In a recent interview Will recounted the story of how he met and collaborated with Musician Frank Kozlowski (pictured right) - here is an excerpt…
John B: Will, tell us a little bit about how you met Frank and the songs you wrote together.
Will Echo: Sure, well I had written a song called ‘Thrill Seeking’ that was to appear on my second album ‘Headlines’. It had a really dramatic vibe to it, I remember really getting into the vocal delivery of the moment, and becoming the song. In fact one of my fans wrote to me after it was published and said “man you've nailed it - you've become the song!”.
John B: Is that something you try to achieve on every song you sing?
Will Echo: Yeah, pretty much. Every song has a certain kind of emotion. As a vocalist you are telling the story of the song, it's your job to communicate the meaning behind the melodies, lyrics and rhythms. If the listener doesn't get the song, then the song fails.
John B: Cool, I get that, so what did Frank bring to the Will Echo songs.
Will Echo: Yeah, sorry, so back to the song ‘Thrill Seeking’, this song was about the thrill of standing on England's Southern shores as waves come crashing in, huge waves as big as a house in a really bad storm. You know you shouldn't be out in the storm, and there's an element of danger, but the thrill of standing there on the edge of chaos is amazing! I had this big dramatic idea of an orchestration effect of waves crashing over the shoreline and knew that I didn’t have the skills to achieve that, so I did a quick search for orchestral songwriters on LinkedIn and Frank was literally the first one that came up!
John B: So, just a bit of luck then?
Will Echo: Yeah, it was one of those moments when things were just meant to be. I mailed Frank and sent him a copy of what I had so far, and he said “man, I’m in - leave it with me”.
John B: It was that instant? You just emailed and you’re up and running as a collaboration team?
Will Echo: Yeah, crazy isn’t it. But then Frank is a really cool, crazy dude. He has since become one of my best friends, he is a really lovely guy, genuine, generous, kind and funny.
John B: What did Frank add to ‘Thrill Seeking’?
Will Echo: So, all the fancy sound design and keyboard/orchestral sounds are Frank’s input - he really brought it alive and gave the song the character, and he ended up mixing and mastering it too!
John B: What was it about Frank that you connected with?
Will Echo: It was his let’s do it and see where it takes us, anything goes attitude. And his ability to create wonderful music so quickly. I write very quickly and in huge amounts! I can write a song in ten minutes, and have a recorded song in an hour, and there never seems to be a limit to the ideas I can generate - all songs just appear to me when I need them. Frank was the first person I had ever met that could keep up with me creatively. As we worked together on more songs, it was like a roller-coaster ride of creativity! Frank would send an idea, I’d write lyrics and melodies, or I’d send Frank an idea and he’d build a song around it. I think we wrote 20 or 30 songs in a really short time. Many of those songs have never been released.
John B: You say many have never been released, why not? And which songs did you write with Frank? And which are you most proud of?
Will Echo: Yeah, I don’t know why we never released more of our co-written songs. Life just takes over I guess. The second half of my ‘Two Sides’ album was written with Frank, from track 6 onwards, which is why the album is called ‘Two Sides’, and we did a crazy electronic song called ‘Be Happy in the Gutter’, which sort of saw us drifted into more of the production side of things more as we worked together on a remix of ‘Hope’ by Thomas Rodenbach which was a big success. I think Frank was more interested in sound design and production, whereas I was happy just to write songs. I think Frank is on a continual journey of discovery and exploration, always looking for new things and new ways. His ideas are always exciting. He taught me that a song can be an incredible journey of wonderful sounds, not just a vocal sung to a basic guitar strum.
And, to answer your question about which song I am most proud of…I guess it would be ‘Tumbling Down’. Personally. I love the beauty of the melodies and Frank’s piano part is incredibly haunting. A friend of mine was going through a really bad patch at the time and I wrote this for him. The soulful delivery is me singing from the heart, telling my friend, “mate, I’m here, I’ll be by your side’.
Tumbling Down was also the first of our songs to get radio airplay which was really cool, and I know Frank liked it too, I remember him saying “I want Tumbling Down’ played at my funeral!”
Check out Frank’s wonderful creations on any music hosting platform.