“11 tracks with a ’70s vibe for a modern age — gliding synths, amusing instrumentation, and enthralling lyrics — the record entices listeners to engage with the individual lesson of each song.”
“utterly infectious.”
““Dailey’s latest album makes it clear that good songwriting isn’t a matter of hiding behind shiny production or an over-stylized persona. His music doesn’t contain a note of pretense. If anything, it is committed to the beauty of simplicity.” ”
“How good is Will Dailey? HE WROTE A SONG CALLED “WHEN IT DIES” THAT MAGICALLY UPLIFTS. A GEM OF A MELODY SITS AT THE CENTER OF A WONDERFULLY MUSICAL MESS WITH HUGE VOCALS. ALL AT ONCE THE TUNE RECALLS JAMES TAYLOR’S SIMPLICITY, RAY LAMONTAGNE’S INTENSITY AND TOM WAITS’ WEIRDNESS. The rest of the new album, ‘Golden Walker ,’ possesses the same magic ....A new peak.”
“sophisticated, a moving artistic statement.”
“We listen to a record and find ourselves curled up in the audible blanket the lyrics form around us. When it came to Will Dailey and Golden Walker, well, I found a lot more. A can of worms, as they say, was opened wide as we got onto topics that plague my mind each and every day. From this generation being coddled to the perspective of the white male to technology being the ultimate fall of civilization.
Again, Will Dailey is a musician but the ideas brought forth on his latest release, Golden Walker, sparked conversations that I could write research papers on for months, years even.”
“A musical lava lamp.”
““Think of Will Dailey as an up-and-coming Paul Simon... “It Already Would Have Not Worked Out By Now” is the bright star of this self-released CD, complete with catchy acoustic guitar and witty word play. Dailey is in-tune to an era (1970s) when singer-songwriters were the true stars of popular music — he then reshapes the structure of a song for the 21st Century.”
”
“He still cares about the art of songwriting and making an emotional impression in his music. His new album, ‘Golden Walker,’ is rich in subtleties, lyrical insights and a sense of hope. He evokes a Paul Simon intricacy at times, a Jeff Buckley fragility at others, topping it with challenging folk-pop and a breezy, almost Motown soul flair in the first single, ‘Bad Behavior.’ The clincher for me is ‘He Better Be Alive,’ a driving, percussive track inspired by the nightly news. Dailey has a wonderfully elastic voice, a natural sense of poetry, and a restless mind that looks for answers and often takes us to them.”
”
Golden Walker Story:
A few years ago, I was playing small town in a smaller club, on my first tour in France. It was after the show, while standing at the merch table meeting people, when a gentlemen, half in the bag and anywhere from 40-70 years of age, grabbed my shoulder and told me I need to come with him. He looked like if a hipster Gandalf in a rainy noir film. Naturally, I had to follow him. I grabbed a friend who knew French, and would be good in an emergency, to come with me. We were lead out of the club and down a dark alley into a century old forgotten apartment.
Inside it looked like the place was hit once with a wrecking ball and overtaken by iron sculptures. Miniature ones, giant ones, pieces of metal scattered in an un-cleansed space but for the carved out paths through the garden of metal. Some rusted, some shining and some too delicate or dangerous to touch. There was no place to move. Our guide immediately disappeared upstairs.
He came back with a piece of metal to declare, in slurred broken English, that my music, which he had heard from his workshop, had guided him to this item and he told me to turn around as he took out a welder and began welding it to a base. The blue light threw our shadows onto the 200 year old stone walls. He propped the piece up on a log balanced on top of a folding chair in the door way looking out over a surreal midnight valley. Then from two giant gas tanks by the door he ignited a torch. Gloveless and without eye protection, our midnight chaperon began carving into the metal. Sparks were flying haphazardly in every direction into the night as I contemplated the safety of the gas tanks, how flammable hair is and what corner of the room I would dive to in an emergency. With this fresh sculpture now before us still molten red, he disappeared upstairs. The sound of frantically rummaged workshop piles banging above our heads as my friend and I used eye language to rate the madness and joy of our adventure. The artist returned to stand before me with his hand in a fist.
