William Fitzsimmons

"If You Would Come Back Home"
from the album The Sparrow and the Crow
2008
iTunes



Sadness shouldn't have such a sweet voice.

William Fitzsimmons' latest, The Sparrow and the Crow (Mercer Street Records) — his third album and the first he didn't self-release — is filled with soft guitar, gentle piano and a warm, whispering vocals, all of which masks the devastating heartbreak lurking just below the calm surface.

The devil is in the story, and the music's restraint only increases the unsettling horror of Fitzsimmons' words.

"I set out to make a record about my parents' relationship, the split-up and divorce that took place when I was a teenager," said Fitzsimmons. "In the process of doing that, a lot of things in my own relationship came to a head and fell apart. ... It's meant to chronicle the year following it, which is when things fell apart. I wrote it as a confessional of sorts ... a kind of apology letter."

There's a discomforting directness to that apology as Fitzsimmons avoids the comforts of privacy and lyrical nuance: "You gave your heart to me alone / I left you out at sea" from "Please Forgive Me: The Song of the Crow" is an example of the plainspoken confessionals that run throughout the CD.

"The last thing I want people to think is for it to come off as some type of finger pointing or whining," said Fitzsimmons. "I don't expect everyone to want to throw in a disc about someone's divorce. ... It's meant to be for the people who are meant to hear that, for whatever reason."

The son of blind parents, Fitzsimmons learned to speak through music from a young age, listening the pipe organ that his father built in his childhood home, as well as orchestral records and a little James Taylor and Bob Dylan.

"Growing up it's just kind of what we did," said Fitzsimmons. "My brother and I were in marching band, and always taking lessons. We would sing with our mother while she played the piano. It was always there. ... It was just always something I assumed would be part of my life, just be a regular thing."

But music was just part of his life; Fitzsimmons didn't plan on music being his life. The bearded troubadour pursued a career as a mental health therapist, finishing his undergrad work, Master's and internship hours before deciding, in his words, "to spend the next 10 years in a van with half-eaten potato-chip bags and smelly musicians."

The decision came after Fitzsimmons' home recordings began receiving heavy traffic on his MySpace page, and then his song "Passion Play" was featured on Grey's Anatomy.

"I wasn't selling anything," said Fitzsimmons. "I had just written a few songs and put it up on MySpace, but people started writing [to me] more and more, so I just started burning [the songs to CD] on my home computer. I bought some glue sticks and made some album artwork. ... I saw it wasn't just a cool little thing for me, that other people seemed to connect with the songs, I think that's what made me start thinking."

And it turned out to not be a long jump between the two worlds.

"We all need a little help," said Fitzsimmons, who worked in the psych unit in a Camden, N.J., hospital. "I see a big connection [between mental therapy and folk music], and I like to think that's not just a rationalization because I have so many student loans. I want the music to mean more than just entertainment. ... I want the songs to challenge people a bit. I'm not opposed to people being offended by it, if it makes them think about how they are living, not in a judgmental way. I think it is like a kind of therapy in that way. It's different, when you're sitting in a room ... with someone that is letting all their dark stuff, the stuff they wouldn't even tell their closest friends, and they are pouring that out to you. ... Therapy is rawer than music has been. Music is an important part to stir people up though."

While Fitzsimmons' second album, Goodnight, explored issues surrounding his parents' divorce, The Sparrow and the Crow frames Fitzsimmons' own struggles with a brutal simplicity and a wistful sense of loss that touches even the most lilting, TV-soundtrack-ready tracks. And from the slow-building "If You Would Come Back Home" to the gentle "You Still Hurt Me" and "They'll Never Take the Good Years," Fitzsimmons details every frustrating tear of someone who has loved, lost and can't do anything to make things right.

"I want people to have a little bit of caution about themselves and about relationships," said Fitzsimmons. "I want them to take it a little more seriously than I did at the beginning. I want to put a little fear into people with the music. To say, this is how things can go wrong."

The album's darkness breaks ever so slightly at the end with a sliver of light called "Maybe Be Alright," because amid all the tears, Fitzsimmons still believes in love.

"The modal response I want to have is hope," said Fitzsimmons. "I realize that's going to sound cheesy written down or spoken, but that's what I want people to have, hope that they can get through a situation like this, because I have, and I'm in a good place, and in a good place with the stuff that happened with my folks. Wounds can heal."

~ Nathan Martin, Washington Post Express