contact: hollowaymccoy@gmail.com Liner notes, of some form, have been a part of this work’s conception from very early on, but now that it is finally time to write them, I hesitate. I don’t know exactly what I want to say, and am nervous that I will say too little, or too much. For me as a listener, there is at times value in understanding an album’s intention and context, and at other times, value in knowing nothing at all: in the forces and acts behind its creation being stripped from the creation itself. In the end, I decided to at least offer some portion of my thoughts and experiences in compiling this album, believing that those whom it interests may search it out, and that those who would rather be without it, may be so.

In January 2019 I had just graduated college in Ohio with a degree in Computer Science and returned to Oregon, where I sat in front of a newly acquired, umbral voiced upright piano in a dismally-yellow lit, though otherwise quiet nice, spare room in my mom’s house, which was in the process of becoming a small studio. “Even Now” was the first song that I wrote on that piano, and it was also the first song to appear for the album. The room that has become the studio was “the yellow room” much of my growing up, for the color of its walls (at some point the walls were repainted gray, but the name stuck around). There were a handful of things I knew I wanted for the album before any of it was written: I knew I wanted it to be primarily acoustic in instrumentation; I knew that I wanted it to be set in the rainy, dark and misty coast of the pacific northwest; and I knew that I wanted the individual songs to feel like they were all pieces of a single narrative. That when someone finished listening, they might feel some semblance of the same tender emptiness that occurs after finishing a movie. While I had a specific narrative in mind, I wanted to smear its lines, to zoom so far in to specific moments that the details distort, shedding explicit exposition or interpretation. I used the original, underlying narrative as a way to determine what moments, perspectives and feelings the album in progress was missing, to enframe the lyrics and music I was still looking for. From there I would pick a direction, and write in it. Sometimes it would come together very quickly (“Low Tide”, “It’s Only You”), and sometimes it didn’t (“Breakers”, “Apart”). In the latter cases, I would force myself to write for some set amount of time each day, and I would discard nothing. I would try brainstorming the images, themes, or specific words that might be relevant to the gap in the story I wanted the song to fill, and then if I found something that I liked, I would try and develop it further. I ended up with very long, rambling “songs”, that I then trimmed down. I can’t remember which songs were written lyric first and which were music first. I think what usually happens is I have a little music, and a little bit of a melody (usually with lyrics, though they may be nonsense), and then I spin the rest of the song (lyrics and music) out from those wisps. Some of the songs appeared on their own, without my sitting down to fill some specefic space; “Late Frost” was developed from an arrangement I was working on of “Somebody Else” by The 1975. All the songs were written over the course of about a year and a half.

The album was recorded mostly at night. I like working in the day better, but passers-by, neighbors, dogs, finches (en masse), and scrub jays are loud enough that getting an entire take uninterrupted is difficult. The Yellow Room floats above a crawl space, in addition to being a corner room, so its temperature fluctuates much more than the rest of the house, compounded by the fact that the heater / air conditioner must be off during recording, resulted in recording sessions that were quite cold in the winter (necessitating breaks to heat fingers back into locomotion in front of the space heater) and very hot in the summer (meaning scantly clad takes). A small portion was recorded at my dad’s house in the woods, also at night, and these sessions required cutting power to the the refrigerator at the breaker, removal of the double AA batteries from the large clock (I had to get up on a stool to bring it down), turning off the air conditioner / heater, and disabling his robots.

The earliest version of the album where it was starting to assume its shape was a collection of demos which included: “Even Now”, “Fever Dream”, “It’s Only You”, “Undertow”, and “Apart”. The first complete version of the album (in which all the songs appear, though not necessarily in their final arrangement) was at the very start of 2021; it was shared with my brother and his girlfriend. I then practiced, revised, and rerecorded the album a number of times (four and a half times total (though some songs were completed full album versions ahead of others)). Each time a version was “finished”, I would run a long aux cable from the studio to the speakers in the living room, and sit down with my mom to listen to it (with the album’s “production notes” notebook in hand). After, we would discuss what we thought was good, and what we thought still needed work, with particular attention to what “pulled us out”. The third version of the complete album was shared with a few others for feedback, people whose music taste I understood (even if it often did not overlap with the album), and that I could trust to be honest. Their feedback was collected through virtual interviews, and reflected upon before recording what I thought was the final version of the album (it wasn’t).

In July of 2022, I set about recording the final final final version of the album, hoping to release it by November 10th. It didn’t happen, as there were still a few songs that I felt were not meeting the standard I had in my head in terms of performance or production. Resolving these discrepancies (to the best of my ability) extended until May 2023, when the album was finished and uploaded to be released in June. I briefly experimented with two alternative sleep schedules in an attempt to give myself more time at night to record. One required sleeping from 6am to 2pm, and being awake from 3pm to 6am. This schedule lasted three “days”, overwhich time I felt confused, lethargic, and that I floated a hair’s breadth away from a migraine. The second schedule involved a 3 hour nap in the middle of the day, and 5 hours of sleep at night, the thinking being that everything I was learning in the first half of the day would be solidified in my mind by the 3 hour nap (improving my retention [per research]), and I could start again fresh in the afternoon session, plus the shorter sleep session at night would allow me more time to record. Unfortunately, I don’t nap very well (I never feel completely awake afterward), and this schedule was also abandoned (though they might have worked if I stuck with them longer). Part of the improvement between each version of the album came from further investments in recording equipment, afforded through contract coding jobs, and teaching music lessons.

