be hard to hold onto or recreate through heavy-handed production process. There’s a close relationship between original demos that Raffoul makes, along with collaborators Justin Zuccato and Mike Crossey, and the way that he hopes audiences will receive these tracks live. I spoke with Billy Raffoul about that relationship and what his goals have been for the songs on I Wish You Were Here.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I know you’re talking to me from the road today. Are you playing songs from the EP, or is that something coming up?
Billy Raffoul: Oh, yes. We started playing “Jim Carrey”, probably the oldest song on the EP, in 2019. In Spring of last year, on our European tour, we started playing, “We Could Get High” and that was kind of the catalyst for the release, in general. The reaction of the audiences to the song overseas made us release it.
HMS: I noticed that some of your acoustic videos of the songs go back further in time, so I figured they had some development period. Did any of the songs change between writing them and recording them because of live play experiences?
BF: Oh, absolutely. I’m so glad you asked that. I’ve heard stories of people like Bob Seeger who played a lot of his music for high school audiences before the songs came out. He played them for years and it almost helped structure his songs. If the song’s not out yet, it’s the best sample audience in a live show. That’s what happened for us with “We Could Get High.” Although the original recording, the demo recording, was done, playing it live changed the lyric.
It used to be a song called “We Could Get Out”, but because of the way that the audience sang the chorus, it sounded like “We could get high.” They thought that’s what I was singing, and it drastically changed my approach to the song in an organic way. It would be hard to have someone sing along a certain way and then say to them, “Actually, you’re getting it wrong.” Instead, I stepped back from it and thought, “I think this is the better thing for everyone.”
HMS: That’s amazing! I don’t think I’ve ever heard a story like that, where the audience supplied the lyric that they want, and the artist capitulated. That’s great.
BF: It got to this point every night where even my drummer, who had only known the song from touring, agreed with the audience. If even he thought that, I needed to revisit that.
HMS: Now, the chorus on the recording has some vocal layers, like a group of people singing. Was that already in place, or did you add that because of how the audience was singing along?
BF: The layers were already there, however, after that trip to Germany, I went back and retracked all the layers to make sure you could hear “high.” On the demo, it wasn’t very far apart, but I recorded all the chanting parts again thanks to the German and UK audiences!
HMS: Was there a period where you were consciously writing towards this EP, or do you work more on a song-by-song basis?
BF: When I signed my first record deal, I was thinking in terms of albums, but I signed at a time when the EP was becoming a thing and singles were getting bigger. It was an adjustment thing for me. The cool thing for me now is that I’m finally able to put out songs when I am most excited about them. In the past, I’d have a song and be excited about it for two or three years before the audience got to hear them. You get burned out on that. This is much closer and I’m getting more enjoyment out of that.
HMS: I’m sure it also opens up possibilities for live shows if singles are already out.
BF: Exactly. On the American Authors tour which we just completed, we played the song “Alligator” every night to a great response from the audience. It was cool to get that and be able to tell people, “This is coming out in four weeks.”
HMS: Do you feel that with singles and EPs, each song gets more attention than they might on an album?
BF: Absolutely. It’s a unique balance and dance. When I listen to albums, the deep cuts and the tissue in between the big singles are often my favorite things about the album. I got to experiment with that a little in 2020 and 2021 with the two albums that I wrote, International Hotel and Olympus. Olympus is an album that I only put out on Youtube. I got to explore sequencing albums where the songs lean on each other. That was really fulfilling, but it’s also fulfilling with this EP to be able to put a lot of force behind each of these songs.
HMS: I heard that you have some collaborators, Justin and Mike. How far back do you all go, personally and musically?
BF: Justin I went to high school with, though he’s a couple years my senior. We really started hanging when he graduated college and I finished high school. Then we started creating together. I went through some DVDs recently, and found an old one that Justin had given me a month after my very first collection of songs had come out. This was maybe 2010 or 2011. I had a six song EP I’d recorded and I’d gotten a band from Detroit to play on the recording.
I was playing weekly bar gigs and Justin showed up one night at the bar gig and handed me this DVD. I rewatched it last night, and it was just him playing the entire EP, spot-on, on the drum set. The EP had only been out for a month! There was no video performance for him to see. He just sat down, devoured the EP in a day, then filmed himself playing the parts. That was the introduction to what we’ve been doing ever since. He’s been involved in every part of it, from the live side of things to the production.
Mike and I go back to around 2015, which was our first session, to create a demo for my song “Acoustic” which went through six or seven versions. So it’s almost eight years that we’ve been working together, and we’ll be working together in a few weeks again. These are long relationships.
