Strand of Oaks' Timothy Showalter finds the healing power of rock
With Strand of Oaks, Timothy Showalter banishes his demons by cranking up his amp and naming names
When the Straight catches up with Timothy Showalter, the Strand of Oaks frontman is at a tour stop in Bloomington, Indiana. Not the most glamorous locale, perhaps, but being there is a big deal for the Philadelphia-based musician, because it’s a return to his old stomping grounds.
“It’s a big nostalgia trip, because both of my brothers went to college here,” he says. “I probably got drunk here way too young many, many times, and have some good memories of this place, so it’s nice to be back in the Midwest.”
Strand of Oaks’ next stop, just three hours upstate from Bloomington, is Goshen, which happens to be Showalter’s hometown as well as the setting of the song that opens his latest album, HEAL. “Goshen ’97” roars to life with some typically blistering lead guitar courtesy of Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis. The lyrics paint a portrait of the now 32-year-old Showalter at the start of his musical life—finding his dad’s old tape machine, buying cheap Casio keyboards, and singing Smashing Pumpkins songs to his bedroom mirror. It’s a wistful reminiscence, but the chorus refrain of “I don’t want to start all over again” makes it clear that, were Showalter given the chance to be that socially challenged 15-year-old once more, he’d pass, thank you very much.
“I think that’s a healthy form of nostalgia, because anything, in the haze of memory, can become nice,” he says. “And I realized it was a really bad time, but also a good time. But more importantly, I just want to have that in the past, you know, and wear those awkward teenage years like a badge of courage: I did it, I survived it, it didn’t get me, so let’s just keep it there.
“For me to have that song first on the record also felt like a Reset button was hit,” he continues. “My whole career, I’d made a different kind of music, and I wanted to just come out of the gates running. I wanted to be bold, I wanted to start with this. If that song was Track 5, it wouldn’t work like it does on Track 1. It needed to be the first thing people hear.”
Indeed, “Goshen ’97” is unlike anything found on any of the previous three Strand of Oaks albums, which were more in line with the subtly shaded folk-rock of Iron and Wine or William Fitzsimmons. (Showalter, it must be said, possesses a wizard-king beard to rival both.) Speaking in terms any Bruce Springsteen fan will understand, Showalter states that he is now well past his Nebraska phase. With its mix of guitar-led rockers (“Shut In” and “For Me”) and dancing-in-the-dark synth-pop tunes (“Same Emotions” and the title track), HEAL seems to have more in common with the commercial juggernaut with which the Boss followed up Nebraska. Showalter says that the notion hadn’t occurred to him, but he doesn’t disagree.
“I love Born in the U.S.A., because some of those are just heart-wrenching lyrics,” he enthuses. “Even on the song ‘Born in the U.S.A.’—they’re some of the saddest lyrics I’ve ever heard, yet there’s this anthemic music mixed with really touching, sincere, earnest lyrics. But it can be played in a stadium. That’s kind of what I wanted with this. I wanted to be singing about really strong, real emotions, but I didn’t want it to sound like an Elliott Smith record, you know? I wanted it to be bold. Anthemic is much more powerful, I think, than introspective, especially for this record.”
The strong emotions to which Showalter refers are tied largely to the same sort of unsentimental looking-back that gave rise to “Goshen ’97”. Although the title pertains to actual physical healing—during the mixing phase, Showalter was recovering from injuries sustained in a head-on collision with a semi that he and his wife were lucky to walk away from—it goes deeper than that, and further into the past. The singer has, to coin a phrase, seen some shit. More than a decade ago he went through a particularly traumatic breakup after his then fiancée had an affair while Strand of Oaks was on tour. A few months after that, Showalter lost his house to a fire.
These are things his previous efforts have touched upon, but his songwriting has never been as specific as it is on HEAL; he goes so far as to name the woman who betrayed him. “It’s practically a diary entry,” Showalter admits. “It’s almost uncomfortably honest at times. I didn’t intend for it to be that way, but I just wanted to go there. I didn’t want to hide behind metaphors anymore.”
Above and beyond the lyrical catharsis, however, the performer seems to be most thrilled about being able to walk out on-stage every night, crank the volume knob on his amp, and rock the fuck out.
“I love playing loud music,” he asserts. “It’s been such a liberating experience, too, to be able to turn guitars up, something as simple as that, and play music loud. The new album has lyrics that you can really attach to, but I think I’m most excited that there’s a visceral element to it. It’s physical now. You can react to it on many different levels. You can drink a bottle of beer and head-bang to it, or you can think about painful experiences in your life that I might be singing about that are similar. And I frankly don’t care which way people take it. If they just want to turn it up loud and have fun with it, then more power to them.”
Strand of Oaks plays the Biltmore Cabaret on Wednesday (August 27).
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