13 Wonderful Will Songs: The Next Generation - Vol. 5

Featuring tracks by Phil Keaggy, Wesley Stace, the Partridge Family, John Doe, Material Issue, Crowded House, Rufus Wainwright, and more

That’s right, it’s time for another installment of 13 Wonderful Will Songs: The Next Generation, a series of playlists which are, in fact, in no way distinguishable from the original incarnation of 13 Wonderful Will Songs playlists. So don’t feel as though you need to have listened to those in order to appreciate these, because that’s not the case at all.

Hit “play,” and here’s hoping you enjoy what you hear!

1. Valley Lodge, “Go”

So here’s a crazy story. When I was writing for Bullz-Eye, my buddy Mike Farley introduced me to the band Valley Lodge, and I was, like, “Oh, man, this is some sweet power pop goodness!” So they stayed on my radar from then onward, and although I’ll admit that I fell off of buying new music for awhile in the wake of leaving Bullz-Eye (a situation at least partially necessitated by suddenly going fully freelance for the first time in my career), I always thought fondly of them whenever I heard their name. Some time after that, I also became a fan of a comedian by the name of Dave Hill. Somehow, however, it wasn’t until a few months ago that I became aware that Dave Hill was, in fact, a member of Valley Forge!

So that’s weird enough as it is. But as someone who’s been a fan of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver since its debut, I somehow never knew until literally a few days ago that the theme song was by Valley Lodge and was actually a full-length song. So this is clearly the wake-up call I needed to catch up on all of the Valley Lodge music I wasn’t paying attention to in the wake of my departure from Bullz-Eye, but the whole insanity of what I knew and yet didn’t know is still kind of blowing my mind…

2. Phil Keaggy, “What a Day”

I believe it was my buddy Chris Commander who first introduced me to the work of Phil Keaggy through his Phil Keaggy and Sunday’s Child album, which features not only a cover homage to the Beatles but plenty of musical homages to the Fab Four as well. Mind you, as soon as you hear Keaggy’s voice, it’s got such a McCartney way about it that he’d have to be a fool to not play into that similarity…and, indeed, even just glancing at the cover of this early ‘70s album by Keaggy, you kind of can’t ignore the resemblance to McCartney’s own bearded era. Yes, Keaggy is best described as a contemporary Christian artist, but he’s also considered to be somewhat of a guitar god as well. All I know is that I’ve never found the occasional religion in his lyrics a distraction from the pop in his music. Perhaps you’ll feel the same way.

3. Wesley Stace, “Come Back Yesterday”

On September 26, which was my mother’s 81st birthday, my wife and I took her to see Wesley Stace, a.k.a. the artist formerly known as John Wesley Harding, perform an acoustic show here in Norfolk. It was wonderful, as I’d expected, but I particularly enjoyed Wes’s performance of this track from his most recent album, Late Style, a tune which he said was very much inspired by a desire to meld the lyrical tone of Phil Ochs with the instrumentation and pop production of a Partridge Family tune. Not only do I agree that he succeeded, but I think it plays even better when you pair it with an actual Partridge Family song.

4. The Partridge Family, “I Woke Up in Love This Morning”

I don’t know that this song really needs any introduction. Whether you watched the TV series or not, the pop hooks of some of their songs still get stuck in your head for the long haul, and this is certainly one such single.

5. Michael Carpenter, “Thinking About You”

I owe a debt of thanks to Bruce Brodeen and Not Lame Records for introducing me to this gentleman, but I also must give a shout-out to the summer 1999 edition of David Bash’s International Pop Overthrow festival - which is still going strong in 2024! - for providing me with an opportunity to actually meet this gentleman. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s when I met him. Things get a little blurry during that long-ago period between when I left college (1992) and when I started dating my wife (December 1999), but I’m almost positive that it was in the summer of 1999 when I made my way out to Los Angeles on my own, stayed with a few different friends, and got to see several fantastic performances, ranging from the Rubinoos to Phantom Planet to my own hometown heroes, the Mockers. It was also during that IPO trip when someone - I apologize for blanking on who was responsible - put together a multi-disc compilation to serve as the soundtrack between performances, and it was through that compilation that I really fell for this song, which was one of the inclusions.

