The Genesis Sublette was submitted.
Local musician Bill Owens has recently been releasing music.
Tucson musician Bill Owens doesn’t stick to one sound with his music. With his recent projects Blunt Objects, DEO Toy and DID NOT!, he has been showcasing different sides of himself as an artist with various collaborators.
Owens is interested in British invasion and alternative music.
He led an alternative rock band called ME while he lived in Minneapolis and San Francisco.
While living in Tucson in the early to mid 1970s, the musician began to write music and eventually moved to Minneapolis and Seattle. He came back to Tucson.
He started taking piano lessons when he was 6 years old.
Owens grew up on a farm in South Dakota listening to music and singing along while on a tractor.
Owens said, “You could sing your lungs out while you were in the field.” The first audience I had was pigs and cows. The chickens ran together.
Owens hosts a radio program called “Music You Should Know,” where he plays obscure music.
Although Owens plays multiple instruments, he is not a virtuoso.
The albums “Safe at Home??” and “Sharper than Some…” were released in April and the single “Lonely Together/Cloudy with Storms” in June.
He released a new album on August 12.
The project began in March of 2020 when he started writing again at home. He retired from an administrative job in the education sector.
He has been playing music a bit since the mid-1980s.
He said that he had to get back into the habit of writing.
Owens said he would make himself mess with the computer, keyboards and guitar for a couple hours every day to see what would happen.
Jim Waters is from the Waterworks West studio. Waters mixed and mastered the songs at his studio after they were recorded at home.
Owens said that his musical style hasn’t changed, but he has more tools available to him than he did in the past. Cubase is a music production software he uses often.
There are trains coming through on the railroad tracks near Owens’ Downtown home in many of his songs.
Owens said that he uses lots of interesting sounds andtextures in his work.
The sound of cardboard boxes and background conversations recorded at a bar are recorded in a guitar riffs.
The album “Safe at Home??” was a reflection on the feelings he was experiencing because of the political and social unrest in this country. He had a few lighthearted songs about his kids and roommates.
He said that he was sharper than some in his life. He wanted the album to express a sense of redemption.
Owens said he tries to make his music funnier.
Owens said that he like to write with a sense of humor and not take himself too seriously.
As part of a new project called “DID NOT!,” Owens has collaborated with Matt Rendon from Midtown Island Studio to remake songs he wrote when he was in Tucson.
The songs are reminiscent of mid-1960s rock, with jangly guitars and vocals.
Rendon’s studio is set up to recreate the sound of the 1960s.
Owens plays the keyboard and sings in the music, while Rendon plays many of the instruments and sings.
Owens said that the two of them have very different styles, but their love of the same music has made the collaboration work well.
Matt knows exactly how we want this stuff to go and he is very process-driven. He knows the order that we go in, and he knows what to do next, he is a task master when it comes to harmonies.
In the spring, a single and album have been released under the DID NOT! name. On August 12 Owens released a new song.
DEO TOY is a continuation of work that he started in the ’80s with his first wife. When they wanted to leave the local music scene filled with drugs, they started to record at home.
They used equipment such as a Dr. Rhythm drum machine, a Farfisa organ and a Portastudio. The project had minimal instrumentation and featured his late wife’s vocals.
Owens continued making DEO Toy music under the name Beatrix Treazy in the late ’80s. The new version was more instrumental and was influenced by the music of the time.
Owens has been collaborating with local artist Rev Wyn, who he met while out at one of his shows.
He helped Owens with some songs.
He recorded a single with Wyn called “Sunday on Wheels” which was released in June.
Owens will release singles throughout the summer and fall for different projects.
Owens has been a fan of music since he was a kid.
At the age of 10, Owens saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.
His interest in the Beatles led him to other British invasion and American rock groups and artists.
Owens said it is difficult to describe his music because it doesn’t fit into a single box.
It is out of time and a little bit out of tune. Owens said that the harmony isn’t perfect, but it all comes together. The Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Mamas & the Papas are my favorites, but it can be difficult to listen to because I enjoy dissonance. There is all of that as well.
Owens often records ideas on his phone or writes them down on paper when he’s inspired.
“My house has got little scraps of paper all over the place with five to six words or a couple of lines,” Owens said. “Every once in a while, I gather them up and throw them in a box. When it’s time to write lyrics, I dump out the box. It’s like assembling a jigsaw puzzle.”
Owens doesn’t usually have a single idea in mind when he puts together albums. He doesn’t approach one song at a time.
The song is the art of the thing. A song is a painting. It is a thing that is on its own. I never write in the context of an album or concept. Owens said it is just to get a complete song.
He does not try to follow one style of music.
Owens said he could go from jazz to country to rock and rollers.
Bill Owens is a person.
Bandcamp.com is where blunt objects are found.