Singer/songwriter Billy Raffoul released the EP I Wish You Were Here via Nettwerk in March 2023, and in late October of this year, his full album, For All These Years, arrived, incorporating the EP tracks but also revealing many new ones. It seems like Billy Raffoul is always touring, and that may not be an exaggeration due to his passion for live performance and engaging with fans. In his recent shows, he’s been playing a big chunk of the new album, and enjoying bringing a bigger band sound to some songs that were written and recorded in a more stripped-down way.

As the title of the album might hint, these songs span a period of time for Raffoul, since some of them have been waiting to make their way into the world, but also you’ll find multiple points in time on the record, bringing in backward looking perspectives from childhood and teen years, as well as the hard-won discoveries of the present day. It’s that view that gives the record a sense of distance and time that brings both emotion and wisdom to audiences in ways that are very relatable. Sonically, the album also works with plenty of interesting contrasts, whether it’s between more minimalistic songs where demo aspects were used in the final cut, or whether a full-band Rock sound is brought to bear. Even within some tracks you’ll hear Raffoul playing instruments against each other for their heavier and lighter qualities to interact.

I spoke to Billy Raffoul about For All These Years and we sifted down to the base layers of some of the songs to discuss how they were built and why he’s proud both to perform them and to give them widespread release.

Hannah Means-Shannon: I’ve listened closely to your previous EP and also of your brother Peter Raffoul’s work, and I think there’s a lot of seriousness in songwriting for both of you. For this collection, the EP was part of the whole album plan, I think.

Billy Raffoul: Yes, it was a “waterfall release”, but the record was already written in its entirety, really.

HMS: I know that live performance has always been really important to you. Does that kind of model, releasing singles as you go, contribute to your live shows because you can keep traducingng new songs?

BR: Yes and no. I think that the release model is more catered towards streaming platforms and getting the most out of each release because you can spread it out. I think in a perfect world from a live perspective, I’d love to have an album out all at once, and then tour it for the rest of the year. Then everyone could hear the songs beforehand. We’ve had the opposite effect, but its been pretty cool in its own way to get to debut songs live, like “Alligator”. Songs like “Drive You Home” and “Michael”, especially, have been played live long before release.

HMS: I remember that “Alligator” got a live play when it was new. I saw that you were at the Mercury Lounge in New York recently. What did you play for that show?

BR: We played a good chunk of the record, I’d say. I think we played 7 out of the 12 songs. It’s been really fun. Growing up, following bands, I’d go to multiple tours and I’d watch how they integrated new music into their set. To be on the other side of that, this was really cool this time around. My last two full-lengths were acoustic records, so there wasn’t as much pressure to bring it to a band setting, though we did. So it’s been cool to work in these new songs into our set.

HMS: You mentioned the song “Michael”, which was new to the world. That has a very big sound! It is electric, it is rocking. I love Blues Rock and older stuff, and I felt like I could hear that, too. What led to that sound for you?

BR: That was the last release from the album. I’m a big fan of fuzz guitars, and my favorite bands in High School were The Black Keys and The White Stripes. After my father’s influence, which was The Beatles, the first bands that I listened to on my own without any outside influence were Garage Rock duos and stuff like that. Like The Arctic Monkeys. I was definitely going for something in that vein.

Also, when people come to see us live, everything is often a little bit heavier. So it was fun to put out a song like that.

HMS: Yes, because a lot of your released music is more stripped down, this is exciting to see how you build this out. Do you think of this song as sounding like a live performance, then?

BR: Yes, absolutely. “We Could Get High” and “Michael” are the bigger moments in the live show. It’s fun because it’s a little bit of a different experience than listening to the record.

HMS: To me, “Michael” feels more like a story song because we’re talking about the psychology of this figure. How often would you say that you write a story song in an explicit way?

BR: I do that quite a bit. There are more than a couple like that on my acoustic record, International Hotel. There’s also “Sundown on County Line” and “Shannon”, which follow a similar trajectory.

HMS: With “Shannon” I can definitely see that narrative development and emotion.

BR: I have a whole record on Youtube called Olympus that didn’t have a proper label release. It has five or six songs like that.

