Tony Scott: 0:13

Welcome to The Jay Franze Show, a behind-the-curtain look at the entertainment industry, with insights you can't pay for and stories you've never heard. Now here's your host, Jay Franze.

Jay Franze: 0:42

Well, hello, hello, hello and welcome to the show. I am Jay Franze and this is your Backstage Pass to the Music Industry. This week we get to talk with a singer, a songwriter and a recording artist. We get to talk with Will Wesley. Now, will, he has a new single out called 12 O'Clock in Texas and we're going to dive into that tonight. So if you would like to join in, comment or fire off any questions, please head over to jfranzycom. Now let's get started. Why don't we just start off with the relationship between you and your brother and how it led to this song?

Will Wesley: 1:21

Oh, absolutely yeah, me and my brother Daniel, we were pretty inseparable growing up. Man, we were very close. But you know, somewhere down the road getting straight to the point of the song, you know somewhere down the road getting straight to the point of the song, you know dan ended up falling captive to addiction. Man, he, um, he had some. He definitely had some addiction problems. And you know I never wanted to let that define daniel as a person. But overall daniel was a kind of a mentor to me, you know. Know, in my younger years he showed me you know the ropes, you know how to mingle, how to fit in. You know he's a very intelligent guy. You know his loss was a tragedy that haunts me to this day.

Jay Franze: 2:05

So you say he was kind of a mentor to you, kind of talk about that a little bit more. What was that portion of the relationship like?

Will Wesley: 2:16

Well, you know, when you have a big brother, you know growing up you look up to everything they do. You always want to find the approval of the big brother and things like that. And as a mentor, you know, dan was really the one who, other than my father, really got me deep into music. You know he loved music and, I hate to say this, really got me deep into music. He loved music and I hate to say this, but he had two left feet. He couldn't play an instrument to save his life. Growing up, I was listening to all these different kinds of music and when I started getting into music myself, dan was always a big part of that and eventually, near the end of his life, was even working with me to build my career. So as a mentor, he was just really someone that I admired and looked up to as a big brother and the way he ended was something that really it should have never happened. It's a tragedy.

Jay Franze: 3:06

So, with that said, how do you handle it? How are you able to move on and stay productive?

Will Wesley: 3:11

How do you handle it, how are you able to move on and stay productive? You know, that's really the power behind 12 O'Clock in Texas is that I've always been an expressional person in my music. I always use my music to tell my own story and with Daniel and his passing, I think the first step to me actually dealing with his loss was not just the writing of this song but releasing this song to the public in its own way and things that even people in the world don't necessarily want to address, which is drug addiction and what it does to not just the addict but the people who love the addict. You know, and I feel like that's really been my biggest therapy since Daniel's death, is to be able to tell his story through song.

Jay Franze: 3:57

So how did that first come about for you?

Will Wesley: 4:01

Well, you know, a week after Daniel's death I didn't really know how to deal with the loss. I wasn't doing well with it and the only thing I knew to do, Jay, was just to keep working. So I went on tour. I had some dates lined up in the Galveston, Houston, Texas area and wrapping up a show one night, you know, I was heading back to our. We were staying at an Airbnb. I'll never forget it. It was a clear night, Everything was very peaceful and out of nowhere, a galeale force wind. It come across the road and nearly knocked us off the road. It was so powerful and I remember my um bandmate being like that's absolutely bizarre. He said that it's a clear night. What, what is this? And I'll never forget. I looked at the clock and it was like 1230 or 1225 in the morning and I just blurted out that was the spirit of my brother saying goodbye. And it was from there that I remember the next morning waking up and writing the first draft for 12 o'clock in Texas, and that's how the song come to be.

Jay Franze: 5:11

So when you first started writing it, was it lyrics first.

Will Wesley: 5:17

You know it was a collaboration of music and lyrics. When I first started with song, I knew that I had a um, a finger style picking pattern that I'd already written. And, um, I pretty much I wrote a draft of lyrics first that originally was entitled Brothers Should Never End this Way, and it started off with a classical intro in E minor. And I began to work through this progression but my producer at the time was telling me look, I think you got a great song here, but we need to really try to make it relatable to the listeners. So we begin to talk about it and we wanted to create a song atmospheric in nature, explaining to the listener what's going on around me at this very moment and that's when we went to the night before it starts off a Texas wind is blowing, the clouds are rolling in. You know, it really came from a second draft of us being a little bit more relatable to our listeners, to try to explain the story better, and that's how it come about.

