Photo via Strand of Oaks - Facebook
Timothy Showalter
Timothy Showalter
For Austin based singer-songwriter Timothy Showalter, making a Strand of Oaks album in the past usually dealt with much self-analysis, often trying to come to terms with trauma, the ups and downs of life, through song. It’s meant lyrically tearing down and rebuilding in hopes of understanding and healing. His recently released eighth album, Miracle Focus, however, bucks that trend.
Strand of Oaks will be performing at Cactus Club on July 21.
When he recorded his previous album, 2021’s In Heaven, Showalter felt very satiated and proud of what he and producer Kevin Ratterman were able to accomplish on the album. It was the sound he had been looking for a very long time. However, rather than trying to recreate that sound again, he felt the freedom to move on to whatever was next. He mostly stopped making music the next few years, focusing primarily on two new creative outlets--painting daily in his garage and acting on FX series Mayans M.C. He spent two seasons acting on the show, flying out to LA to play a villainous biker. Those experiences gave him an exodus for a brief time from his longtime band and gave him renewed focus when he started writing again.
“That allowed me to not be Strand of Oaks for a while, which felt like a wonderful vacation,” says Showalter.
The break allowed him to “be quiet enough to listen.” Coming back into the writing process, he sought to “connect with something bigger than myself” and allow “that larger connection to be put into the songs.”
“Quickly and without any planning, the songs just weren't about me anymore,” he says. “They were just about how do I as an artist try and find a way to translate some of these good feelings and this idea of balance and bliss. I love the word bliss. How do I find a way to translate those into songs then to provide the listener hopefully a similar experience to that?”
Showalter said that lack of expectations allowed songs to came very freely and naturally, without any guiding forces. He spent three years writing 10 or 11 songs, rather than the roughly 50 songs he tends to write while making an album.
“I just took these 10 songs just like I would with a painting,” says Showalter. “I just kept working on them to the point where the songs told me when they were done.”
He once again recorded with Ratterman, who helped him create a synthesizer heavy danceable collection of songs, a bit of a departure from his typical folk-rock sound. While he occasionally has felt tempted to continue finetuning the album – “it feels it’s still being painted in my mind” – he’s ultimately happy with how things turned out.
The Shepherd Express caught up recently with Showalter to discuss the transformative album, how painting and acting gave him a new perspective, and why Cactus Club continues to be a special venue for him to perform.
Did the slower process help you become more patient as a songwriter?
For sure. I think it's good to be patient, especially with these songs. I think I always had this goal as a songwriter to make my own the genre of my heart perhaps, and find a style of music that I think my soul was always trying to speak in. I always relate things back to painting, but when I paint, I don't know if I necessarily do something correct, but I know when I do something wrong or not fitting to the painting as a whole. And I felt the same way with Miracle Focus songs. I knew what didn't fit. And that took a long time to edit and slowly curate these songs into where they were. And it was a pretty gigantic process and three years of my life just going over this.
What was it like getting to act on Mayans M.C.? How did that opportunity come about?
Miracle Focus by Strand of Oaks
I didn't plan on being on a television show in my life. It was a wonderful chance of events where I met and had dinner with Elgin James, the co-creator of “Mayans M.C.” We just became buddies and had this wonderful dinner. He had used Strand of Oak songs on the show prior, and we just got to know each other. And then out of the blue, I got an email saying that I was cast on the show, and I at first thought it was maybe a prank or something. And then I had this email, and next thing I knew it, I was flying out to Los Angeles and getting my outfit on and just beginning to live this dream that I never expected.
The thing that really brought out a lot of creative energy was the idea of a new brain. I have been Strand of Oaks for 20 years and it's great and I love it, but it was also getting kind of routine, of you make records, you tour them, then you write another record.
And to be an experience where I was on a television set and I'm acting with extremely talented actors, I had a scene with Edward James Olmos, one of my heroes, and it made me nervous in the best of ways. I was scared to be on set, and I wondered if I was doing a good job. There were many instances where I would have to stunt, drive a car, or be a part of some elaborate action sequence. I had to be good because I loved Elgin, I loved the cast, I love the crew.