HMS: How does the subject matter for stories occur to you?

BR: It could be almost anything, really. It could be someone I know, or something I’ve read, or, oftentimes, something I’ve watched in a movie. Like “Shannon” was about a person I knew. “Sundown on County Line” was inspired by a TV show.

HMS: “Michael” has some more religious themes to it also, and feels almost in the tradition of Southern Rock, so it reminded me of a Bible Belt mentality.

BR: That’s exactly what it is. It’s one of the more obvious songs, I guess. I’m a lyric person where I think of the story or the words before the melody, and if you read the lyrics, it’s pretty clear-cut exactly what I’m talking about.

HMS: I think it’s an interesting combination though, with the theme and the intense sound together. I think when you put them together, it really creates a powerful amalgam.

BR: Definitely! It’s rare and not very often for me that both the lyric and the instrumentals are so aggressive.  I have a song called “Home Grown” that is probably up there with “Michael” as one of the more aggressive lyrics and that song has a sound landscape that’s a lot more toned down than “Michael”. The lyric sounds angry and the music sounds angry with “Michael”.

HMS: It’s riveting. A very different song and possibly a more emotional song for you is “My Old Man”. What’s the story behind that song? Is it more personal?

BR: That one’s definitely more personal and lived in, you could say. “Michael” is not my story, but this one is. It’s a lot closer to home. I think it’s something that a lot of people can relate to, not just with their fathers, but maybe with their mothers and other people in their family. It’s about how easy it was when you were younger to question these people, but then when you’ve grown up, you understand why. All of the sudden, you’re in the position of your parent and you’ve been through things now. Then you can maybe start to empathize with them. It doesn’t have to be specific. But the song is that feeling.

HMS: It’s always crazy when you start doing the math and realize, “Oh, my parent was younger than I am now when that event happened in their lives.”

BR: Exactly, you start to put them in their shows like you can’t do when you’re a kid. Once you get a little perspective, and maybe there are a few hurdles that you need to get over, you say, “Oh, they were doing this in a different time when even may more was expected of them.”

HMS: I like how the song takes in even three generations, talking about the grandparents, too. The piano is interesting on that one and the strings are even bright and bell-like in places.

BR: Yes, it’s a contrast. The piano is more dark, and cumbersome, and the strings are lighter.

HMS: Was that one where you wrote the lyrics first?

BR: I think they came simultaneously. I think I just started playing that guitar part and then sang the opening lines, then went from there. I wrestled with that song for a long time. It was a couple of years old and just sat as a demo before the demo ended up becoming the recording. It’s the demo vocal with the guitar, and then I colored around it with the piano and the strings.

HMS: Though you often write personal songs, I can see how it might be tough to put that one out into the world because it has so much emotion.

BR: Exactly. It was kind of just for me for a long time. It didn’t leave my phone!

HMS: Another very different song is “Tangerine”, which reflects back on younger days. I appreciate the perspective in the song because it shares the feeling of looking back on relationships when quite young, including the confusion of that. It has a raw feeling and the acoustic aspects really drive the song.

BR: I was really excited about that one. It kind of came all at once. From the conception of it to the recording of it was the quickest of any of the songs on the record. It was written and recorded 20 minutes later! And the recording was done in the moment. It was just a live performance and that was it. I look back fondly on that one since it was exactly what it was supposed to be. It’s imperfect, for sure, but it’s a moment in time for me. I found the words and phrases simultaneously and also liked it. I sang it three times and I think it’s the third take.

HMS: There’s something kind of perfect about the video for the song, too, because there’s something about the busking situation that makes me think of being young in the city.

BR: Yeah! Thank you. The ticket aspect and the subway felt like the right thing to do. We have a contact in Toronto and a friend of mine set it up.

HMS: Does the title of the album, For All These Years, have to do with the idea that these songs span a certain period of time for you?

BR: For sure. “I Can’t Love You Anymore”, one of the last tracks on the album, is from 2012 or 2013 and it never got a proper release until now. Some of the stuff on the album is a long time coming. At the same time, “for all these years” is a line from the song, “Jim Carrey”, which is the last track on the album, so that felt like an appropriate thing. I like pulling album titles from somewhere on the record.