Jay Franze: 6:23

Well, it definitely has an atmospheric feel to it. How long did it take you to write the song?

Will Wesley: 6:29

I think, in total, to get a finished product. I would say, and this is unusual for me, but it took about maybe two hours, two to three hours, which is normally. I sometimes write songs very fast, but this song I'll never forget it. We were in Texas and we were, we had written a lot of the song, me and a bandmate and we were, we were talking about it and we were stuck on this one lyric.

Will Wesley: 6:52

A bandmate and we were, we were talking about it and we were stuck on this one lyric and he kept telling me, man, we've got to use a lyric that's going to tie in the emotion of the song. And man, we must have stayed on this for about an hour, it seems, until finally I started to think about how my brother would always have a shot of whiskey for the band at that time when we were um done with a show and, knowing that his name was Daniel, I just come up with the lyric Jack, without the Daniel is a drink I drink alone. And I'll never forget he looked at me and he was like my God, man, that was it and it tied the whole thing in, you know, but we did get hung up on some of the lyrical process, you know.

Jay Franze: 7:30

Wow, I mean, that is a clever lyric I do, says you know. Wow, I mean, that is a clever lyric I do. I do like it, thank you. So you put these lyrics together and now, now that you're getting ready I'm assuming at this point you put the lyrics together, you get your music together and now you have to go record this song. How hard was it for you to perform the song in the studio? You?

Will Wesley: 7:52

You know that's a wonderful question. Recording it in the studio was. It was definitely an emotional experience. One of the things that I've come to know is that lyrics take me a little bit longer. Being a vocalist, I usually have to really work to get the vocal takes that we want. And one of the things that I found interesting about 12 O'Clock in Texas is that it was one of the first songs that the emotions were so raw and real that we really nailed it in one or two takes in the studio.

Will Wesley: 8:28

But segment two of this is performing it live, and I got to be honest with you in the early days of performing this song live, because we've just released the song, but it's been a crowd favorite for well over a year now. They've been rallying for us to release the song, and live is a different story, man. There's been some times in the early days of performing this live where the emotion would really overtake me, jay. I would get to the point where I'd be very overwhelmed about it and I would choke up trying to sing this song. You know, and I was I was very nervous about that. I thought that the crowds would oh, wesley sucks or something you know. But they, the crowds, are wonderful, you know, and they really do relate to the fact that there's a lot of emotion behind this project, and I've gotten more and more used to to handling the emotions and singing the song accurately despite the emotions that are with it.

Will Wesley: 9:20

And then the third segment of it is the hardest part of the making of this project was actually the shooting of the music video. I really, really wanted to tell an honest story about how my brother died, and the point of me doing that is to try to do it so that I can explain to people how bad addiction can get. And also, we didn't want to go into this story, phony. So what I did before I got with my director, jordan Fontenot, is I visited the hotel. First, let me give you a little backstory my brother. I checked him in the rehab in late 2020. And by early 2021, he had gotten out of rehab. He had had a sobriety coin and one of the things that was really challenging to Daniel was he was having the past catch up with him in a lot of ways and he knew that he would go back to jail for things that he had done when he was an addict, and he was terrified to do that and I remember that he wanted to present this sobriety coin to the courts in hopes that they would give him a second chance. But in doing this, the courts completely denied it. They tossed the sobriety coin out and they more or less said you're going to go back to jail. And unfortunately he overdosed two days later.

Will Wesley: 10:43

Wow, if you watch this video, there's a significance with coins in this music video and the sadness of the story was when we went to film the video, my brother died alone in a hotel room in Baton Rouge. That's where he overdosed and, um, I was on a show when I got the news. And in this music video I wanted to be as authentic with the, the listeners and viewers as I could because I wanted to tell a story where the song and the music video collaborate with one another to tell the whole story. If you listen to the song, the lyrics are real, more indicative of just grief and loss, but if you watch the video, you see what the grief and loss is and with 12 O'Clock in Texas, the hardest part of filming that, jay, was.

