Nathan Woloshin went solo for his new album, Natey Woloshin.
Woloshin, 29, lead singer/guitarist/synthesizer of the progressive jazz/rock band Sunweight, says this is his second solo album. His first one was released in 2018.
“On my first one I was doing a lot of production, a lot of beats and instrumentals for some rappers,” he says. “I was doing some side project stuff. And then I just didn’t want to rely on other people to do the writing, so I just just took matters into my own hand and started singing on beats I made myself — my own beats or beats rappers didn’t want to use — and started writing my own song lyrics.”
He began his latest album in 2020. “Sunweight had just gotten back from touring and the world was kind of shutting down. We took a little bit of a break, a two-to-three-month break. In that time I was really writing a bunch of songs and recording them at my house. And, eventually, it turned into this record.”
Natey Woloshin is “more of an introspective view of my personal life. The things I see and do and go through day to day versus the Sunweight stuff, which is more kind of concept writing, where I write about certain things that don’t pertain to me.”
And, he says, “This is actually the first record I’ve ever done where I wrote, recorded, and mixed everything by myself.”
He describes Natey Woloshin as indy. “I guess my version of an indy pop record. It’s elements of my style of music. So, it’s jazzy. It’s got some guitar rock work. And it’s got some hip-hop elements to it.”
As for the album name, Woloshin says, “That’s the name my mother and father have called me since I was a boy. Up until now it’s been more of a name that people close to me call me.”
Woloshin, who goes by “Nate” to his close friends, says the title reflects the album. “This record was really personal as far as song lyric content.”
Describing “Chicken Wire,” Woloshin says, “Chicken wire gets all tangled up and can be a mess. So, it’s likened to my personal feelings tied up on certain views, certain issues.”
And remember, he says, “I was writing all these songs while we were in the middle of the pandemic.”
“’Chicken Wire,’” he says, “was hard to make just because of all the instrumentation that was involved with it. I just did a lot of weird, different things with my piano and keyboard and things like that. I was running an electric piano through a fuzz pedal and a delay pedal and messing with my synthesizer through it all.”
“Whetherman,” the last song on the album, was the “easiest song” for him to write, Woloshin says. “That is about not believing everything you see kind of deal.
“It’s dealing with pandemic stuff. We’re stuck inside. We’re stuck with what we’re dealt. You have to deal with what you’re given.”
“Forbidden Tangerine” is “wanting something you can’t have or seeing it. It’s like being in this pandemic again. You want to go outside and do things and you can’t. People are saying you can’t do these things and you want do these things. One of the lyrics is ‘Tastes sweet to me, forbidden tangerine.’”
Other songs are more upbeat.
“Hill Finder” is about a vacation that Woloshin and his fiancé, Meredith Potter, took to the mountains in Arkansas. “I guess it’s like a love song of sorts. It’s an upbeat kind of song. It’s got acoustic guitar in it, so it’s nice and mellow. And it’s got sort of hip-hop elements as well with the drums.”
“Tiger Walk” is about “living on the streets of Memphis, Tennessee my entire life. Me and my friend, Juice, walking in ditches, taking pictures of anything, getting rocks thrown at us by little kids while we were down there. These are everyday things I used to do and still do.”
Potter did the art work for the album and single covers to “Hill Finder” and “Tiger Walk.” The album cover shows an angler fish. It fits perfectly with the record, Woloshin says. “From that cover, it almost looks like a rock album or a metal album. And when you listen to it, it’s something completely different. It’s more artistic. More personal. I feel like the angler fish is a perfect depiction of that. An angler fish has the light on it ‘cause deep down in the ocean the light attracts prey. They think it’s food or something. It’s deceitful.
Woloshin shot and directed the “Chicken Wire” video. “Half of the video is a one camera angle shot of me getting my face painted by a person off camera. So, you can only see their arms. I used filming tricks and messed with the speed of the audio to get a fast forward effect. It looks like it’s fast forward, but my mouth is in sync with the lyrics.”
And, he says, “The other half is is just continuing on with the introspective feel of the album.” He includes video filmed at “touring shows, hanging out with family. A bunch of video footage of stuff like that.”
Woloshin knew when he had enough songs for the album. “I was just done with it.”
It was time to move on. “We had really started going hard on the Sunweight record, so I didn’t have time to do that anymore. And we were coming back to work and things like that.”
The new Sunweight album will be “an epic that consists of five separate parts. A 26-minute song. The album is just one song. We love bands, especially bands like Yes and The Mars Volta and Frank Zappa. We want people to really embrace our music and sit down and listen to it and absorb it.”
Songs today “keep getting shorter,” Woloshin says. “I wanted to go against the grain. Make a really long song that was really intricate and meant a lot to us. And I honestly think it’s the best material we’ve ever written.”
Making another solo album isn’t out of the question, Woloshin says. “I love doing it. I probably will do it again depending on the time that I have and stuff like that. It’s therapeutic for me. I have to make music or I’ll go insane.”
To watch the “Chicken Wire” video, click here:
