Interview: Scott Mulvahill conquers fear and failure

There are very few differences between modern man and Greek mythological figure Sisyphus. We’re all cast as mere mortals ill-fated to pushing metaphorical boulders to the top of a hill, only to do the same exact thing the next morning. On the most basic of levels, that laborious cycle defines who we are and who we must become. In an essay called “Experience,” as part of his Essays: Second Series collection (1844), essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once inspected humanity’s constant state of movement and the desire for knowledge. “To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom,” he wrote. Emerson’s words punctuate the very spirit of “carpe diem” thinking and evaluating one’s place in existence.

“I may never make it / But I don’t care / It’s all about the steps / Not the top of the stairs,” musician and songwriter Scott Mulvahill advises on his song called “Top of the Stairs.” It’s a slinky, rubber-glued centerpiece of his debut album, 2018’s Himalayas, and through the reeds of bluegrass and traditional country music, he progresses from self-loathing to self-reliance. In lieu of agonizing over ambitions just out of reach, he lets them come to him. “Whenever I’ve tried to grasp for opportunities, they slip away. But when I have a vision and create and allow things to flow organically from that vision, I’m always amazed by what opportunities come up,” he writes to B-Sides & Badlands over email. The implication here is fate, an outcome he could never have predicted or anticipated but which fulfills a deeply-moving ache in his bones.

In cracking open such an unlikely notion, while also paddling his way through various artistic endeavors, he allows the inevitable to crash down upon his head. “So it’s kind of a ‘there is no try’ thing, but I think being open-handed and creative and forging your own lane leads to good things. Plus there is no standard definition for ‘making it,’ so it doesn’t really exist,” he confides. “A friend put it well the other day when she said she didn’t aim to ‘be a songwriter,’ she aimed to write songs. So whenever she writes songs, she’s living her dream, independent of anyone’s idea of what ‘being a songwriter’ means.”

Later, he triumphantly pops the bubble on stagnation. “Standing still is still just dying,” he sings. The brightness of the harmonica’s chirp rubs unexpectedly against his lyrical bite, yet there emerges a certain intoxication as a result. Initially recorded as a full-band blow-out, which felt “slow and draggy,” he points out, “Top of the Stairs” underwent a facelift, and it’s layers were peeled back for a much “lighter and bouncier” framework. There’s a froggy lurch embedded at the base, with Mulvahill’s voice fluttering as a choir of bluejays upon a guitar-geared power line. “I stripped it back to just bass at the intro, got the harmonica in there and edited everything to just build throughout the song so that by the end it’s a party,” he says. “[Co-producer] Charlie Peacock has his thumbprint on it, as well, in some of the sounds and instrumental parts. I like that it was collaborative; I think it ends up more fun that way.”

That joyous and musical vitality, not unlike Charlie Worsham’s Rubberband album (2013), bleeds out onto much of the record. “Gold Plated Lie” chews on the syllables, a funk-guitar pricking his vocal into the sub-basement, and “Move and Shake,” a much more muted interpretation, brushes past the cheekbones with a honeysuckle tanginess. Every inch of the record, amongst lush sheets of musicianship, aptly performed by an extreme band of players, pieces together into a vast and beautiful patchwork display ⏤ the theme of fear stitched right at the heart. “I knew the steps I was about to take in my own life, going out and doing my own thing. So, in a way, it’s the story I’ve been telling myself as I prepared to have the adventure of my life,” he offers, considering the album’s pulsating thread line. “But I do think it’s universal: our greatest enemies are often the voices in our heads saying we can’t do this or that. Of course we can. I needed the reminder, maybe other people do too.”

Below, Mulvahill speaks on his greatest fears, developing particular grooves, breaking cycles of stagnation and end of days.

What have been your greatest fears in life, and have you overcome them?

My greatest fear is and always has been failure. For some reason, I’ve always had something to prove, and sometimes that’s served me well in learning my craft and learning my instrument. But a big part of becoming an adult for me has been letting go of that need to prove myself. I think it’s hard to engage my heart, artistically ,when I want people to have a certain reaction, rather that just purely expressing and doing something I like. I think I’ve gotten better at letting that go, but it’s an ongoing battle.

What would you tell someone wanting to face down their fears?

It’s worth doing. You’ll surprise yourself. And the opposite of facing fears isn’t that you stay the same as you are now, you become less of your full potential self. I believe we are either moving forward or backward all the time.

“Gold Plated Lies” (a co-write with Cheyenne Medders) is one of the album’s most musically adventurous moments. How did the integral groove of this one develop?

