An Evening with Will Overman (solo)

The Virginia-raised singer-songwriter spent the last four years watching his first solo album slide away in the rearview mirror. The life he had when he wrote and recorded The Winemaker’s Daughter is gone. His sophomore effort, Stranger, finds Overman with eyes fixed firmly on the dotted line unspooling ahead of him. 

Recent converts will find much to explore in Overman’s densely layered tunes. And longtime fans will be happy to hear that Overman’s signature traits — deft storytelling embedded in hooky tunes, anchored by precise lyricism and powerful delivery — are all present and accounted for on Stranger. But don’t expect Overman to stay in one place, musically or otherwise.

Restless by nature, a traveler with a poet’s eye for mountains but a working man’s taste for road food, Overman’s always on the move. He comes by it naturally. That’s because Overman spent his formative years as a child of two worlds. Summer surf sessions in Virginia Beach gave way to fall backpacking expeditions in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Rinse, wash, repeat. Sunscreen and fly rods, flip flops and hiking boots. Two different landscapes. Two different soundtracks. Rock and pop where water meets earth,  bluegrass and folk where trees meet the sky. Somewhere in between, maybe on the interstate between Virginia’s edges and its heart, that’s where the country music is.

Ask Overman about his influences, and he’s just as likely to say The Killers as the Avett Brothers. So it’s inevitable all those worlds would sonically collide inside Overman’s head. A live performance will probably include a harmonica. But you’ll also get a good old-fashioned rock show. Or is it alt-country? Alternative? 

Impossible to say, and that’s just the way Overman likes it. That’s because the versatile singer-songwriter has some road behind him now. Has lived enough life to know it doesn’t matter what you call a thing as long as it does the job. And that’s what Overman’s songs do. Aided by unforgettable vocal delivery, Overman fires each track directly at the heart by way of the ears.