HMS: It sounds like the three of you are used to making things work across distances. Do you usually send tracks to each other remotely?
BF: Absolutely. I actually sent Justin parts from “Jim Carrey” before everything shut down. It wasn’t even because we couldn’t get together. We had a head-start on the pandemic. We ended up making two full albums that way.
HMS: Did that pose technology challenges for you, or did you already have methods down?
BF: There’s so much I could learn more about. I’m very bare-bones. I just use two or three channels with two microphones. When I give everything to Justin or Mike, it’s very basic, and they work their magic. When I think back to these songs and recordings, I am so happy that we were able to put things out as quickly as we did. I wouldn’t be opposed to making more albums in that way. It’s very honest.
HMS: It’s got that immediacy, too, capturing a feeling.
BF: It’s so exciting. When I think back, it’s some of the most excited I’ve ever been about music, being able to work that quickly. You don’t censor yourself. If something feels good, you just do it.
HMS: You’ve put up quite a few videos that relate to your songs, some live play, some lyric videos. Is that a constant process for you?
BF: It’s definitely on our radar, to make sure that we have something to release. We have collaborators and we just go straight into a performance or lyric video. It’s a little production team we’ve been working with for years, and we’re always getting something done.
HMS: Even within the videos for this EP, there’s a lot of difference between them that’s interesting. For “I Wish You Were Here,” you’re in this barren field with a piano for the live play.
BF: That one is indicative of our hometown! It’s our friend Mitch Neufeld’s property. I didn’t really mean for it to be symbolic, we just wanted a big, open space. But I gravely underestimated how hard it is to get a piano, even an upright piano, into a field. We learned a lot that day! We were sweating because that thing was so heavy. We’d go to try to pick it up and we’d sink.
HMS: That song is, in some ways, based around that piano. Is that usual for you? This collection seems more based around the guitar.
BF: I only have a few that I’ve written on piano. This one actually started on guitar and we were looking at a chord progression that we hadn’t really used. But my brother is more of a piano player. It felt like something that naturally went with the piano. There aren’t many!
HMS: I think if it hadn’t been piano, the song might have needed more orchestration, but the piano kind of fills that space fully. It’s a very strong presence in the song.
BF: I couldn’t agree more. It takes up a lot of space. It’s just this train that’s moving forward.
HMS: That’s a very emotional song and the lyrics are very direct. Is that ever difficult for you, to be that direct in your songs?
BF: Sometimes it’s harder to second-guess and wonder what people close to me will think. I have another song coming up called “Drive You Home” where I’m struggling with the directness a bit. Sometimes it is tough, but when it feels really honest at the beginning, you keep trying to go back to that. Because there must be some reason that it clicked at that point and that this was the way that you needed to say it. I try not to water that down too much throughout the writing and recording process.
HMS: It sounds like a way to keep that original energy to the song, too, rather than losing it through multiple revisions.
BG: Exactly. Justin and I talk about that all the time. If there’s something you absolutely love about it in the beginning, even if it makes you feel a tiny bit uncomfortable, it makes you feel that you’ve accomplished something. If you cut that in half before anyone has even heard it, what are you even doing? We try to capture it in the beginning and just don’t want to fuck it up!
HMS: A song like “Jim Carrey” is more complicated, in a way, because you need to talk about this film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in a way that even people who haven’t seen it could still relate to. Was that something you grappled with?
BG: In the verses, I tried to make them as universal as possible, in case someone had not watched the movie. The choruses are really specific. In my mind, I’m having a conversation with someone who has seen the movie. That’s how I justify it. I loved that part of it because it was very direct and personal. But then, how do I bring other people in? There’s the idea of getting a text from someone you care about, or going to a restaurant that you had once been to with somebody. Those are the more open things for people to relate to.
HMS: I saw there was a film poster design for the song “Alligator”, which conjured horror film tradition. That made me laugh. Was that part of the feeling of the song for you? The sound has some of that, too.
BG: I’m glad you mentioned the sound because since its conception, the sound of that song has always been like something’s a little bit weird, a little bit off in a kind of cool way. I describe that whole feeling like the walls are melting. You think it’s supposed to be a nice release in the chorus, but then there’s a chord that goes a little Addams Family.
HMS: It reminds me of in video games where you’re going to fight a “Big Boss” and the music suddenly changes and gets a little sinister. But it’s kind of exciting at the same time.
BG: That’s exactly what we’re dealing with! You’re going to fight the big boss. We hope to have a visual that’s going to accompany that one.
