Bill Deasy has been a fixture in Pittsburgh music for more than 30 years, but according to the title of his new album, he’s still a “Work in Progress.”
Released Dec. 3, the new project had Deasy venturing out of his comfort zone and working with some new faces.
“It was different than any other record I’ve ever made, in terms of the process,” Deasy said.
A music lover since he discovered Elvis Presley at age 7, Deasy started writing and recording songs in his teen years and performing at open mic nights. He founded his first band, Shiloh, in college, a project that eventually evolved into the Bill Deasy Band.
The group’s last guitar player, Dave Brown, went on to found The Gathering Field with Deasy.
“Though the Bill Deasy Band kind of discontinued, Dave and I had this pretty deep connection that seemed kind of special, and he and I became the core of The Gathering Field,” Deasy said.
The Gathering Field released its first album, self-titled, in 1994. The success of the single “Lost in America” — especially on Pittsburgh rock station WDVE — led to a deal with Atlantic Records.
“We just toured forever, and it never quite translated naturally the way we hoped it would. But it was still just an incredible experience,” he said.
The Gathering Field does still occasionally perform together, including recently at the Nick’s Fat City reunion show at Stage AE.
Deasy continues to play shows and releases records as a solo performer.
As the songwriting aspect of “Work in Progress” came into shape, Deasy said finding musicians was more of a challenge; schedules just weren’t clicking with longtime collaborators.
“So I called my friend Shane McLaughlin, who’s in the band Buffalo Rose, just because I thought he might be a little more tapped into the scene these days. And I asked him if he had heard of any cool recording spaces or producers,” he said.
This led him to Tyler Thompson, drummer for the Portland, Ore.-based band Fruition. Thompson also owns Studio 110, based in Carnegie. When he isn’t touring with his band, he makes records.
“But he’s not really a Pittsburgh guy. He doesn’t really know the Pittsburgh scene, which I thought was kind of cool. So he didn’t have any kind of sense of me or my history or anything, what I sounded like or anything. So that was kind of … a good starting place, where there was just this unfamiliarity between both of us,” Deasy said.
Thompson also provided a new method of recording that Deasy hadn’t experienced before. Working quickly and “catching moments,” he tends to make albums in fewer takes. The process forced Deasy out of his comfort zone.
Thompson helped him find some unfamiliar musicians, and together they found the sound of the album and seized on it.
“We would play a song for like 20 minutes, just kind of fishing around for the parts. … And then, once we started to get it going, we’d record maybe two or three passes of it. and then we would pick the pass that everybody felt the best about and that was it. … For a lead singer, that’s kind of scary,” Deasy said. “But it felt to me a little bit more old-school or something. It reminded me of Elvis Presley and the Sun Sessions; it was just guys in the studio recording songs.”
Plenty of obsessing happened in the addition of harmonies and the mixing of the album, but it maintains something of a lightning-in-a-bottle live sound that feels fresh for Deasy.
“I always feel like when I first bring a song to like a band rehearsal, you can never get back to that initial energy when you first feel it taking shape. So it was fun to get a recording that was pretty much only that,” he said.
“Work in Progress” will heavily feature in his Dec. 26 show at Club Cafe. The South Side venue announced in September that it will be closing its doors at the end of 2024, a sorrowful ending for many in the local scene.
Deasy has been doing shows at Club Cafe since it opened in 1999, and witnessing its imminent shuttering has been tough for him.
“It’s super important in my evolution because I knew the people who first opened it, you know, who first created Club Cafe. I knew them well,” he said.
At the venue’s beginning, he was in search of an identity.
“I was a little confused about who I was as a musician, and Club Cafe just became the place where I kind of figured that out. I played there a ton. … And I just had a bunch of great, great times,” he added.
The nature of shows at Club Cafe would give him lots of freedom to experiment.
“I would put together these ensembles. It was just a chance for me to really explore, you know, performing with other musicians. I remember I had like Liz Berlin and Rachel McCartney — a great local singer — singing harmony. You know, just all different configurations, different piano players … it was just a really, a fun, fun time for me to find my solo voice.”
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He was part of the video series “Live at Club Cafe” that the venue’s owners operated until 2005. In 2023, he released his own two-disc live album, which was recorded there.
At this year’s Boxing Day show — a tradition Deasy has maintained at the listening room for years — he will draw heavily from “Work in Progress” and his 2003 album, “Good Day No Rain,” which he sees in many ways as the new album’s spiritual twin.
“Thematically and vibe-wise, I’m feeling a connection between those two records. So I’m gonna explore that in this night.”
He’s recruited some old friends and new faces to play with him instead of doing a solo acoustic show, as he has in past years. He sees this mix of old and new as an adventure, and also an ode to the closing Club Cafe.
“It is an ending, but it’s the beginning always,” he said.