Denison Witmer

When Sufjan Stevens first offered Denison Witmer the chance to workshop some songs he'd been working on back in 2022, Witmer says he had no idea a new album was going to result. He was just hoping a change of environment and the feedback of a longtime friend would move the songs forward to a new place. That's where the creative ground rules came in handy.

After laying down a few core tenets for their collaborative process, the final mixes for Anything At All, Witmer's 13th studio album, came into view. With plenty of contributions from fellow friend and producer Andy Park (who produced Witmer's American Foursquare), Anything At All finds Witmer letting go of perfection and following new sonic ideas.

We recently sat down with Witmer to hear more about the rules established in the studio and how challenging they were to the way he's used to working.

Analogue: You and I have talked several times over the years and I think I've even talked to you at moments where you were questioning if you were going to keep doing this. There was a real break but fortunately for us, here you are still at it. Do you feel like past versions of you would be surprised that you're here to talk about and support a new album in 2025?

Denison Witmer: Possibly. I mean, so when Sufjan [Stevens] and I worked on this record, we actually set out some tenets for our creativity, and one of them was to not get attached to outcomes. It was just “be creative,” but don't get attached to the outcome because you really can't know how the songs are going to turn out.

I realized how that applies to every part of my life. I often have an idea of what I think is going on, and life has other plans. So I'm sure that one of the times that you and I spoke, I was questioning whether or not I wanted to continue to do music professionally because it's a tough business.

I see people who are a lot more commercially successful than me, who are really struggling to make ends meet, and that saddens me. I wish it wasn't that way. And while at one point in my life, I could consistently tour and make enough money to survive, it's not that way with two little kids and a wife and a mortgage—all that stuff, you know?

And so, I didn't think music as a profession was really in the cards for me. I think I was confused for a while as to what that looked like as well. Like, would I have any way of making albums that sound the way I want them to sound? Because it doesn't cost any less to make music, even though we're making less when we release it.

So I worked some things out. I figured out a path to doing it. And as long as I can keep faking it until I'm making it, that's what I'm going to keep doing. I don't have any idea that my voice is super important to the conversation that's happening around music. I don't know that people are really waiting for me to release a new record. I also don't know that they're not.

I know I have some fans who are, but I still feel compelled to share my records when they're done. And as long as I feel compelled to make it public, if I feel good enough about something I've recorded to share it with people, then that's my plan.

Analogue: What informs that compulsion?

Denison: That’s a really good question. I think that I realized I had a collection of songs that felt good together and they had a cohesive album feeling to them. I don't always feel that way. So, I knew that it was worth holding onto these songs and putting them out in an album format, even though a lot of people are just releasing singles now. I think that there's a time and place for that, and I do have some songs that I'm sitting on that I want to do that with.

For this particular record, this was mostly about Sufjan and I spending time together, making music together—just seeing where it went. Then once it started to take shape and the creativity went from a creative brain dump to more of a executed punch list like, ‘Oh, this is what these songs need,’ it was like, ‘Oh, we're actually making a record here. We're actually going to do something that's going to have some finality to it and final mixes. And we're going to share it. It's going to happen.’

Analogue: When you reference your time with Sufjan, first of all, how long was that? Were you together for a month, a week, intermittently?

Denison: It was very intermittent. We started the album in 2022 and on somewhat of a whim, you know? I think that he could sense that I was feeling a little bit of a bottleneck. I had these songs I wanted to start working on, but I didn't know when I could start doing it or how.

I was making little demos at home, but I wasn't feeling like I knew how to proceed. And he said, ‘Why don't you just come up here for a few days and we'll just put them down and see if we can put some basic arrangements to them, see what feels good and what doesn’t?’ So that's what we did.

It was after that that I realized, ‘Oh, okay, I'm going to do this again.’ So I scheduled to go to Seattle and finish it with my friend Andy [Park], who made American Foursquare with me, my last record. And we did. We added drums. We added a bunch of other parts.

When I got back from Seattle, I was living with the songs and played them for Sufjan, and I could sense that maybe he was more invested than I realized. He was basically like, ‘I don't know why he tried to wrap this up so quickly. And I was like, ‘Well, I mean, I'm busy. I’ve got a family. I've got so much to do. I'm trying to get this record done with the time that I have allotted.’ But he encouraged me to slow down.