And I just felt so inspired by that energy of the new experience and the new energy that comes from that new experience. I thought, if I'm capable of standing up to this challenge of a new way to express myself, it gave me the courage then to finally make a record. I wanted to, even in the face of most likely confusing my fans or whatever fan base I have left. I didn't have those concerns. I just needed to make what I made and the confidence that I was given by watching so many people collaborate and be talented together and inspire one another. I could write a whole book on how amazing it was being in that show. It was a once in a lifetime experience.
It's awesome to watch the show’s evolution from season one until it ends. Elgin and the actors and the writing kept digging deeper into the sense of self and the consequences of ego. It was extremely poetic. And a lot of times the show felt like a painting as well. It was this impressionistic, an interpretation of existence, and I was just in awe of it.
I saw your recent social posts about the turn in 10 and that you kind of think that the new album is kind of a response to it in a way. Why do you think those albums connect to each other?
I think Heal was a way to share and purge and release a lot of feelings that came from a very emotional and perhaps impulsive place that was really beneficial for me at the time. I needed to express or find a way to just capture the chaos of life. And I think it was beneficial to my life and hopefully the listeners. But I think Miracle Focus was the direct opposite of that. Miracle Focus was a way to find balance beyond. I mean, Miracle Focus since writing it was very easy, but explaining it has been very difficult because it's very simple in nature. It's just, how do I find balance in my life or try to? It's a big question. Miracle Focus represents peace, and healing isn't an action or something you can win. Healing is just something you exist with. And I think that was the response to Heal.
After creating albums that usually dealt with trauma and the ups and downs, I imagine it was refreshing to rip up the script and do something different.
Yeah, it was something that I didn't intend on. My relationship with being a part of the system of the music industry was already kind of drifting away over the past few years, even when In Heaven was being written. And it allowed me this kind of freedom that I just didn't want to do the dance anymore with the music biz.
I feel like making Miracle Focus was this point very similar to Heal, where I wasn't sure there wasn't any expectations that other people are putting on me or myself. And I think when I'm in those places creatively, I just do whatever I want. It’s fun to make records like that because similar to Heal, Miracle Focus, the expectations of how I am going to do this live. How am I going to pull this off? That wasn't a concern. It was just I needed to fully channel the closest I can to the feeling artistically and sonically.
Was it your plan to lean heavily on the synth for the sound from the start?
No, not at all. They just came out. I think a lot of people have interpreted this as some big left turn that I've done. And I think I didn't. I wrote some of these songs on guitar. I just felt like the best way to paint blissful emotions while I was writing it was through synthesizers. Because of my history as a music listener, I have always found that my heart just opens up when I hear synths, especially in a good context. It really speaks to me in a beautiful way, similar to guitars. But synthesizers have just been my gateway to that magical place since I was 12 years old, probably.
Was there a song or two where you started noticing that it was going to have a different type of sound?
It's hard to say. It was so long ago. I think previous records I had this huge agenda of what I wanted to accomplish or sounds or reference points of bands. And for this one, it just happened, and it's provided a difficulty in explaining the record because I'm usually a very referential person.
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It came from when I started to quiet my mind and take away all of the fast-moving parts of the way my computer brain works. And when I just quieted it down to, similar to when you sit on the beach and you just hear the ocean waves and they're so strong, and you feel this sense of all consuming, at least for me, peace, whenever I'm by water or in ocean or Lake Michigan, I grew up near [in Indiana], I just feel so quiet and still and a part of something eternal and always feels like a good metaphor to where I was when I wrote this record. Since it came from a place like that, and it was a while ago, it's really hard to remember now because I have lived a lot of life since. I mean, some of these songs I started writing before In Heaven was released. So, it's been a while now, three years.
Why did you feel the Miracle Focus was a good title for this collection?
I made a painting called Miracle Focus before I even wrote the songs. It was two words that kind of explained me discovering meditation, discovering painting, discovering an approach and a method towards quieting my mind and easing some of this constant anxiety and being clouded by emotion. So much that when I was painting, I would start with the canvas and I would have these impressionistic, color swatches and work with really just these impressionists. It didn't have a lot of structure to them. And then I would just look at the canvas for a week and not paint anything, not draw anything. And I would just look at it for hours and while looking at it, a story would appear just meditating on the painting and meditating on why I am creating something.