“All the gold is being take from our world. They take it all to use in technological devises that are supposed to help us communicate. The gold is disappearing, hidden in phones and computers that only leave us feeling more alone, separated and disconnected. When I heard you tonight through the walls of my work shop, I heard real communication. I heard you. You are a communicator.”
Opening his hand he revealed a small nugget of gold. He brought it over to the cooled sculpture that now revealed a man walking forward out of the metal. He used the torch to melt a small amount of gold onto his foot.
“You have to keep communicating like that. Carry the gold, protect it. Be a golden walker.”
We then sat, sipped coffee and talked to 3 in the morning. A conversation I am still processing.
We are told we are disconnected. Maybe we are over connected in the wrong ways? Since that midnight meeting in France, when I find myself lying awake at night wondering what I’ve done with my life or think there is nobody in the world who needs to hear one of my songs, I think of his call for true connection. The great human pay-off of being in a live concert venue, a recording studio full of people engaging in one moment together or just seeing a face right in front of you!
With each listen I hope that some extra sound, word, idea or performance is found and taken in and a bond, outside of our personal screens, is created. As it happened when one sculptor heard some music across the street through 200 year old stone and all of a sudden patterns are upset and connections are made.
Ya, but who is Will Dailey?
Songwriters, by their very nature, move through life not only from the inside out, but also from the outside in. They look and listen at the worlds within and around them, pulling it all in and pouring it all out in melody. The barriers between personal and political, fact and fiction, us and them do not exist within the confines of a song. Music is about connecting hearts through art, as singer/songwriter Will Dailey well proves on his newest offering, Golden Walker, calling on us to turn away from our screens and toward each other.
Will Dailey is an acclaimed independent recording and performing artist. His sound has been described as having a rich vintage vibe while having a firm appreciation of AM rock, pop and big hooks leading famed Rock journalist Dan Aquilante to call him “the real deal”. Dailey's latest album, National Throat, has been met with stellar reviews, over 8 million spins on Spotify, top 20 on Billboard Heat Seeker chart and won Album of the Year in the Boston Music Awards, New England Music Awards and Improper Bostonian Magazine. Dailey, who is already a three-time winner of the Boston Music Award for Best Singer/Songwriter and two time winner for Male vocalist also won Artist of the Year in 2014. Most recently in 2016 he shared the stage with Eddie Vedder in Chicago this summer, joining him for 5 songs for the Hot Stove Cool Music Benefit and was direct support for G Love’s summer tour. In June of 2013 he was featured on a Stephen King/John Mellencamp project produced by T Bone Burnett called Ghost Brothers Of Darkland County and, in that same year, also released an original song he wrote inspired by Jack Kerouac's Tristessa. In September of 2013 he played his fourth Farm Aid Concert along side Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Dave Matthews and John Mellencamp. Dailey's music has been featured on over 50 TV programs and films and is now back in the studio recording some exclusive material for fans and the follow up to National Throat in 2017. Dailey has become an artist to watch not just now but indefinitely.
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GOLDEN WALKER - BUY NOW
NATIONAL THROAT - BUY NOW
"Dailey’s latest album makes it clear that good songwriting isn’t a matter of hiding behind shiny production or an over-stylized persona. His music doesn’t contain a note of pretense. If anything, it is committed to the beauty of simplicity. National Throat is a statement about the value of creativity and the survival of art. Dailey believes the truth will find its way out, that what is real and beautiful will rise to the top." - Jon Karr, New York Minute Magazine, May 2015
“Dailey has a natural charisma, particularly as a vocalist, and much of “National Throat” gives him room to simply emote. While the music plies a spare sensuality, he’s in full Technicolor mode, from brash (the full-throttle rocker “World Go Round”) and soulful (the horn-stoked “Why Do I”) to exuberant (the big singalong “We Will Always Be a Band”) and tender (the dusky, banjo-driven ballad “Higher Education”). This is Dailey at his most self-possessed, a clear and confident musician who doesn’t need a big label or a big budget to put across his charms." — James Reed, Boston Globe, September 2014"Will Dailey's pop smarts, his dedication to detail, and his soul-inflected voice are just what we need right now to restore belief in music. His new songs are personal epiphanies with a universal appeal. Frankly, it will take a forklift to get his new album National Throat off of my Top 10 list for 2014." — Steve Morse, Rock Critic, March 2014
