Lancaster, PA-based Singer/Songwriter Denison Witmer recently released the album, Anything At All, through Asthmatic Kitty Records. It was co-produced and recorded by Sufjan Stevens, who also performs throughout the record. The two have been friends for over twenty years, and for this album, what started out as, possibly, a more casual collaboration led to the first album that they have fully created together. Working on the album also spanned an eventful time in their lives where, coming out of the Covid period, life events, including illness, made for a very measured pace that eventually led to the completion of their work.
Anything At All is an album that builds carefully on atmosphere, making it almost the definition of approachable. Each track lures you in, and feels guided in terms of direct lyrics, meaningful themes, and personal emotion that’s being shared. The songs stemmed from a particularly energetic period of songwriting for Witmer, who usually allows a very gradual process for writing, but their migration through stages of development in the hands of both Witmer and Stevens may be part of their gentle charm, preserving the tone of a world full of wonder but prone to complex truths. I spoke with Denison Witmer about the genesis of the project, its progress, and some of its themes that he can see now even more clearly in hindsight.
I saw that you and Sufjan had worked on and off on this record, despite interruptions. What did you have in mind for it as a collection, or did you just work on a song-by-song basis?
On the heels of making American Foursquare, I actually recorded another album in between. In January 2020, I decided to give myself a songwriting project where I wrote and recorded a single song every single day. Then I released it on Bandcamp, though it is available more widely now. I just wanted to do something immediate. I released it under a different name, called “Uncle Denny”. I realized after writing those songs, “Oh, I’m enjoying writing again. I just have to keep this spirit alive.” So I just kept writing, even while I was promoting American Foursquare. It’s not always that way for me. I go through spells where I don’t write anything for almost a year and a half. Music’s not very consistent for me when it comes to writing. Sometimes, the writing goes on in the back of my mind for a long time, and I don’t really have a lot of material to show for it.
But in that case, I was writing a lot. I was determined to make another album, kind of quickly, because it had taken me so long to make American Foursquare, and I didn’t want that to happen again. So that was the inception of this album, Anything At All. When I was talking with Sufjan about it, he said, “Why don’t we book a session together, and we can lay down some basic tracks. We’ll see what you have in terms of getting a new album off the ground.” And that’s what we did. We spent three days together and recorded the basics for six to eight songs. I thought I’d then take them to Seattle, to Andy Park, who made American Foursquare with me, and we’d wrap the songs up in about a week. Then I’d have another record. But it did not happen that way at all!
We did make some progress on the songs, but when I brought them home and up to Sufjan to share them with him, it became apparent to me that he hadn’t previously meant, “Let’s start some songs,” but, “I want to make a record with you.” I didn’t know that! I didn’t make any assumptions. I thought it would be up to me to finish it. When I realized that he wanted to make the record together, I reapproached it entirely. I said, “Let’s listen to the songs and see what’s working for you, and what your original vision for the songs might have been that’s different than what I did in Seattle.” We sort of deconstructed the songs and put them back together again. A lot of the things that I did in Seattle ended up being things that we kept, but he definitely had a different vision for some of the overall arrangements for the songs, so we worked our way towards that.
Even though it was going around your elbow to get to your hand, and it was a lot of work, it sounds like there was something to be gleaned from the Seattle session that was useful. Then you could springboard off of that.
Exactly. It definitely got the conversation started, and when he heard everything, and when he’d been pondering the songs ever since we worked on them, maybe it made him want to see that through. I don’t really know. It just became apparent that we should finish them together. I’ve made enough albums now that I accept that every single project I’ve worked on has its own timeline and it’s never going to turn out the way that you think. But that’s even one of the tenets by which Sufjan and I created rules for ourselves in the studio, such as, “Don’t get attached to outcomes. Just put in the work, do your best, and you’ll figure it out.” I feel the same way about making records. You can’t get attached to outcomes, since it always takes a different path than you think.
With this album, Sufjan ended up getting sick and being in the hospital right as we were going to finish recording, so I realized that the album was going to require another hiatus. But that was fine. This was something that we were doing together. I decided to wait for him to tell me that either he couldn’t finish the record with me or that he wanted to work on this record with me again. Him getting better was the most important thing, and our friendship is way more important to me than a project. After he was out of the hospital for a little while, he said to me, “I’ve been thinking about your songs and I think that we should make some time to finish them.” So that’s what we did.
