As Waters

As Waters is the vehicle and eponymous debut album of this talented singer/songwriter, guitarist - Tristan Avakian.

Created over the course of two North American tours, it is a classic heartbreak album like Blood On The Tracks (Bob Dylan), For Emma Forever Ago (Bon Iver), 21 (Adele), Back To Black (Amy Winehouse), Vulnicura (Bjork) and Sea Change (Beck). Like these works, it evolved spontaneously out of a necessary catharsis. “I started writing again for the first time in years, and to my surprise, it wasn’t like anything I’d ever done”, Tristan says. In spite of the fact that he’s known principally as a theater/rock guitarist (Rock of Ages, We Will Rock You, Hedwig, Book of Mormon, Kinky Boots), the material is story and lyric driven, and the instrument is almost an afterthought.

The nature of the material demanded an organic approach. It’s a heritage album that assimilates a variety of styles, all of which pre-date Woodstock: Civil War ballad, Elizabethan lay, Revolver-era Beatles, lush orchestral pop, film noir, tropicalia - but with a bracing post-punk sensibility instantly familiar to fans of songwriters like Josh Homme, Trent Reznor, Ben Gibbard and Billie Joe Armstrong. The combination of these elements

was strangely freeing.

More a soundtrack to an emotional odyssey than an attempt at a top 40 “hit”, clearly this was not to be a laptop album. It evokes an era when things were made by hand, to be lasting and beautiful, rather than utilitarian and disposable. So it needed real players, and got them: Viktor Krauss (upright bass, Lyle Lovett), Petri Korpela (percussion, Josh Groban), Mike Waldron (Tanya Tucker, Martina McBride), David Davidson (strings, too many Nashville credits to count), and many others. They were always recorded professionally in real studios wherever possible.