Analogue: That’s interesting.

Denison: Yeah, he was like, ‘Let's just do this together. Let's see these songs through the whole way.’ I really understood that that's what he wanted to do from the inception. I thought he was just asking me if I wanted some help getting started, but then at that point, I realized, ‘No, he meant he wanted to make this record with me.’

When I realized that, I kind of just slowed everything down and said, ‘Okay, well, if we're doing this together, if it's a collaborative effort, then let's re-listen to all the songs. Tell me what you're hearing that you like that I did in Seattle. Tell me what we're envisioning that might be different. Let's pull it back. Let's re-imagine it.’

A lot of the things that I did with Andy were great and stayed in the songs. Andy is such a great producer, and he's got so many great ideas. And I'd say like 75 to 80 percent of his ideas still stayed in the songs. But there was that other percentage that Sufjan felt like he wanted to pull back and re-imagine. Some of that was overarching arrangements or just the feel of the song being a little bit more mellow, less driving, that kind of thing. So that's what we did.

Analogue: When you worked with Sufjan, you said you had some creative tenets set up. You only said one but you referenced there were more. What were those?

Denison: Yeah, sure. One was that no idea is a bad idea. So if you hear something in your head, let's try to record it and see what happens. And like I said before: don't get attached to outcomes.

Then the other one is: Finished is better than perfect. Let's not strive for perfection. Let's not nitpick over every little thing. Let's just put in a good day's work, do our best, and worry about something later, when we're doing a more fine-toothed comb overview of the songs. I have to say, it's funny, because I'm very guilty of this, I admit it.

I often like imperfections in music. I think about certain Simon and Garfunkel records that I've heard or Neil Young Records, different things where there's little mistakes. At some point you start to look forward to them because they feel like they're part of the song, and it’s humanized—it’s a humanized part of the song.

I didn't let myself get away with that for a long time, making records. I would nitpick. I don't like that about myself, but I definitely get nitpicky. I just had to remember that I'm at this phase in my life where I'm not playing music every day because I've got a family and another job, and I'm being pulled in a lot of directions.

So I don't always feel like the best musician when I'm in the studio. I feel like I can remember that time when I was touring all the time, and my voice was stronger, my guitar playing felt more effortless. All those things can play on me a little bit when I'm back in the studio, especially when I'm surrounding myself with musicians who are really good.

But I just had to get that voice out of my head and perform as best as I could, and it was great because we built the songs, and there were very few things that I really felt like I needed to go back and change. When I was recording it, I felt a lot different. I felt like, ‘Oh, that's not going to stand the test of time. That's not going to work. I'm self-critical.’

So one thing, you never stop learning, right? This is my 13th record, and I'm still learning how to make things in a positive way, trying to break old habits. So that's good. It's really good.

Analogue: How long had it been since you'd worked with Sufjan like this?

Denison: Well, the last record that he played on was my self-titled record, which came out in 2013.

Analogue: That's a long time.

Denison: Yeah. That was just him showing up at the studio for a day and adding some piano parts and a background vocal. It was not him doing any solid arrangements of any kind. This is the first record that I've ever done with him where he's taken the helm of actually arranging the songs from start to finish. So, yeah, it's wild, right? Because we've been friends for about 20 years, but I didn't find that it actually worked out that way.

Analogue: What led to that? I mean, if you've been friends for this long, you've run in similar circles.

Denison: I don't know. I really don't know. I think it's just we've been spending so much time together outside of music, just spending time at his house or just hanging out with him. I think that he could sense I was wanting to work on music.

He has the studio that I helped to build elements of it. He had kind of built it with the understanding that he was going to record other people and bring friends in. But with the COVID lockdown, none of that was really happening.

I don't know. Maybe he just felt like this was a good opportunity to learn his way around the studio in addition to helping out a friend. I mean, I look at it as a beautiful gift that he gave me of his time and his abilities. Yeah, I can't answer for him, but I'm thankful.

VISIT: Denison Witmer

*Photo: Lindsay Elliot