Customer Reviews

Will T Massey

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I bought this album when it first came out in the UK in 1991 and I've never stopped playing it in the intervening years. I got the cd after reading a great review in one of our upmarket newspapers and boy am I glad I did there is not one bad track on the whole record. All lovers of Springstein and great singer/songwriters should do themselves a favour and buy this album it might not change your life but it'll certainly add to the experience. Whatever happened to Will T. Massey? If anyone out there knows please let me know I'd love some more music by this guy.

I wrote this review for Dallas-based Buddy magazine in June, 1991.


Will T. Massey
Will T. Massey
MCA Records

It would be so easy to dismiss Will T. Massey as merely this year's populist rocker. After all, the vital ingredients are all in place - the Springsteenesque vocals, a backup band made up of heavy hitters such as Mike Campbell, Waddy Wachtel, and Roy Bittan (from the E Street Band) who manage to sound an awful lot like John Mellencamp's crew, and a slew of personal songs of unfulfilled yearnings, small town frustrations, disillusionment and, of course, angst.

But just as the smug expression settled on this reviewer's face, it became achingly clear that there's a whole lot more going on here. Maybe this is what those aforementioned two have been going after with their neo-folk-roots, get-down-to-basics forays. The big difference is that there's no affectation here. Will T. Massey is the real thing.

The ten tunes here sketch a painful panorama of life in an almost featureless, humorless wide space in the road where there's no there there. But the allegory goes far beyond Massey's hometown of San Angelo and into the personal emptiness of restless youth in a sometimes indifferent world. To say that the tenor of this album is bleak would be a serious understatement. Let's not beat around the bush, folks, it's dark. Check out some of the titles: "It's Midnight All Day Long," "Highway Hearse," "Homeless Heart," "A Summertime Graveyard." You get the idea. Very dark. Nonetheless, rather than slipping into a tiring, brooding mess, Will T. Massey takes us in and out of ourselves and leaves us with a feeling of catharsis. One feels good for having gone through the wringer with him; it's somehow cleansing.

As for the music itself, it ranges from the sturdy rock and roll backbeat of "Highway Hearse," in which boy meets car meets the devil, to the tender "Summertime Graveyard," with its spoken verses and fragile romantic choruses. Much credit must be given to the expensive talent in the band, as they restrain themselves and allow the songs to come through. After a while, one doesn't mind the somewhat `Boss'-like vocals - in fact, they sound great without the histrionics into which Springsteen too often lapses.

Still, Will T. Massey's strength is in his insightful, touching lyrics. In "Barbed Wire Town" he ponders life without the safeguards (or constraints) of the "barbed-wife kind of philosophy/where maverick minds are never free." In "Send Up the Smoke" he addresses how we allow ourselves to become gradually estranged from our own feelings.

While much of Massey's words deal with abandoned dreams and painful introspection, there's still a feeling of hope that comes through on this album.

On "Coffee Break" with its laid-back, almost meandering manner, Massey looks at the Texas sky and wryly suggests, "The angels take a coffee break at night/we see the tips of their cigarettes shining bright/We call them stars; they call that a joke/and the clouds - they are Holy Smoke."

This is an impressive debut from a gifted writer. Since this album is about his life to this point, it will be interesting to see where his life takes him, and how he chronicles it in song. Some folks say you have your whole life to write your first album, and after that, well...

We'll be listening.


-Chuck Flores
Buddy Magazine - Dallas, TX
June, 1991

I've missed Will T. Massey for well over a decade, but just learned that he's releasing a new record and released a couple in the past year or two. I couldn't be more excited!

Rave on!
Dave

This is a stellar album and it has one of the greatest songs ever written on it: Summertime Graveyard. The song is a haunting beauty, a love song like no other, and a mesermizing journey into Will's writing style.

BTW, Will is back. Check out his site [...] to find out where he has been. Talk about a journey! Glad he is back and healthy and happy and anxiously awaiting his next project!