Will Wesley: 11:29

I went back to the hotel when my brother overdosed and we went and we took a look at how the hotel was lined out, me and my manager and wife and from there we actually in the music video went to a hotel to shoot the scene as it was told to me.

Will Wesley: 11:50

I was told that when my brother died there was a sobriety coin on the ground by his hand, and it's a very tragic story that we really wanted to tell. And that's why, when you watch this video, you see at the beginning, back when we were kids, one brother handing another brother a movie coin. And then we cut to the future and you see a sobriety coin in the hand of my dead brother. Because the significance of that coin me twirling it and dealing with it throughout the whole video is really that a sobriety coin for millions of people is a symbol of hope and accomplishment, which is a wonderful thing, but for me it was just a symbolism of a failed attempt at sobriety and a system that let him down, and that's why I'm using that in the music video 12 O'Clock in Texas, and ultimately I throw it in the river just to have it handed back by the spirit of a brother, and that's really what the heartbeat of this song is.

Jay Franze: 12:49

It has to be tough. I could not imagine having to go through this.

Will Wesley: 12:54

It was. But you know, the hope in a J is that it will help somebody, that his death was not in vain, that In something like this there are other people going through it, and we're hoping, with 12 o'clock in Texas, that people will watch the video and really relate to the storyline. Because I always tell people it's not just the person who's addicted that suffers, it's the person who loves the one who's addicted. And this is a story all over our world right now and it was a very difficult video to film and a song to record. But if we can help anybody out there, we're doing God's work and that's what we want to do. That's why we wanted to be very candid in how we told this story.

Jay Franze: 13:34

It's just going to be tough to see something like that it was.

Will Wesley: 13:40

I think I was okay with most of the video until we got to the hotel scene. We got to the of the hotel scene and, um, like, I remember the director um screaming action and walking into this hotel room. We, we had the tape and the lights and and um, an actor playing the the role of my adult brother who had overdosed, and and I gotta tell you that was I think that director must have yelled action about 10 times before I walked in that room. Yeah, it was. It was not an easy scene to film. It really wasn't.

Jay Franze: 14:14

You mentioned adult brother. How old was your brother?

Will Wesley: 14:18

Well, when he died, daniel was 41. He was, dan was five years older than I am, and we lost him in 2021, which, if you do the math, you might can figure out my age. But why do that? There's no sense doing all that. We'll just pass right over that. So the gray in my beard is really just uh, it's there for decoration.

Will Wesley: 14:47

It's the silver fox. Look, you know, but um, yeah, dan was five years older than me, so yeah, when he died in 2021, he was he was 41 um, let's talk about the, the production of the song itself.

Jay Franze: 15:02

Who was the producer behind the?

Will Wesley: 15:04

song, phil chand. Phil Chandler has been a longtime producer of mine. You know he was also just a little food for thought here. He was the bandmate in the car who was riding with me when that gale force wind come across the road. And I'm normally the guitar player on all my tracks. Many people know that. But Phil came to me and asked me if he could play um the solo for 12 o'clock in texas. He said he wrote his own solo for it and I must say he did a wonderful job on that. He did a fantastic solo, fantastic. He ripped it for sure. He burned it up. You know, and you know I thought it was a very impactful scene to have him soloing in front of Dan's grave to kind of to really send them off.

Will Wesley: 15:49

You know it's this video and this song really has had some freakish things. I talk about the wind, but not to get too far off a topic. But man, a lot of people have asked me how did y'all get this perfect rain effect that's coming over you? Well, the truth is, jay, that's real rain. It was a very strange. Strange. Once again, it was a clear day. My, the whole cast was there, my wife and my manager. We were all there and, out of nowhere, just this heavy storm just come in and I told the director I want you to just film me in this rain and we're going to use this as additional footage. And but getting back to the production of it, you know Phil was a very big um he. I think it's the production of his career. I feel like he um he really masterfully him, and Tyler Hansen, who does all of my audio engineer, mix and master. I can't say enough about Phil Chandler and Tyler Hansen for the great job they did on the production of 12 O'Clock in Texas.

Jay Franze: 16:49

Well, that's a good point. That leads me to my next question which is the studio itself. Where did you guys record it?

