Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Will Batty. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Will, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

This latest album we released (Insane In Line). It is by far the biggest creative project I’ve ever undertaken and the most satisfying thing to get done. We started it over a year ago and recorded it all ourselves. It was recorded and then released in a very strange time in my life. It’s a catalogue of our sound. After finally finding a bass player that fit we decided to record a double album of very different songs. Testing to see what really pops out with us as a band. “Insane In Line” is us exploring what we do best as a group and experimenting with things we didn’t know we’d be good at.

Will, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We met in college Nathan is the drummer/producer and me (Will) I sing and play guitar/keys and write. We’ve been playing together for a long time, but after adding Byars (Lead Guitar) 2 years ago and Jacob (bass) last year, we’ve felt like we’ve grown alot as a unit. We do all different genres. I’ve heard us described as Beatle-ish 90s rock, and I’ve heard us described as 80s New Wave gone Country. But we do the best tunes we write, and fit them into our unique sound. We all contribute very heavily into the music. It wasn’t until all 4 of us were joined that we really started sounding like Psycho Wave.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For us I think the most rewarding part of creating is the satisfaction of getting your feelings down on paper. I think so much of our anxiety as thinking creatures is the unknown. What I find really rewarding about songwriting is that you can be clear and concise on how you feel about any given thing. We could write a song about our cats and then write a song about grief but if you can get how they make you feel on paper and you can look at it and think through it, that’s what really drives me. There’s something very reassuring about having your thoughts, even if they change soon after, down on paper. I imagine it’s what reciting mantras are like for spiritual people. I have something I can sing/say to myself whenever I need to be reminded on what my reality is in a situation. That and it’s just very fun to play music loud.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the main issues that impacts recording artists today is how technology provides us infinite options. Time, money, and technology are the 3 big reasons you gotta hurry up when trying to get something down. But thanks to some wisely invested capital and employee discounts while recording this album we didn’t have to worry about any of these. We had a recording space at one of our homes that was free to use whenever we had the ability, and that recording space was well furnished with most if not all of the equipment we needed. This sounds like it’s a very big advantage and yes in general it was. As we found out though that ability to take our time impacted the way that we used it. “Insane In Line” ended up being 18 songs and over an hour of material, all of it original and all recorded at that studio. We started strong making demos and finalizing arrangements but as the time wore on we knew we could take our time and unless we were very focused we would drag. In response we made a google doc of everything we would need to do and I made a loose time frame for when it would be done. On the scale of this double album that was a very big list and they were all very different songs. This in a way was good as we had a lot of different songs and sounds to refresh our ears on. That I think was our saving grace. We found that the more you listened to your own songs the stranger they sounded. The more little things popped out to you and the more you were bothered by them. What we had to learn was to listen to these songs like an audience. We had to be able to walk away from them and pretend that we hadn’t spent months recording them. That, that wasn’t you on bass or drums or guitar and that you were only looking to enjoy the music not dissect every bit of it. Once we did that the album fell together, we were still able to create this big sprawling double album and only drive ourselves a little crazy.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/psycho_wavetheband/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5HlAnFZovX3Riv1cc0bT1w
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0TfF4FSCWYP2mY9LknwgM4