WILLA BASSEN, The Private Me

From the time Willa Bassen wrote her first song at 14 and set the course for her life gigging at 17, life’s been a crazy-cool but mostly creatively fulfilling whirlwind for the multi-talented force of musical nature who’s found great success over the years as a composer, songwriter, vocalist, pianist/keyboardist, engineer, producer and studio owner.

As co-owner and operator of Studio 900, a beautiful 24-track recording facility located off Union Square in NYC, she hosted sessions for the legendary likes of Harry Connick Jr., Keith Richards, Marian McPartland and Herbie Mann, while her Studio 900 Productions team wrote and produced jingles for Honda, RCA and other corporate giants. Her expansive resume includes co-writing the theme song and underscoring for the Nickelodeon series Clarissa Explains It All, penning the title song for John Waters’ classic film Hairspray, and, as head of Lillilbabs Productions, scoring independent films and composing, producing and underscoring for ABC-TV Sports, The Olympics and the soundtrack for the David O. Russell film Spanking the Monkey. Her music also appeared on the iconic series Mad Men. She was later involved in musical theatre, co-writing and producing with partner Nick Robinson the full-length children’s musical Perfect, which played in Manhattan.

The bridge from that prolific run of professional endeavors to the fulfillment of a lifelong dream with the independent release of The Private Me, her long in the making debut album as a singer songwriter, was her UK based dance/pop band The Working Class, which included Rick Finch (of KC and the Sunshine Band) and Tony Battaglia. She got her first taste of success as an artist with the group’s two singles on President Records, “I’m Going Nowhere” and “Gotta Go-Go.”

Battaglia plays both bass and guitar on the foundational six of the eight tracks on this stylistically eclectic, deeply personal, beautifully vulnerable collection, which Willa recorded between outside projects at Studio 900. That’s how it often is with busy industry pros who want to unleash and share the depth of their artistry while attending to the demand their talents create. Finding the time is never easy, but for the listeners blessed to hear The Private Me, figuratively and literally, the mesmerizing results here make it worth the wait.

“I’ve been in many bands and projects, original and not,” the singer says. “While I was paying bills and keeping the lights on, there were these other special songs, the ones I just had to write, just for me. That kind of song can have a magic to it, cutting to the truth like nothing else can. For me, sometimes it’s the only way I can locate the truth, let alone express it. And once it’s done, I have a deep yearning to share it, like ‘Have you felt that way too? Or is it only me?’”

Although the songs were recorded over a period of eight months, Willa estimates that she wrote them over a span of five years or so. When she sequenced them recently, she saw a narrative emerge that she hadn’t planned. “So,” she adds, “the playlist is not chronological to the writing. At the time, I was just going through things and writing it all down. I don’t want to get specific, because I’d like to leave room for each listener to take their own journey, but there’s definitely a narrative.”

A dreamy, free-flowing pop/rock anthem expressing her exultation and sense of liberation over finally allowing her deeper artistry to take center stage, “Be Free” is Willa’s clarion call, a promise she made to herself even when the idea of a project like this seemed impossible. Opening with a gorgeous extended soprano sax solo by Billy Drewes, the track showcases her lovely lilting vocals and graceful phrasing as she imparts key lines that are both advice to self and those of us still pursuing our own goals “Keep on going, as hard as it seems. . .You don’t need no answers, Just keep sight of your dreams. . .Nothing’s easy, but you’re gonna be free.”

The session came together in a unique serendipitous way, reflecting the transcendent musical energy that can happen when a high-caliber band has time off while the “star” is elsewhere. Willa’s friend, bassist Paul Socolow (pictured with her above) was working with a world class group she calls “Brazilian or experts at Brazilian music,” giving the tune a slightly exotic vibe. She only handed Drewes, Socolow, Ricky Sebastian (drums) and Toninho Horta (acoustic guitar) basic charts because she wanted to leave room for their creativity. “I played as simply as I could while they wove the magic tapestry around me. We took it five times, but the first track was the one and we all knew it. It still gives me goosebumps.” As listeners are drawn into Willa’s new world as an artist, they’ll likely feel the same – especially if they relate to that feeling of “finally” achieving a dream that once seemed elusive.

The other tracks on The Private Me feature Willa on piano and synths with different combinations of other world class musicians, anchored by Battaglia, Socolow and Jon Albrink on bass, Sebastian and Warren Odze on drums and Paul Harris on Fender Rhodes, organ and pianist.

