Little Canyons by Timmy Vigilante

I started work on Little Canyons in January of 2013, though I had previously planned it out many times before then under different names. A great deal of the songs deal with my own depression, with loss, and with the trauma suffered by my community of Woodland Park during the Waldo Canyon Fire and the other tragedies of that summer. Almost 50 songs were recorded or drafted for Little Canyons, with some of them appearing on, "Through Cardboard Walls". The writing of the album came about very gradually, as did the recording, with the first recording of Rose starting in February and finishing in May of 2013, and the last recording on the album happening on that very song in February 2015 while mastering the album. (new bass guitar part added) I hope you'll download and listen to the entire thing, there is a wide variety of things on this album, and you'll probably find at least one song you like.

[[2024 retrospective: so I deeply appreciate Elijah's hard work producing this. I was, at the time, trying really hard to make a decent follow up to Too Much Time on their Heads, and vaguely thought of this as pop music--which sounds hard to believe, but yeah. Anyway. What I regret more about this album nearly ten years later is that I largely self-censored a lot of what would have been some of the most interesting songs. Like I understand why 2015 Timmy didn't want to do anything with "All the girls in the hospital" where they expressed how they would feel more comfortable over on the girl's side of the psych. facility at the time, but 2024 Timmy feels like it would have been pretty based. I also listened to the folks who told me to change the pronouns in Annabel Lee from "they/them" to "he/him"; I had written "they" in the first draft of the song, and still said it (on "accident") in the first recording I did of it (not here), but yeah. Positives: I say "giraffe begun to macrame in a wax museum incarnate" as an example of something fantastic I'd like to see; the ending of New Grace is lit; I had access to a marimba and I used the fuck out of it, good times.]]

Tracklist

1.	Shine Your Eyes	3:00

2.	Function feat. Hannah Lara	3:18

3.	Rose	4:08

4.	Heart Still Beating	4:25

5.	Just Words	2:44

6.	Patron Saints	4:13

7.	Little Canyons feat. Kyla Valenti	4:19

8.	Even Summer's Cold	2:40

9.	Annabel Lee	3:31

10.	Van Gogh	3:08

11.	Conditional Dance	3:30

12.	Parchment (Samp. Roomful of Teeth)	3:58

13.	Elephant Parts/Elephant Party	3:24

14.	New Grace feat. Micaela Davidson	3:31

15.	Cadence	3:15

16.	Through the Night feat. Ashley Vrtis, Joseph Irvin, Lily Oram, Rachel Marolf, Stephanie Harris	5:03

Credits

released March 14, 2015

Writing and Production.

Timothy Vilgiate: Mandolin, Mandola, Guitar, Bass Guitar, Glockenspiel, Marimba, Orchestral drums, Drum set, Buffalo Drum, Ukulele, Sample manipulation, programming, recording, vocals, keyboard, piano, banjo, Upright bass.
Elijah Petty: Production, Mixing, Mastering, Recording on Van Gogh, Vocoding in Patron Saints, Bagpipe manipulation in Even Summer's Cold, Removal of the Mamba in Conditional Dance.

Vocal Features and Sample Acknowledgements.

Hannah Lara: Voice on Function, Also credited with watching that one movie about Satan in the elevator with me, and attempting to drive with me to Glenwood Springs in the snow storm from hell.

Marriage of Figaro by Mozart sampled in Just Words, performed by Solveig Olsen and accidentally picked up on recorder. Asked her if I could use it. Added something from a HUM 3990 class on the renaissance, a choir, do not recall the origin.

Lagrima by Francisco Tarrega sampled in Patron Saints, rearranged into 4/4 and performed by myself while softly crying in the dark, appropriate to the song.

Kyla Valenti: Voice on Little Canyons. Putting up with me. Listening to crappy rough drafts of the songs on this album.

Sarabande by a Roomful of Teeth sampled in Parchment, composed by Caroline Shaw. Very beautiful contemporary classical music.

Micaela Davidson: Voice on New Grace, recorded in between the outbursts of noise from the boiler in her house. First person to hear the song when it was written in 2012, as well as Cadence. Made the valuable suggestion to not perform these in a falsetto.

Other Instrumentalists

Stephanie Harris: Violin on Through the Night. So much better than using a keyboard.
Lily Oram: Cello on Through the Night. My cousin, what a champ.
Joseph Irvin: Analog Synthesizer on Through the Night. Randomly invited to my house on night, next thing you know, he was on the track.
Ashley Vrtis: Alto Saxophone on Through the Night. Tolerating my awkward and miserably unpracticed "conducting"
Rachel Marolf: Trumpet on Through the Night. Hit note so high Elijah mistook it for a whistle. It took a very long time.

OH! And the cover art is by Ashleigh Hollowell. It inspired the lyrics to Little Canyons.

License