Depression is a bitch, and it has taken another extremely talented musician from us.  That would be Will Owsley, a power pop singer/songwriter from Alabama.  Will spent most of his career as a sideman for Amy Grant, but released an incredible album in 1996 with The Semantics called Powerbill (was a hit in Japan but Geffen wouldn’t release it in the states) and released two well-received solo albums in the early part of the ’00s.  What is saddening most to me is that I got to know Will and was somewhat close to him for awhile.

In 1999 Giant Records released Will’s debut solo album Owsley and hit radio with it.  I was working for an FM station in Seattle when the single for “I’m Alright” came across.  I knew the name because I had been introduced to The Semantics through Lee Swartz at Sony Tree in Nashville.  I’m convinced half the people in the world who know and love that Semantics album owe it to Lee’s spreading the gospel.  My station did not add Will’s single, but I was in the position to pitch a “short take” interview with Will for The Big Takeover.  I interviewed Will in the summer of 1999 and we published the interview that fall.  You can read a PDF of that interview right here, courtesy of Jack Rabid and The Big Takeover.

I remember will as an extremely talented singer and guitarist, as a man excited about his family, and dubious about his chances as a future pop star.  I spent about four hours sitting out on the curb outside of the Crocodile Cafe in downtown Seattle talking about all manner of things besides rock and roll.  I forged a friendship with Will that night that continued via email and the occasional meeting when he’d come through on tour.  But I stopped hearing from Will about four years ago.  It is hard for me to reconcile the image of the jovial, caring man I knew and the sort of man that kills himself and leaves his children to grow up fatherless.  It is the worst kind of tragedy, and not because the voice is silenced.  But because something fundamental went wrong with Will Owsley, and I grieve for his family and whatever straits he found himself in that made him feel he had to take the ultimate out.  That is so, so wrong all the way around.