Will Wesley: 16:57

This is the cool thing about it is being on the road. A lot I've learned to record in home studios Because a lot of times getting a a studio just in a solid location it's just impossible for me to do. I may be in europe, I may be in new york, I don't know where I'm at right. So we've learned to record um the foundation of a lot of these tracks in a home studio and then we move into bringing in the accompany of. So I'm proud to say that, as wonderful as the production is, on 12 o'clock in Texas we recorded out of a home studio.

Jay Franze: 17:34

Okay, so you recorded in a home studio and you mentioned building off of a foundation. So what was your foundation?

Will Wesley: 17:42

Well, originally the foundation is guitar, bass, drums, lead vocals, and then, of course, we have to bring in. We have other instruments and other musicians who play with us. We brought in fiddle, we brought in steel guitar.

Jay Franze: 18:03

Well, I was going to ask you about that too. Whose decision was it? Was it Phil's decision?

Will Wesley: 18:11

to lay out the instrumentation the way it is. No, that was mine. I'm very, very particular about the instrumentation I use. I'm very particular about who plays fiddle on my tracks and I'm proud to say that Michael Cleveland has been a longtime collaborator with me, and if you know who Michael Cleveland is, you can't really argue with his play, and he's one of the best in the world in my opinion. On 12 o'clock in Texas, the idea of the instrumentation was all mine, from acoustic guitar, electric bass, drums, piano, steel, and we did have an orchestra towards the end of the song as well. So all of the instrumentation has been chosen by me, along with the scripts and the songwriting. That's all done by me. Me and Phil co-wrote it, but the arrangement is all mine.

Jay Franze: 18:57

So would you consider yourself a co-producer?

Will Wesley: 19:00

Yes, always On all of my tracks. I'm somewhat of a co-producer because I'm really hands-in into my material. I have a certain way I want to hear it and I can drive a producer up the wall with that, by the way. But you know I'm a pretty particular guy in how I want to present my music to people.

Jay Franze: 19:20

Well, I know a lot of artists are very particular about the music they're putting together. It's something that they have to live with for a long period of time. But I can only imagine in a case like this where the song has such meaning and not only does it have meaning, but you wrote the song and you're co-producing the song. I can only imagine you want to see this full vision to the end. But you mentioned playing guitar on your songs and this finger picking pattern that you had. So you said you came up with the finger picking pattern before you actually sat down to write the song.

Will Wesley: 19:54

I did you know the original draft that I was telling you about brothers should never end this way. As a younger musician I was really enthralled by classical music flamenco, guitar. I enjoyed it. It was a. It was a big, big part of my upbringing. And the original part of this song was originally an instrumental classical piece that I'd wrote. It started from there and then we went from that composition into the lyrical content that was more flamenco, based at the beginning of the song that was eventually edited out in the final production for radio.

Jay Franze: 20:35

So you do this guitar piece and I'd like to hear that other piece, but you do the acoustic guitar and that's where you primarily write the song. So you mentioned hearing the piano and the steel and that's where you primarily write the song. So you mentioned hearing the piano and the steel and the fiddle, which all lends a very atmospheric feel to the song. So at what point in the production process is it that you start to come up with these ideas and start bringing in this instrumentation and these musicians?

Will Wesley: 21:03

You know, in the beginning it was originally just the classical part was written more just from the grief of the situation, but once we layered out the songs, it fell into place so well. I knew exactly where the instruments were going to fall and what they were going to do. It was something that it fell in place so naturally, jay. I think that it was figured out within 10 minutes Everything. I just knew exactly where it wanted to go. I think it was such a spiritual song, I think that the music was crying for what it needed and I just followed it. Who played the bass guitar? Phil Chandler. Phil Chandler, he played the bass on the song and he played the lead guitar on that track. He's a multi-talented fella.

Jay Franze: 21:49

He obviously has more talent than one man deserves. But who played the drums?

Will Wesley: 21:57

Seth Jones. He's my longtime drummer. He's played on a lot of my tracks, from Honky Tonk USA to Ready to Ride. To all of these tracks.

