Every week, Milwaukee Music Premiere connects the city’s artists with our listening audience. If you’re an artist with a track you’d like us to debut exclusively on Radio Milwaukee, head over to our Music Submission page to learn how.
One of the all-time underrated segments of songwriting is music about being a musician. For an art form that spends so much time talking about love and the targets of that love, it only makes sense for artists to turn their focus inward and celebrate their most adored means of expression.
This Milwaukee Music Premiere from Caley Conway actually assigns a ranking to her passion in a package that comes across as melancholy rather than celebratory. “Singing Never” is not a joyous, rapturous ode to the activity. As she explained when delivering the track, it bubbled up in a moment of contemplation and reflection, eventually tilting toward the subject of our own mortality that Conway has scattered throughout her recent catalog.
“It explains how singing is my second favorite thing to do, just after getting to sleep next to my partner every night — that ultimate privilege of being rich in love,” she said, adding that the song then “meanders into a projection of the role I suspect the act of singing will play much later in my life, especially if my decaying health mirrors that of my Grandmother’s and her long struggle with dementia.
“I’ve noticed a lot of similarities between the way our memories work so I actually feel like it’s a viable prediction. So I guess it’s sort of an outpouring of gratitude, fear and faith all at once. It was a strong feeling at the time.”
Conway went on to liken her creativity to a “life preserver,” and on “Singing Never” she has some very capable company clinging to the side as they float along. Frequent collaborators Ellie Jackson (vocals), Devin Drobka (drums), John Larkin (trumpet) and D’Amato (baritone sax) all play prominent roles on Conway’s upcoming album, Partner, which is out Oct. 28. With trusted friends providing support, she opens herself completely:
Like Rita Genevive, when I am in my nineties, dying
To circumstance I lose my love and gladness
Aunts to cancer, nerve to madness
Submit my work to them
I’ll submit my work to them
When I am dead and resting
And singing never
While there is a sadness to “Singing Never,” with it comes an inherent appreciation that the thing we may lose one day is here now — more specifically, it’s waiting for you in the player at the top of this page. You can also hear the song on 88Nine throughout today (6:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.; 2:30, 6:30 and 9:30 p.m.) and at several live shows Conway has lined up. She’ll join us for State of Sound on Oct. 5 and celebrate her album’s release at Anodyne on Nov. 6 as part of a Midwest tour that runs Nov. 5-14.