It was my mom’s idea to bury hidden treasures on the website (there are 3 in total, and they won't appear on mobile). The studio was once (for which I was present at least) visited by a rat, who was very quiet and respectful. He squeezed out through the floor vent grate before we got a chance to talk.

I have a single curtain which I move from window to window in the studio. At night, I put it up in the street-side window to prevent people from being able to see into the room, and on summer mornings I move it to the eastern window, because the sun shines in too brightly and it bothers me. I usually remove it around noon in such cases. In this album’s compilation, and during my study and practice, I often thought of a maxim inculcated in me by my former guitar professor, Bobby Ferrazza: “you can’t make a tree grow faster by pulling on its branches”. "Snow Down" was made by sending a piano motif through the the Red Panda Particle and Red Panda Tensor (with varying settings on each take). These were then collected, arranged and sent through the Chase Bliss/Cooper FX Generation Loss mki (for the deteriorating effect at the end). I ordered the Tensor first, but what I got was actually a mislabeled Particle (the tag/barcode said “Tensor”, but it was on a “Particle” box). It grew on me, and I wound up keeping it and also ordering a Tensor.

While most titles came quite naturally, there were exceptions: - the album title, which I thought of while reading a passage from Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge, where she talks about walking the "wrack lines" with her mother (before that, the album was referred to as “pac” (from “pacific”)). - “Crash” was originally “big strummer v2”, implying that “It’s Only You” was “big strummer v1” (with the “v” being a sort of mistake, I realize now the “#” sign would have made more sense, but I knew what I meant). - “Late Frost” was “electric interlude”. It was the last song to receive a proper title. - and “Apart” was called “final song”. As such, many of the related folders and Logic (the daw the album was made in) projects bear the songs' original titles, instead of the finalized titles. One day after arriving home from a guitar lesson I accidentally left my guitar in the passenger seat of my car (I went to move the trash cans and forgot to go back for it), and it was stolen over night. It was a custom guitar that someone else designed, but then decided not to purchase, and I picked it out as a gift upon graduating high school. Thankfully, insurance covered it and I was able to reinvest, much more money than I would be able to spend otherwise (due to the instrument’s appreciation), in a custom guitar, which I elected to have made at Breedlove in Bend, Oregon. The top wood is ocean sinker redwood, which comes from redwood trees that fall into the sea, and then wash up on the shore. It can be heard on "Fever Dream" and "Crash". The 12 string that appears on the right side of "It’s Only You" was gifted to me by Meg (to whom it was gifted by her father). She also taught me the first chords I learned on guitar, and she has a very keen ear. She gave me a CD in late high school, when I first began trying to write songs, with examples of what she considered to be great songs. Those songs seriously informed my development and study of songwriting.

These are some of the notes I took trying to come up with a strumming pattern for "It's Only You".

I kept a notecard beneath my computer with a list of albums that served as inspiration for this project (like a mood board). The core of that list was (in no particular order): - Deb Talan, Something Burning - Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, Once - Damien Rice, O - Meshell Ndegeocello, Bitter - Kate Walsh, Tim’s House - Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago - Phoebe Bridgers, Stranger in the Alps Each song having a corresponding image (really a long, still video) was a part of the album’s initial concept. The coastal images were shot along the Oregon coast over the course of a three day trip. "Even Now" was the first video shot, I had left before sunrise on the first morning, and pulled over because I liked how the mist, trees and early light were interacting. A cop saw me, and pulled over to ask what I was doing, he then followed me around for a while. I knew roughly what kinds of shots I was looking for, but I kept a look out for anything that might work (beyond my original intention). The shot for "Torrent" was one I knew I wanted before the trip, I had seen the street light over the wash and rocks some years before, and this time I was staying at a hotel right next to it. The night that I shot it was cold and very windy: I had one hand pinning down the tripod, and the other binding myself to the coarse concrete railing of the bridge from which I filmed. At that time, "Torrent" was closer to 8 minutes long, so I filmed for a very long 10 minutes. The rest of the trip was spent slowly driving up and down the coast searching for spots to film, standing in the rain next to the camera, or sitting in the car eating dried fruit, sardines and nuts while I offloaded files from the memory cards to the computer to free up space for more videos. When I got home from the trip, it happened to be snowing (not a frequent occurrence, or even seasonally guaranteed). I parked the car, and shot “Snow Down” before I even unpacked. The remainder of the images were recorded in the woods around where my dad lives, or in my mom’s house. The album cover was shot on a camera test trip (trip makes it sound longer than it was, we drove around a few hours) my mom and I went on (she lent me her camera, lenses and cards for all the photography). The trip was more about making sure I could operate everything fluently enough before I went on the larger trip, but I got lucky with the lighting and weather. I coded the website in javascript, css, and html. At one point I planned on making all the text in my handwriting, but it was also important to me that all the text be completely legible, so I decided against it. It was difficult to know when the album was done, and many times I found I was not done when I thought I should be. I am not a perfectionist; it’s more like I have a threshold that I want the music to be above. In this project, I felt that I had out-written what I could perform, so most of my practice went towards closing that gap. It was difficult for me to accept that it was done, as I had so long imagined what it would be, and there were inevitably ways that its reality differed. Part of being able to release it was understanding that it is only a snapshot of where I am at this moment, and that if I want to revisit these ideas later, when I know more and am more capable, I can do so. As it is now, it is something that I am proud of, and satisfied enough with that I feel I can explore in other directions. I am grateful to everyone who listened to the album’s intermediary versions and shared their criticisms, encouragements, and ideas. I am grateful to my family for their support, and their patience. Thank you for listening. Holloway McCoy