Billy Law

You may not notice it at first, but Billy Law’s debut album Alone Somewhere is telling you a story of life, lived. Ups and downs and middle grounds, the good and the bad wrapped up together because that’s precisely how life works. As you work your way song to song, the album plays like a soundtrack, detailing events through the passage of time that you may not have lived directly, but feel deeply. It’s a masterful summation of human experience: the uneven act of growing up, youthful mistakes and adulthood regrets, finding, losing, and earning love, and the daily attempt to understand the person in the mirror. It quickly becomes clear that while Alone Somewhere may be his debut, Billy Law already has the songwriting chops of a veteran musician. Perhaps it’s the influence of the decade he’s spent as bassist for the raucous and nationally-acclaimed country-rock band Ottoman Turks that has lent such rough-and-tumble life experience. One might certainly be surprised to find that a single band has produced multiple celebrated songwriters, with Billy Law joining his bandmate Joshua Ray Walker in crafting stellar solo albums. Even as a solo artist, he has shared the stage with the likes of America and Bob Schneider. But it is just as likely that the normal, non-rock star life has provided fuel for the songwriting fire: there’s plenty of rough-and-tumble to be found in the journey of self-discovery that is graduation, working for a living, chasing your purpose alongside friends and family. Both sides of the singer are fully realized, giving the songs a lived-in feeling like an old friend’s greeting, the touch of worn leather, the taste of a favorite meal. Like revered songwriters on classic albums, Law crafts tunes that are at once painfully personal and yet universal. His songs are raw, truthful, real. He has lived these lyrics. And in his sometimes weary but always urgent voice you find kinship.