Will Wesley: 22:06

We went down to Austin and we recorded Seth on drums and I've got. I cannot say enough about how talented Seth really is. You know, you have drummers who are very methodical and they're very hey, they play like a metronome. But what makes Seth special is that he is methodical and plays like a metronome but he knows how to build the intensity and he knows where to put it. Methodical and plays like a metronome, but he knows how to build the intensity and he knows where to put it. And he is he really. You know, a great song starts with the drums as a foundation and I must say that he clearly knocked that out of the park the way he presented that, as he does on a lot of songs that we record together. But I was specifically happy with not only his playing but the tone drum tones we got on 12 o'clock in tex, texas so you recorded the song, you said you, you layered it together.

Jay Franze: 22:52

So how long was the recording process?

Will Wesley: 22:55

the recording process for 12 o'clock was probably done not all at once, but off and on over six months, you know, because there was European tours, there was Asian tours. You know, I'm trying to get tracks back here in america and I'm all the way in thailand. So it was. It was the process of being on the road and getting home and trying to build it when we could. But, um, over six months we laid down all the instrumentation and then we just started the, the daunting task of the mixing and the audio engineering which, as you know, can go on forever until someone finally just says stop, it's ready, we've had enough.

Jay Franze: 23:34

We've had enough. Well, that's a good point. So was it Tyler, then, that mixed the song?

Will Wesley: 23:40

It was. Tyler Hansen has mixed all of my songs since the Both Sides of the Tracks era. He is a fantastic audio engineer. What really makes him special is his attention to detail. He really has an ear for details and he really knows how to amp those songs up and he's a great addition to the Wesley team. He's a valuable, valuable part. He really put his heart into this one and it shows. It shows in the way that Phil and him had this mixed and mastered it.

Jay Franze: 24:09

It shows Well, let's take a second to talk about his approach to mixing. How does he approach it?

Will Wesley: 24:16

Well, the first way he approaches is by locking me out of the room.

Jay Franze: 24:21

Probably a good, a good decision.

Will Wesley: 24:23

Yeah, but you know the first thing, as I'm told that he does, he likes to work privately, but he tells me he likes to clean up each individual track from the drums, guitar, bass. He cleans each individual track, isolates it and then he begins to begin the building process, the levels and all these things. As I've been told, his main starting approach to mixing and mastering is cleaning up each individual track.

Jay Franze: 24:52

So when he went to mix the song, is it the type of thing that he was able to knock it out in a day, or did it take him a period of time?

Will Wesley: 25:02

Well, you know, all of us have busy schedules. It wasn't knocked out in a day but he did take, if I'm not mistaken, about a week to really send tracks back and forth. And we had a lot of critiques that we wanted to do. We wanted a lot of things to shine on this song. So I would say maybe four to seven days overall for the mixing, which you know is a little longer than usual from what we normally take. But we really spent a lot of time on this one and we really spent a lot of time building it to where we felt like it should be. So I guess the extra days was just a 10 of ears and more attention to detail.

Jay Franze: 25:43

At what point does he bring you in?

Will Wesley: 25:46

He brings me in more towards the end, but he'll send me rough WAV files that I can listen to. I'll be honest with you In the early days of this track a lot of people were like I'm not sold on it. It's a ballad, you know. And once Tyler and we and me really got in there and got our hands dirty and started bringing these levels up, bringing in the guitars, bringing in the, the fiddles, the steel, the drums, the power, I never seen people's opinion go from ah it to will it's a song of your career. That'll tell you right there what mixing and mastering will do for your track. Once we brought in all of the, the power and all the, the instruments and we got it where it was meant to be, people went from it's a good song to will it's the song of your career. It's a defining track. Respect your audio engineers. There you go.

Jay Franze: 26:49

So the video itself. When you talk about the idea of the video, you scout out these locations.

Will Wesley: 27:04

Who scouted out the locations Was that Jordan. He was a big hand in that. One of the things about it is I write all of my music video scripts and we originally ran into some, some obstacles. I was going to use a piece of fruit as a embodiment of loss of purity, but the problem was, is I got with jordan about that? And he said, will I really, really do love your idea, but I think you're going to lose your your viewers on that. I think that they're not going to make the connection that the piece of fruit of the peach is a loss of innocence. He said so we need to come up with another symbolism. We couldn't find a place that looked right. We didn't have an apple orchard, we didn't have a peach orchard and we didn't have a peach orchard. And I'm like well, man, we're going to have to go to a whole nother place to film this until eventually, jordan and me got to sitting down and talking. He's like well, we need to take a symbolism from your brother's story and emphasize it in the video. Would you be interested in rewriting a new opening scene?

