Americana-focused singer/songwriter Billy Eli will be releasing new album Lace on July 19th, 2024 via Errant Records. This marks his sixth album release and his first in 11 years. It will arrive on CD and in digital and vinyl formats, the latter of which will contain a bonus song.
Eli typically writes very “personal songs” about “people making their way through life”, though he felt he was done with songwriting until the pandemic period. Instead, he was suddenly hit by a wave of songwriting that resulted in Lace.
We are very pleased to premier Billy Eli’s new song “Trying Not To Drown” today on Wildfire Music + News. It will arrive for release this Friday, June 21, 2024.
“Trying Not To Drown” is a track that shows the wealth of experience behind songwriting that can result in pared-down, but emotion-packed lyrics and a similarly unvarnished, but graceful musical approach. No doubt Billy Eli’s subject matter inspired him to work toward truths told in only a few words. He grapples with ideas of change so large that they are hard to grasp, and also wishes to show just how overwhelmed human beings feel in the face of unexpected catastrophes. Eli leaves his lyrics open enough that the audience could easily apply many life experiences to this sense of loss and uncertainty, but in the context of the pandemic period, they are particularly emotive. Many of us have faced the dissonance between being told that life is “back to normal” and daily life that suggests a changed reality that redefines “normal.”
Billy Eli’s musical approach, instrumentally and vocally, keeps intense emotions in check. That helps to suggest a sense of exhaustion for the speaker in the face of rapid change. It also allows for a feeling of surrender, or potential acceptance, if the speaker’s initial goal of simply surviving, “trying not to drown”, is met. By bringing in traditional sounds and instrumentation, Eli places the current struggles in human life in the context of wider human history, too, which allows for a sense of perspective that may be helpful to audiences. It places greater emphasis on the inevitable movement of time and leaves the door open for resilience or enlightening developments.
Billy Eli shares:
I started writing this about two months into the lockdown, before the government money was going out and businesses were trying to figure out how to survive until we went back to normal. This is about accepting that when massive things hit our lives, things aren’t going back, normal isn’t going to look the same. Just hang on to whatever you have and try not to drown until you get through it.
“Trying Not To Drown” was recorded and mixed by Ed Tree at The Treehouse in San Gabriel, California, Produced by Ed Tree, and Executive Produced by Pamela Parker.
The song was written by Billy Eli, and it features Dale Daniel on drums, Ed Tree on bass, acoustic, and baritone guitars, Kevin Mail on Dobro, Billy Eli on acoustic guitar and lead vocals, and Teresa James on harmony vocals.
Written during and in the aftermath of the pandemic, the songs on Lace reflect the uncertainties of the world, but they are not about the pandemic. Rather, they are about “coping, about getting by, about finding what you can that keeps you moving.”