I didn’t know about that aspect of the process. I saw a reference to personal lives affecting the schedule. It’s amazing that you all were able to get back together. It’s very common for life issues to mean that albums never get completed, so it’s wonderful that wasn’t the case here.
Sure, yes. Life is what happens while you’re making other plans. I also have a lot going on with my life, like I have two little kids, and there’s a lot in my life that could derail progress if I didn’t actively work towards it. I think Sufjan and I have the benefit of having been friends for twenty years. If and when the time presented itself, then we would finish it.
It definitely casts things in a different light to know the story behind this album, which is so much about contemplation and acceptance. The cover art really suggests passage of time and growth, as well. There’s a sense of unity to things.
That is the work of my brilliant friend Eric Fisher. He designed the cover art for my past two records, and he did some of the singles for me, as well. He’s done a good job of finding the ethos of my records and putting them into imagery. He and I talked a little bit about the album, and he came up with this. I’m glad that you feel that the art connects to the album. That’s so important to me.
American Foursquare is kind of about the time when I relocated to my hometown, had my second child, really was coming to terms with leaving the city, and trying to figure out how to make that work. That album was about coming to terms with this big life decision, and this record is about me arising out of that and putting things in place to live the life I want to live, which is in community with others, with kindness, and love, and care. And that’s showing my children what the best way is to be a person in society. I’m 48 now. I’m allowed to be in this phase of my life! [Laughs] I’ve put the time in. If some of the songs even feel a little preachy in some ways, I feel like I’m allowed to do that, saying, “This is how I see the world.”
This album is certainly about that. And those big questions don’t come without a certain amount of confusion. I’ve often been very comfortable with this mentality that every time you have an answer, that leads to another question. It just happens. I find myself stuck in that a lot, and that’s not because I’m not content. That’s not how I live my life at all. I actually take a lot of simple joy in the wonder of everything. That’s something that my wife and I talk about a lot and want to model for our children. But my music is kind of where I come to terms with it, and I try to answer a lot of it in my lyrics, maybe. I always come back to the same thing, though, which is that I don’t really know anything! [Laughs] So I don’t really answer questions for myself, but I put the work in trying.
It makes sense that when you reach the middle of life, you want to have built a certain worldview that sustains you. I’m sure you’ve always had one, but this sounds more conscious and articulated. Especially having kids drives that!
Right, for sure. I never saw myself as modeling anything for anyone, really. That was just because I didn’t really feel that I had sets of eyes on me, but kids, that’s what they do! They are incredible observationists.
It’s scary, isn’t it! [Laughs]
It is so freakin’ scary! I’m glad you can laugh about it, because it is almost comical. I have to look at myself, and ask, “What am I doing? How am I actually going to live my life?” That definitely played a role in the way that I represented some of the lyrics. Some of the songs are very simple, lyrically. I tried to stay away from being overly clever with a lot of the lyrics, because I wanted them to be a very relatable message. That’s not the way that I’ve always written, but I was willing to try it on this record for that reason.
This all ties in with the cover ideas we were talking about, too. Wrapped up in all of this, do you think that time is something that’s a theme on this album? Songs like “Clockmaker” and “Slow Motion Snow” made me think of how we encounter time, how we hold onto it, and whether that’s beneficial. A lot of people say, “Just let it go.” But actually, there are ways in which holding onto moments and capturing them can be important.
I think that you are spot-on with that. I think that maybe it was subconscious for most of my writing on this record, but then I wrote a song on the heels of this album, that’s not on this one, but will probably be on some future release. All of the lyrics have to do with keeping and letting go of time. It all kind of spilled out on the heels of this record. I think that time plays into this album in that I’m feeling this cumulative sense of life right now. Anything that we do builds up, and it’s the accumulation of time. If you’re engaging in tiny amounts of bad behavior every day, you add that over a year, and it’s actually a lot of bad behavior. And if you’re doing something good, a little bit every day, that also adds up to something good.
It’s tough because I’ve seen, now, the way that time builds and the way that tiny decisions turn into big decisions in so many of my friends’ lives, and in my life, as well. This year, my grandfather passed away, and he was 99. And I, being in my late 40s, I realized that if I double my age, that’s my grandfather’s age. So I, potentially, have an entire lifetime ahead of me. I already feel like I’ve had a long life, so I’m looking at time so differently. I see it stretching out in front of me, and behind me now, and I’m square in the middle of it. I’m saying to myself, “How do I want to proceed?” Part of me is saying, “Don’t fuck this up! Do your best, here!” That’s kind of the way that I’m thinking about time these days.