Will Wesley: 28:05

And that's when I literally went home and thought about it and I I came to the significance of a sobriety coin and then I realized that if we're going to um do a sobriety coin, we can really shoot this thing anywhere. So we were able to shoot this whole video right here in louisiana and um, it was a very interesting area because, uh, a bandmate had known of an area where we can get a beach kind of environment and from there we we had all the scenes we needed because I knew where the hotel would be and the graveyard scene was actually shot right at Jordan's home. He has a big spread and a little backstory for that scene. I actually made that cross myself. I made my brother's grave as well. I built it myself. Rather than concrete and all that. I wanted to build a wooden cross because my brother at one point in his life was a carpenter. I built my brother's grave and I also built the grave for that video.

Jay Franze: 29:15

So the way you're talking about the video again is similar to the way you were talking about the recording of the music that you were very involved, that you wrote the script and you came up with things. So again, you credit him as being the director, but do you feel like you're the co-director?

Will Wesley: 29:35

You know I guess you can call me a co-director, but I can't fully take credit for being a second director because Jordan was so involved in what he did. He was so involved. I have to give all directing credits to him. It's the way we chose to film it. He chose to film the video slowed down in the past and sped up in the future to show the chaos around me in the future. But in the past, in the memories of brothers, he slowed down the film to give it a real somber, slow effect, and you know I cannot take credit for those kind of decisions.

Will Wesley: 30:22

That's a wonderful, wonderful move on him as a director and he also had visions of the video that I actually did not write in the original script. There's a scene where the younger version of my brother and me are running and the character playing me is reaching his hand out, trying to his brother, and he never can until eventually you see the brothers getting further and further away, which is a symbolism for his death. No matter how hard I tried to catch up to him, I couldn't. I couldn't stop what was coming. That was all jordan fontenot, and I have to say that that's a wonderful way to portray that and another little side point, just on a side to this video, that my actual stepchildren were the younger children in the video who played my brother and me and they resembled us so much that we figured we would just bring the family in on that. And, you know, I thought that they did a wonderful job in how they portrayed that.

Jay Franze: 31:19

They really did. I was going to ask you about the two of them. So, um, we do this thing we call Unsung Heroes, where we take a moment to shine a light on somebody who's worked behind the scenes or somebody who's helped you along the way. Is there somebody specific that may have helped you through this particular song?

Will Wesley: 31:35

There are a couple of people who have and, if I may, I'd like to name them. Sure, absolutely. One was my late manager, brian Abrams. Brian passed away in December and unfortunately he never got to see the release of the songs that he helped present, but Brian was instrumental in helping me get these songs out there to the people. The second person is my father, who is a musician as well, and my dad really he took it hard being his father, and you know I would discuss my script with my father before I ever presented it to anybody and he was emotional about it, but he did agree that we needed to tell this story.

Will Wesley: 32:24

Yulia abrams, who was the the wife of my manager, brian that when brian died, my career was very much in question and yulia decided, as his widow, that she was gonna continue on in my management and has really helped to bring this video to the world.

Will Wesley: 32:46

So yuli as well. And the final person is my wife and manager star, who really really took the time to try to um, look, I mean as a wife, somebody who really knows the grief that I went through and how tragic it was, her moral support, her emotional support to help me to bring this video and if you look closely, she even had a cameo in it. She's the photographer who's taking the photo of us and also on a management role the way that she helped me to not only school the boys on how to act in the video, but she was a big part of helping me with locations and everything. When I went and visited the hotel where my brother had died, it was Star who was with me. I can't thank my wife and manager enough for that as well. So these people are all incredibly important to bring this work to the world and I cannot take credit all of it on my own. It takes a lot of good people to bring an art to the world. I got to tell you that.

Jay Franze: 33:52

A big thanks to Will for taking the time to share his stories with us and thank you for taking the time to hang with me here. I really do appreciate it. If you know anyone that would enjoy this episode, please be sure to share it. You can do that and find the links to everything mentioned over at jayfranze. com/ episode 97. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week.

Tony Scott: 34:18

Thanks for listening to The Jay Franze Show. Make sure you visit us at jayfranze. com. Follow, connect and say hello.