“Ten songs about 10 disasters … EBows and synths galore.”
Scott Whiddon’s assessment of his forthcoming album isn’t exactly reassuring. But the Lexington, Ky.-based singer, songwriter and educator isn’t fixated on catastrophe. Instead, he uses calamity as a conduit to minor revelations about the human condition—like the peculiar strain of romance that informs “A Strange Kind Of Love.”
Whiddon’s new single was the last thing he wrote for Sometimes Just Isn’t Enough (A Door For A Desk). Due in late September, his third LP was produced, engineered and mixed by multi-instrumentalist J. Tom Hnatow, who’s worked with John R. Miller, Ringo Starr, Horse Feathers, the Mynabyrds and others. Turns out Hnatow was the ideal collaborator for an album Whiddon approached less like a collection of songs than a string of interconnected scenes. A professor of writing, rhetoric and communication at Lexington’s Transylvania University, Whiddon describes his process as almost screenplay-like, accumulating images, details and bits of dialogue before slicing them up and assembling them into songs.
That multidisciplinary approach has long been part of Whiddon’s work. He’s developed film scores and served as music director for his hometown’s Harry Dean Stanton Fest. He also contributes to Archipelago, a collaborative recording project among educators at Kentucky colleges. Off campus, he’s shared stages with everyone from Lucy Dacus and Elf Power to Mike Watt and Television’s Richard Lloyd.
“It was a huge honor to work with J. Tom on this single and the LP as a whole,” says Whiddon. “Having Jeremy Midkiff—from the mighty Kentucky indie-pop band Big Fresh—animate the video was also a treat.”
We’re proud to premiere Scott Whiddon’s “A Strange Kind Of Love.”
—Hobart Rowland
