Part 1

Name: William P C Simmons aka Rev. Billy Simmons aka Evidence of a Struggle
Nationality: American
Occupation: Guitarist, composer, producer
Current release: Evidence of a Struggle's eponymous debut album is out now.
Recommendations: Gavin Breyers - After the Requiem; Quadrivium -

If you enjoyed this Rev. Billy Simmons / Evidence of a Struggle interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects, and colors. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?
 
I like that you make a synesthesia reference as part of the first question. Music, for me, has always been a tactile experience. If it’s right, it feels good, and it’s like that base or core needs satisfaction, triggering different dopaminergic mesolimbic pathways. That’s the pathway to addiction if you’re wired for it, I guess. Maybe I'm oversimplifying.

I think people listen and or create any art based on this “feeling” or a similar one. I guess multiple pathways get triggered when I play or listen to music, but also when I look at images. I feel shapes when I’m writing. Sometimes there are colors attached, a scent, a flavor, but mostly it’s that feeling, that reward, combined with those other tactile sensory markers that point me in what my brain feels like is the “right” direction for whatever sounds or words I’m composing. Then I have something. A song. Words to go with a song, maybe.

Those synesthetic markers always make a path for me to follow. It's a path to that reward. It’s not always an easy path to follow. It can be a struggle to get where the song needs to go, but the music usually leads me to some acceptable stopping point for whatever I’m working on.

A professor once told me that in any good art, something spectacular, there is Evidence of a Struggle. It’s that struggle or difficulty getting there that keeps my brain searching for something, keeps trying to recreate something, keeps leaving me markers signposts, and I stay mostly mindlessly following, searching for whatever it is that’s leading me to the following combination of sounds, notes, and words.

And there’s always a next.

What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

This answer might seem heavy or dramatic, but I still remember this, and my aunt can back me up on it. We had to go to Jonesboro, Arkansas, close to Memphis, for my grandfather’s funeral. I think I was three or four years of age. That’s another kind of fantastic story of its own in my head.

My grandfather had a radio station and pressed records, like a small record label. My first steps were sitting at the piano at my aunt's house, pushing the piano keys and pedals, and pressing my forehead or the side of my head on the piano. And back to your first question about synesthesia, I could see the sound, and I could feel it, the feeling, the smells. Everything connected somehow. I was hooked. It was my drug. I think, I hope,

I still have the naiveté of those first steps. I somehow believe that’s what I’m still searching for, that first feeling when I made that sound that spoke to me on many different levels. The dealer, whoever or whatever it was that connected those things, was my first hit early on, and I’m still hooked.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age, and what’s changed since then?

I had incisive or profound musical experiences when I was considerably younger. The piano thing at my aunt's house would qualify, I think. That’s deep. I mean, that was tactile. But that was before the age range you're referencing. But I still remember it. For that age range. Incisive.

I’m not sure. I’ve always tried to be clear, which was there since the beginning, from what I remember, but I’m not sure clarity has ever been the purpose or direction of what I’m doing or saying. What I’m making is crafted out of questions and observations. It’s all one possible road away or into something.

Music has always been a necessary pathway, but I’ve always found more questions that keep me looking for answers. I guess nothing has changed.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools, and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

Whatever is going on in my head, I guess my brain, how I process whatever information I feel needs to get out, is singularly my most important tool. Next to that, I think the guitar is another vital tool. Then, the amps affect the signal, so that’s an essential tool. Then the fuzz, delay, octavier, and all the effects I can use or not use help me get a good vibe to create.

I think that equipment has shaped my perspective of good sound. I guess newer technology is changing my perspective. It’s making me excited about where the sounds can go and how easy it is to get some fantastic tonal variety that would’ve taken a truckload of equipment to make up until about five or ten years ago.

The newer modelers, like Neural, Kemper, and Fractile, minimize the size and increase the ease and ability to make some insane sounds if I don’t want to take a Marshall, a Bassman, a bunch of cabs, and a 150lb case of pedals I don’t have to break my back and do that anymore.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music, and what motivates you to create?

Understanding and Need. I think, for some reason, I need to make the music I make. It sounds cliche. If I don’t create what I create, I start to unravel.

Ultimately, I think I’m attempting to understand what’s happening in our world, what’s going on in my head and life, how we are processing all of that, and how my life and what I do might affect anything.

What I might be able to do to help change things and everyone and maybe share those experiences to help others understand they’re not the only ones experiencing what I’m writing music about.

Paul Simon said, “The way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that, and how would you define your personal sound?

Good question. And a difficult one without sounding smug or full of yourself, I think. I love music, and I appreciate music fans. I'm acutely curious about how different music makes them feel, and I love to hear about that.

Again, going back to synesthesia, questions, and sonic statements, music can somehow bring us together. I think when anyone writes, composes, plays, and records music, they, to some degree, have to obsess about what they're releasing to the world. I want to make it concise before setting a song free. We all (musicians and composers) are giving the listener an audible and tangible piece of ourselves, a glimpse inside.

Still, I'm not sure a lot of what most of us create is ever really complete, but the music is no different than the written word. I think good artists want to ensure they represent whatever they're trying to convey to others, honestly.

My sound is curious, hopefully interesting, introspective, and maybe atmospheric.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

Yeah. The whole universe is musical. And we're all trying to make sense of it. There's an underlying, I suppose, musical vibration in everything, everywhere, all around us, always heard and unheard, seen and unseen.

It's strange and necessary to try to make a point to open yourself up to that every day, to be receptive to it, and to attempt your best representation of what's being said to you by whatever it is that's helping any of us create the sonic art we create.