One day, I just started singing that riff in the shower. I was thinking, “Oh, that’s cool, I wonder what song that’s from?” and I was glad to realize it wasn’t from anything! So, I had a writing session with Cheyenne soon after, and we came up with the rest together. Even in the writing session, we came up with the arpeggio riffs in the arrangement. I think those were Cheyenne’s idea.

Thematically, the song deals with cutting corners in life. How do you connect to that? How did you come to learn that things work out when they’re supposed to?

Life teaches you that, whether you wanna learn the easy or the hard way. Like I said earlier, when I grasp for opportunities, they don’t generally come, so I try to pay attention to patterns like that. At some level, I can just feel when I’m desiring some opportunity or thing that doesn’t need to be in my life right this moment, and I try to listen to that feeling.

“The Lord is Coming” really packs an emotional punch and feels eerily relevant to the world right now. “With the Red Sea closing in / There’s no safety in the mighty horses” is an especially potent image. What got you thinking about the end of days?

I wrote that song with Alanna Boudreau and Gabi Wilson (aka H.E.R.), and that was Alanna’s line. In fact, those first two verses she pretty much scribbled out instantaneously after hearing my bass line and melody. It was pretty amazing. But the mood of that line got us in the Old Testament headspace. I think the end of the world is interesting because no matter what people believe, just about everyone agrees that the world will end someday, somehow. We all know that this place we live in is temporary; we are temporary. So, it’s an appeal for help from outside of ourselves.

Another viscerally-charged lyric comes with “20/20 Vision,” your reworking of the old bluegrass standard (written by Joe Allison and Milton Estes). “If it wasn’t for dying, I’d wish I was dead,” you sing. What a heavy image in a truly weighted song. It really sinks into the darkness of life. What is your journey in this song?

The arrangement is adapted from Bruce Hornsby’s version with Charlie Haden. When we toured with Bruce, I would play the intro, and he would sing it. After that tour, I sang it in pretty much all of Ricky’s shows. It is a hell of a lyric, and I love it because the scope is so narrow, and the whole song just stays in this emotional pit. There’s no escape or redemption. In fact, the only twist is at the end to put equal misery on the woman’s new lover: “I’ve lost her, I’ve lost her, what will I do? I’ll bet you’re not happy if she’s there with you. But the eyes of your heart will have trouble like mine. 20/20 Vision and walking ‘round blind.”

What was your process of dissecting Paul Simon’s “Homeless” and recalibrating it as a collaboration with Alanna Boudreau? Did the specific melodic and musical choices take time to really develop?

Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ album is my all-time favorite, and I organized a show in 2016 to play the whole record with my friends. I invited Alanna to be a special guest knowing that it’s one of her favorites, as well. So, we arranged “Homeless” that way to play in the show, with her singing lead, and it was so beautiful that I wanted to record it. We actually recorded the album version at a songwriting retreat in Vermont, and it was during that retreat that we wrote “The Lord is Coming.” Fun fact: I just did the Graceland show again last night [May 29, 2019] and had the original bass player from the album, Bakithi Kumalo, guest with us.

Bookending with the title song feels appropriate. “I wanna go where I’ve never been,” you attest. When did you realize you were feeling stagnant in your life?

I’ve always had aspirations to build a musical life and career of my own, and there were years where I was playing with other people and not able to focus on my stuff. I would say “stagnant” isn’t the full picture. I was also learning and developing what I do and having a lot of fun. But all along, I eventually had to go be me. And I have to find mountains to climb outside of music as well, or else that can be stagnant and my life becomes one-dimensional.

As human beings, it’s natural for us to want meaning to be clearly outlined for us. What do you feel is your meaning?

Within music, I find meaning in searching out the ideas and sounds that really capture me and putting that forward to people. I also find a lot of meaning in collaborating with people I respect and placing my music in the context of great artists that have inspired me and so many others. But I think the meaning I find in music hinges on my relationships with God and other people I love. Without that in place, it would be pretty empty. And I wouldn’t have much to draw on. It’s a privilege to do what I do, but I need (and thankfully have) the kind of relationships that make my life meaningful regardless of anything I do.

As your debut solo album, what did you think you learned about yourself through the process?

For one, I learned that I create, and I produce, and I finish things. There were a lot of twists and turns and obstacles in the recording process, and I’m proud that I saw it through. I learned that I want to get better at this music-making thing. I’m really proud of the work I did. I can’t wait to top it.

Photo Credit: Keoni Keur

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