I began to call that Miracle Focus, and I made a painting for my best friend, Kevin, who I make records with, and that was the Miracle Focus painting. And that was probably a year before the song started. And the painting was just two beings in the midst of this chaotic symbolism and painting these two glowing white beings just there for each other, one comforting one another, and finding stillness in the chaos. Miracle Focus is a concept much bigger than the 10 songs in my life. I think it's my own terminology for trying to get better.
You’ve mentioned that it's important to be grateful for the miracles one has rather than trying to ask for them.
Yeah. I think it's a dangerous thing to be expecting anything out of the universe. I think it leads you to this false sense of entitlement of your place in the universe. And I think for me at least, a more healthy way is to not to think the universe works like a casino, and I put a coin in and maybe I win the jackpot. I think it's more of just, I'm thrilled.
And I still get bummed a lot, but I'm bummed currently. I don't know why, but within the same day, even if I wake up kind of bummed within the day, something miraculous will happen. Whether it be just the sound of my wife's voice or my cats, or just an interaction with the stranger and smiling, or realizing that my parents are still with me. And realizing that oxygen exists, and it allows our bloodstreams to continue to move and we get to live. Those are the miracles, and that's the focus I try to relate to. I think asking is expecting and expecting leads to disappointment, and the inevitability of life is it will be over. So, I need, and hopefully we all need to focus as much as we can on just right now. I'm thrilled to be alive, whether being alive is difficult or amazing, and it's all of that at the same time, I'm just thrilled that I still get to be a part of this ride, this journey.
What song from the album was the most surprising to write and record?
That's a good question. The process took so long. I think the one that was the most surprising actually was the first song, “More You.” It was a rare case where everything was painted on the first take and I redid the vocals in the studio with Kevin, but everything else happened the moment I wrote it. I wrote all of the parts, the lyrics, the vocal melody in probably one, or maybe the first take, I can't remember, but it was written within five minutes. And that's only happened maybe with the song “Goshen 97,” where it just flowed out. And then over the process of all of the other songs, there's probably thousands of edits and drafts and retakes and moving parts around and rebuilding and deconstructing, but “More You” is just what it was from the very beginning.
And I am still kind of amazed that I never went back. And Kevin and I tried a few things, but we just kept exactly what I did as it was, and just used a much better microphone because my gear at home is what I record on at my house is the exact same equipment I used writing Heal. My laptop's very old, and I have a microphone. I founded a practice space, so I have pretty low fi gear. So, it was nice to go to Kevin's and then be able to sing out of fantastic mics and have all the good gear to use.
You first played Cactus Club about 15 years ago. What does that mean to you?
Wow. You're probably right. I was thinking about that. Time is wild how fast it goes. It doesn't feel that way. And I feel like in my memory bank of good memories throughout the history of me touring, Milwaukee just has so many, and I feel like I've been there thousands of times. I probably haven't, but I've never had a bad experience in Milwaukee, whether it was meeting people or making friends or playing shows, or just being in the city. It just has something that I hold very dear to my heart.
I can't tell you right now my future of touring. My battery level for touring is pretty low right now. And this summer I just wanted to go out and there's these sacred places in my heart, and Cactus Club is one of them. I mean, I remember playing there and wondering why people were even showing up. I'm like, how do people know my music? And it was a wonderful experience. And 15 years later, it's humbling to still be playing the same venue, but it is what it is, and I am going to make the most of it. And really just looking forward to being back in the city and hopefully seeing some friends and reconnecting and just having a good time, as always, in Milwaukee.
I imagine it's important to have audiences like that as an artist.
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's just special because touring at a band of my level, it's not something that I'm going to go buy a Rolls Royce off of. It's more of the love of it, especially being almost 42. And I have a philosophy now of if I'm going to leave my house with my kitties and my wife and my garden, it better be worth it. So, I think that's why it's important to have Milwaukee, because it just makes me happy. It just makes me happy to be there, especially in the summertime.
I grew up in the Midwest and Indiana, and I just have the best [times there]. There's this joy that comes over me of being places like Milwaukee or Indiana, Chicago, being there in the summertime. It's impossible to describe how nice it is. There's a thankfulness everybody has, because winters are so long and tough, especially Milwaukee. There's just something in people's mindsets when summertime comes. It's just beautiful…I could still see myself in Milwaukee someday. Just those winters. I don't know if I can take them.
Get Miracle Focus at Amazon here.
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