Will Stratton shares old wisdom, new tunes and his many pseudonyms

As a musician who understands the career of an artist can skew toward nihilistic and narcissistic living, Will Stratton strives to keep it simple.

"I just want to make things that are beautiful to me when I have the time and the resources to do so, and to focus on survival and having fun when those resources aren't available," he says.

You can hear Stratton navigating that balance in his folk music. Contemplative lyrics don't leave the listener stagnant in rumination, thanks to the movement of his finger-style acoustic. His sound is a fierce hush that's both cutting and soothing.

Writing his first folk album in high school, Stratton felt "stuck in the suburbs." Since then he has released three more full-length albums, and recently written Gray Lodge Wisdom upon surviving aggressive treatments for cancer.

One of Stratton's first shows upon moving back to New York was at Pete's Candy Shop in Brooklyn, a spot he has enjoyed playing for years now. The chilly night was the kind of evening where you bump into lovely musicians such as Hollie Fullbrook (Tiny Ruins) of New Zealand, and honest art hangs in the air like portraits on the wall. Except that art reverberates into the night via sound waves.

How has Stratton produced music ripe with wisdom from such a young age? It turns out that early on, those mature lyrics came more from a vivid imagination than life experience.

"I think when I was younger I romanticized and blew things out of proportion," Stratton says. "Tried to make it grand and epic, cause that's how teenagers feel."

What the Night Said received solid reviews when it was released two years later in 2007. The album featured Sufjan Stevens, an artist Stratton has been compared to in addition to Nick Drake.

"After my first record, I think I hit a rough patch in terms of writing and I started just scrounging for material and writing about a lot of more fictitious things, that in retrospect felt kind of unnatural to me." Stratton was in college and was focusing solely on making his sophomore album, but everything ended up feeling fake to him.

"But then on New Vanguard Blues and Post-Empire l was moving to the city. Everything felt like it had a real element to it, more than it did on No Wonder," I interpret them as trying to come to terms with adulthood, having my first real job and being confronted with the idea of living alone in this big city, and navigating a world that all of a sudden seemed much larger before."

His current material is more of a direct expression of himself. "I feel like I was pretending to be an older person on previous records and now I am actually an older person."

The year 2013 held a lot for Stratton: multiple surgeries and four rounds of chemotherapy, which provided an inconceivable amount of perspective.

"Thankfully I'm better now and the material I'm writing feels more autobiographical," Stratton says. "I don't feel any real artifice to it anymore and whether that's a good thing or bad thing, I guess that's for the listener to judge."

Musically, Stratton is experimenting with melding the worlds of instrumental, finger-style guitar and new classical music. This is in line with his college background, composing for chamber ensembles.

"I eventually think I'm going to write music that doesn't have guitar at all, but I don't know what that's going to look like," Stratton says. "I say this every year, but I kind of find myself coming up against a limit that on guitar that feels insurmountable. But I'm not sure when that instrument will stop putting out for me...creatively."

Stratton also plays piano and writes notation for string instruments. He would also like to explore more music involving computers and automation.

"I've made some ambient music under the name 'Honeymoon.' it's just kind of out there on the Internet...I've never publicized it."

What can you expect from the new album release? "Same basic materials, slightly different approach," Stratton says. "I try to reinvent my approach with every record...I'm sure it's much less apparent to the listener than me, but it helps me justify me moving along to the next project."

Stratton says his days as the folk "Will Stratton" are numbered. That's not even his real name. His last name in high school was too hard for people to spell and pronounce so he made the switch.

"Eventually I'll probably stop or pause making folk music, and work on something else for awhile," he says. "Right now I'm in this unexpectedly creative period, mainly because of my illness, that's why I find myself working on this new record."

Stratton has since finished Gray Lodge Wisdom, which will be released in the United States and Europe this April.

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