TW Walsh

Tower of Song

TW Walsh’s Terrible Freedom LP out 04/28/2017 on Tower of Song Records. 

The first two records TW Walsh ever bought with his own crumpled cash were Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Van Halen’s 1984. His dad’s vinyl collection was full of albums by The Stones, Zeppelin, and Neil Young, but young Timmy was watching Music Television the day it came on the air, and over the years MTV probably shaped him more than any other single cultural influence.

On Friday nights, he watched Talking Heads and Police concerts on VHS. He never went anywhere without his skateboard and his Walkman. He stayed up late playing Atari on his bedroom’s tiny black and white TV. He saw Tron in the theater and saved his quarters for the arcade. His cassette collection was the envy of many. He was a terrible, yet very committed, breakdancer.

Terrible Freedom is an album about fear and liberation, space and time, the self and the mind. Its themes are existential and broad, but they also characterize the cultural and political dumpster fire in which we find ourselves engulfed today. Walsh grew up in Reagan’s America (The New Cold War, the AIDS crisis, trickle-down economics, The War on Drugs), so Trump’s chaotic presidency is familiar territory.

If Terrible Freedom has a message, it’s to cultivate compassion and courage. If you can muster the strength, simply lean into the fear. All things must pass. Whatever comes, just let it arrive.

TW Walsh is a member of Lo Tom (Barsuk Records) and a former member of Pedro the Lion, Headphones and The Soft Drugs. Terrible Freedom is his sixth album. He has also contributed to more than 850 recording projects as a producer, musician or engineer, working with artists such as Sufjan Stevens, The Shins, Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), members of The National, Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats, Cold War Kids, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Foxygen, Damien Jurado and David Bazan.