Musical momentum
Kuklis releasing new album, preparing for local show
The job of the modern troubadour is to be seen and heard, to create and market the creations. The Prince George artist leading the pack this summer might well be William Kuklis. He just finished performing at the coveted ArtsWells Festival of All Things Art, he released a video for his original song It Tears Me Up Inside, he has a hometown show set for Nancy O’s, and he is in the studio working on a new album he’s aiming to release early in the new year.
He has to work on all these facets simultaneously, he said, to establish the best material.
“Playing it live is a totally different entity,” he said. “The stuff in the studio takes weeks. You create it, you spend recording time with it, then you let it sit all alone by itself for awhile so you feel what it’s like to come back to it, but ultimately I have to feel comfortable with it live, on stage.”
With the material coming together for the new album, plus all the previous material he’s created, he is now in an enviable position for a performer.
“I have to pick and choose. I have to create a set list, not just throw out everything I have and hope I can fill the time,” he said.
He also had a menu of options for film director Chad Magnant to work with. The two had talked about collaborating on another music video (they did the song film for Kuklis’s single Save Me in 2015, co-starring Meaghan Bell), so with the album beginning to coalesce, the time was right. Kuklis let Magnant in on a number of publicly undisclosed songs and Magnant picked the one he wanted to work on first. The finished result is now ringing up hits on YouTube and Facebook.
“We didn’t do a big announcement about the video, we just put it out there, and I think it was up to 4,000 hits the last time I checked,” Kuklis said.
The progress of the new music is mightily aided by one professional advantage. Kuklis is also a trained music producer with his own recording studio built into his house. When he sits down to compose, even just noodling around with new ideas, he can quickly process it into commercial tracks.
“I’m writing this whole album in the studio. I create as I go. Normally, you can only afford to write in the studio if you’re the Rolling Stones or someone like that. You have to prepare your material somewhere else, make a careful plan, then go into the studio and slam it out as fast and efficiently as you can – just plow through. I’m extremely lucky to have that luxury.”
He calls his music space Vinyl Deck Studio and occasionally has other artists use the space for their own work, but that has been reduced as he works on his own project in recent weeks.
Songs don’t come easy to him, hence the focus on his personal project at the expense of all others right now. The melody almost always comes first to his mind, he will work out the music, usually on guitar, and then the lyrics struggle into shape atop that foundation.
To hear some of the latest creations, catch Kuklis on the Nancy O’s stage on Sept. 10 at 9 p.m. Tickets will be $10 at the door.