Tempo Talks: A Conversation with David Cloyd

THE RELEASE

David Cloyd returns after over a decade's hiatus with a swanky new look and a gracefully matured sound to match. His latest 10-track LP, “Red Sky Warning,” is a poetic and personal story of fears, loves, and the cyclicality of life’s breaths and journeys, both personal and collective. With the help of producer Blake Morgan, and after a wonderfully received series of singles, Cloyd’s new album is already racking up listens with its refreshing plunge into the personal. 

Starting with a strong opening track, “Ocean of Hours,” Cloyd wastes no time in setting the stage for both a grand and tenderly beautiful album to come. Sticking to the nautical theme, the lyrics of this song paint a story of a ship crew fumbling and waiting in the doldrums of the ocean (or perhaps something greater??). The strong image carries through the rhythmic swells of the song, building a rhythm not unlike the constant thrust of oars in the deep blue ocean. Kept musically simple, the instrumentation builds that sense of immensity with the dry strum of a guitar and all other sounds kept at bay, lingering on the surface of breaking out into a louder, noisy ballad. There’s so much I took from this song: the movement from the collective to the personal perspective in the lyrics, the strength of simple poetic language reiterated in all the details, that vocal funk reminding me of Colin Meloy’s casual charm… But mostly I’m struck with the courage to hit it back into the music scene with a flavor that’s deeply personal. Almost an on-the-nose reference to his own absence in production, the song reflects a matured sense of writing and playing, inviting one to lean in closer and be drawn into the new David Coyd’s world. 

But the album doesn’t stop there. “Ocean of Hours” is one of a handful of delightfully thoughtful tunes, each one layering atop another. The theme of being at sea continues, many songs referencing the flowing and ever-changing nature of water, grasping the nature of its liminality in being both a consistent cyclical presence and also a special, irreversible moment in each new wave and crest. Cloyd’s natural sense of patterns enjoys the surprise of finding new attitudes throughout the album, from the punky and clipped “If We Could Escape” to the warbling romance of “Into the Sea.” 

Powerful, soft, and definitely worth the instant repeat listen, Cloyd's reentry to the scene could not be more welcome. Cloyd, please make yourself comfortable and stay for a while, and oh, is that a heap of new songs you're sitting on?

THE INTERVIEW

How has your relationship to your craft changed since you last released an album?

My love affair with songwriting has only become more passionate. It used to be something that I wanted to do, and now it is something that I cannot do without. The album is the perfect medium for music to me, so making records is how I choose to share that necessity with the world.

What was the inspiration for this new release?

Getting married and having children was the beginning of a seismic shift in my life. It’s been a rich, deep, and beautiful experience, but it’s also been difficult in ways that I never would have anticipated. For my own sanity’s sake, I decided to shine a light in every corner to better understand how I felt, and why I felt that way.

There are tons of songs and albums about romance and heartbreak, but I found that this particular angle on love—the dark side of this blindingly bright love—familial love–is either not represented at all in music, or so underrepresented that I’ve never heard a collection of songs devoted to it. I’ve found it incredibly rewarding to hear from many other parents that this album really speaks to their experiences, and just as rewarding to hear that it resonates with people who don’t have children, and maybe didn’t notice that the songs were about that.

This whole album is bound by a theme I like to call “lost at sea” or even that ominous title “Red Sky Warning”. Can you share more about that inspiration or thoughts behind those images?

There is certainly a nautical theme connecting all of this material. And I definitely felt a bit “lost at sea” during my early years as a father. But behind that, I really wanted to share the deliberateness of my decision to have a family. I was aware that it wouldn’t be easy, and that there would be dark and stormy waters ahead too, but I knew I was setting a course for a greater and deeper love. When you’re young, you can be fooled into thinking that love always looks like a perfect summer morning. Even worse, you can be convinced that something is wrong when it isn’t that. Real love has all the colors, light to dark, and it’s so much more interesting when the full palette is in play.

You’ve often been compared to pretty classic greats out there; Jeff Buckley, Elliot Smith, to name two… who are your musical inspirations and who would you yourself like to inspire / be witnessed by?

My biggest musical influences are artists who like to tackle the art of making albums on their own (or nearly)—Paul McCartney, World Party (Karl Wallinger), Elliot Smith, Stevie Wonder, Thom Yorke, Nine Inch Nails, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, and Blake Morgan, to name a few. It’s nice to think that I might inspire other mad scientist-type musicians out there to stop waiting to find the perfect partners, roll up their sleeves, and get to work.

The classic question: what next? Are you sticking around for a while or what can we expect in the next few months, years, decades?

My Buffalo concert series MIXTAPES starts up again in September. For each concert, I share the stage with another local or national songwriter and a string quartet. As a solo artist, I’m eager to collaborate with other musicians, and I love writing string parts for songs. For me it’s the chocolate and peanut butter of music.

I’m always writing, and I do have a stack of songs that I’ve already tagged for my next project. The recording studio too is beckoning me, but I’m really focused on promoting Red Sky Warning at the moment. It’s the album I wanted to make for a very long time, and I’m having the time of my life sharing it with everyone.

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