Perfect for modern adult contemporary vocal playlists, with the deeply soulful, lilting romantic ballad “A True Heart,” Willa explores the difference between calling it love when everything’s perfect – when “things are going right . . .on a warm and moonlit night” – and the more enduring real deal that we only learn about when it’s tested through trial. As she sings “But it’s rarer than rubies, precious as gold/If he still loves you when the world turns cold.” Illuminating the contrast between the fly by night emotions that come and go and the elusive, harder to find ones that take root and stand the test of time, she sings in the joyful chorus, “A true heart doesn’t turn away/A true heart loves you every day.”

Willa showcases her warm, elegant piano touch, more intensely felt emotion and facility for dynamic vocal texturing on another gorgeously rendered, rhythmically infectious ballad, “I Might Say I Love You,” which taps into the feeling of ambivalence about taking a chance on someone who could be perfect, if only they would only stop playing coy games and come a bit closer. It’s romantic power balladry at its finest, reminding us that we can find and fall in love “if you give me half a chance.” In fact, if he’s open to it she might dare to say “I love you” and be open to running away and having a full-blown romance. It’s a glorious way to tell your prospective partner, “your move”! “I was tracking from the live room,” Willa recalls, “and I could see at least half a dozen people in the control room. But I was just so full of frustration and longing, I didn’t care who heard me. Everything went away. I’m very proud of that vocal.”

Willa tackles a whole other lovelorn ball of wax on the funky, blues-edged, piano pounding (including a deliriously manic, high-octane solo by Harris) “Mr. Torture,” a masterpiece of catharsis inspired by being in a controlling relationship that put her through hell. Swirling her emphatic, percussive vocal phrasing with Battaglia’s fiery electric guitar and Odze’s booming drums, she invites us to feel her pain, holding nothing back: “Mr. Torture, you’ve got love on your mind/Mr. Torture, not the conventional kind/Please don’t love me, I can’t take anymore.” Willa says, “My favorite paradigm for this one is Annie Lennox’s ‘Walking on Broken Glass.’ I wrote this before #metoo was a thing, but I had to include it.

Less specific about a single painful situation but equally willing to embrace the darkness of life amidst its magnificent moments, Willa’s haunting, meditational mid-tempo ballad “When Darkness Comes” offers some provocative philosophical questions over Battaglia’s wily basslines and electric guitars and the impressionistic, action-packed piano chords and drums. “I wanna know where the sun goes when it rains/I wanna know of the sacred and profane/I wanna know when the challenge comes/Between the dark and light/Will I be running?” After putting listeners through a seductive emotional wringer on this one, it’s clear they’ll be grateful that she didn’t run from her fears and challenges and lived to share the tale and inspire people to face their own battles.

Showcasing her charming, witty storytelling in a completely different mode, Willa uses a soaring ballad format to take us back in time to when she secured her first solo apartment on the aptly titled “A Place of My Own: - including a sly reference to the reality that when she moved in, “I’ll have to scrub the tub/The walls, the tub.” On a more intimate level, she feels the the “four walls, a floor” is a sanctuary where “I can be free” and “I’m free to be me.” Considering the fact that the lyric includes the album title (“Where I can be free/No one will see/The private me”), it’s clear that she’s drawing on that experience of freedom as a metaphor for the freedom she has felt at other times in her life – including now, as a busy behind the scenes musician spreading her wings and sharing those powerful truths.

Though many of her songs here have a spiritual feeling about them, the final full ensemble gem, the passionate gospel-tinged “Take Me There” flows as an eloquent prayer to the divine, imagining a time when she transcends this life for the next: “Come my lord, take me home/To a higher place. . .Oh I wait impatiently/Your eyes, your eyes/my soul to see.” She looks forward in heaven to a brighter sun, a place where “hate and greed shall be unknown and where “the tender seed of love is sown” and where music plays all the time.

Having showcased so many aspects of her personal life, Willa wraps The Private Me with a lighthearted, buoyant appropriately whimsical nod to the crazy-busy life she’s caught in day to day on “Balls in the Air,” whose playful sense of humor includes her snappy, wildly humorous incantation about the reality of day to day life we can all relate to: “Happy happy sad sad…happy happy, mad mad…worry worry, hop hope, worry hurry, mope mope.” Her final words on this plucky piece of pop perfection is good parting food for thought: “So when you’re playing with your balls in the air. . .just try not to care about ‘em. . .just let ‘em float by…float by.”

“I was driving home after a gig one night, happy to be thinking about how many projects I had going on at the same time, and this catchy little refrain kept bouncing around in my head about juggling all those projects,” Willa says. “Then I thought about my interior life, how it’s the same thing, all the emotions just bouncing around in there as well. I’m grateful to end on this hopeful note, to embrace all your crazy and enjoy the ride.”

With any luck, Willa Bassen will tap into the personal side of her life’s journey again and grace us with more of The Private Me and happy moments like that on solo recordings in the future.