6. John Doe, “The Real One”

This is from the debut solo album by X vocalist John Doe, but I believe the first place I heard the song was on a mix tape that my friend Tanya made for me before I headed off to Averett College for the first time. She introduced me to a number of great tunes through that tape - the one that I always remember in particular was Jimmy Buffett’s “Pascagoula Run” - but I really love this one. And I guess you can technically consider this to be an Obligatory Cover Song alert, since it’s a tune that was penned by John Hiatt, even though I’ve never actually heard a version by Hiatt. (I’d certainly like to, though.)

7. Material Issue, “Valerie Loves Me”

I was fortunate enough to fall in love with this Chicago power pop band when their Mercury Records debut was originally released, which meant that I was able to see them live a few times when they came through the Hampton Roads area and follow their career over the course of their subsequent albums. Of course, it also meant that I was horrified and horribly depressed when frontman Jim Ellison committed suicide a few years later, but I’m at least happy to say that he left behind a musical legacy that still holds up strong to this day.

8. Crowded House, “Sister Madly”

You can never go wrong with a Crowded House song, but throw in a bonus guitar solo from Richard Thompson, and you’re hitting the true heights of pop goodness.

9. Ben Lee, “Nothing Much Happens”

I don’t know if you’re aware of the music of Ben Lee, and even if you are, I don’t know if you’ve followed his career with any regularity over the years, but I’m pleased to tell you that he and his wife Ione Skye - yep, the one from Say Anything… and several other classic flicks (I’m partial to an obscurity called The Rachel Papers, personally - have a podcast called Weirder Together that’s extremely entertaining. It’s definitely worth checking out, as is pretty much every album he’s put out.

10. The Webb Brothers, “Summer People”

I believe I first heard about this bit of pop gorgeousness from a review in Q Magazine, and I’m glad I did, because I picked up the brothers’ album immediately thereafter and fell in love with it. Mind you, it’s no wonder that they’re great songwriters: their dad is Jimmy Webb.

11. Rufus Wainwright, “April Fools”

Speaking of guys with good songwriting parentage, I find it kind of funny that I barely knew anything about Rufus Wainwright’s dad - Loudon Wainwright III - as a singer/songwriter until after I started listening to Rufus’s music. I knew Loudon mostly for his occasional forays into acting, most notably in early episodes of M*A*S*H. Since then, I’ve definitely become a proper Loudon fan, but I fell in love with Rufus’s stuff from the very beginning, thanks to this very song.

12. Linus of Hollywood, “Heavenly”

Back in the waning days of my era as a record store employee - or was it in my early days as a music journalist? - I fell in love with a goofy little power pop album by a band called Size 14, who gifted the world with a very-much-of-its-time single called “Claire Danes’ Poster” and one of the silliest, catchiest tracks of the ‘90s, a ditty called “Rollin’ in the 5-1-0.”

Fast forward a few years, and I was steered toward the debut album by a singer-songwriter named Linus of Hollywood, who masterfully delivered an LP’s worth of beautiful pop music. I don’t remember how long it took me to realize that Linus had, in fact, been the lead singer of Size 14, but it still stuns me to this day. Not in a bad way, mind you, but…the Size 14 stuff is just so different from Your Favorite Record!

13. Steve Lawrence, “The Drifter”

When my daughter was young, one of the songs that got a lot of regular airplay in the car and elsewhere was a tune by the Mello Cads called “The Drifter,” which was a Paul Williams composition that the Cads had recorded for their debut album, Soft as a Rock. In fact, they’d done two versions: one on their own, and one with Williams himself contributing guest vocals. As of this writing, Soft as a Rock still isn’t on Spotify, and I’d been trying to find another version of “The Drifter” that sounded like theirs, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find one that matched their arrangement…until a few days ago, when I decided to do another Spotify search and stumbled upon a version by, of all people, Steve Lawrence. It matched the Cads’ version almost precisely, so to satisfy my curiosity, I had to reach out to David Ponak, who - in addition to being one of my former coworkers at Rhino Records - was also the lead singer of the Mello Cads, and ask him if this was, in fact, the arrangement they’d based their version on. It was. I felt vindicated. And until David finally manages to get Soft as a Rock up and streaming, this’ll do nicely.