"The album continues into a variety of emotions, as Dailey recounts epic nights on the town in uptempo moments, while also cascading down into the slower songs that reveal his inner workings. As most fans will agree, music is best when it’s most vulnerable, and National Throat is a prime example of this." - Weston Shephard, Veriance Magazine, November 2014
"Dailey sounds comfortable regardless of the genre he’s tackling, though if he wanted to make more songs like the lush, sprawling psych-pop of “Castle of Pretending,” we wouldn’t be mad at all." - Martin Caballero, Weekly Dig September 2014
"There's something genuinly uplifting and inspiring about this Boston based throwback (and I use the word throwback as an endearment). Any musician who can master the balance between commercialism and good taste the way Will Dailey has deserves all the success both professional and critical that is heaped upon him. National Throat is a throwback in the sense that it harks back to an era when recording was becoming a facet of the music industry." - Tim Merricks, Americana-UK.com
"From the opening notes of the reggae fueled ‘Sunken Ship’ to the marvelous use of horns on ‘Castle of Pretending’ and ‘Lookout Johnny’ to the awesome slide work on ‘Don’t Take Your Eyes off of Me’ this collection of songs has been allowed to live and breathe through Dailey’s songwriting genius and the brilliant work of co-producer Dave Brophy. In today’s overcrowded music marketplace, “National Throat” is truly a diamond in the rough and its triumph should prompt his former label to be singing 'Will Dailey won’t you please come home'." - Rob Penland, Indiehabit.com
"Soul, rock, great songs, great hooks and lyrics, plus the guy is just rocks on guitar... The man is simply put, a powerhouse." — Redlineroots.com, June 2014
"National Throat, is a pop-rock gem and the pride of Boston’s music scene." — Howl Magazine, September 2014
"The new collection of songs takes you on a ride that brings forth comparisons from Tom Petty or John Melloncamp territory to Spoon and Cold War Kids. Dive into the new record with it's first single "Sunken Ship" which immediately brings you up close and personal with the songwriter." — DeliRadio Blog, August 2014
"...Boston’s finest delivered that ‘honest and invigorating’ album... National Throat’s sonic landscape is full of rich instrumental textures that draw from pop, rock, folk and blues, setting the perfect backdrop for skillfully crafted lyrics..." — MaimedandTamed.com, August 2014
"...a landmark album." -Performer Magazine, August 2014,
OTHER OBSERVATIONS: "Will Dailey is the real deal." — Dan Aquilante, New York Post
"Hey, that Will Dailey sure can play guitar. And sing. And write songs. And find great players to play with. I think he’s onto something.... This guy is loaded with talent. I want to say he’s a natural up on stage, but I suspect there’s a lot of hard work involved, too." — DaykampMusic.com, May 2014
"Will is an artist’s artist, a brilliant songwriter, master showman and beast of a guitar player." - The Vinyl District
"Will Dailey is not a bubblegum pop star; he’s a damn fine guitarist, a showman who can hold his own alone on stage, and a songwriter whose songs are as creative and original as they are catchy. He’s also a pretty prolific songwriter … " — Drunkwithpens.com
"While Will Dailey is often labeled with the singer-songwriter title, the Boston-based artist identifies more strongly with rockers like John Lennon or Tom Petty." — Emily Cassel, tastemakersmag.com
Will Dailey wowed the audience with amazing guitar work and killer vocals. The last time I saw Dailey the lights were much dimmer at The Stone Church in Newmarket, NH. Regardless of the amount of ambient light, Dailey shines on stage with his amazing talent..." — Michael Brooks, Examiner.com
"Dailey’s the kind of singer/songwriter who grows on you, the kind of singer/songwriter who will go far."
— AmericanSongwriter.com
"Will's voice has a fresh rasp to it which allows for a surprising degree of flexibility when delivering his work." — THE WORLD IN A PAPER CUP.com
"...while Dailey's songs can be stripped down to their indie folk undies, his passion for punchy, melodic 70's rock (a la The Raspberries or Badfinger), Costello-styled 80's new wave propulsion and the SoCal Laurel Canyon jangle of Roger McGuinn and the Byrds rings loudly throughout...These are AM radio songs re-imagined for modern times, bearing sharp hooks large enough to hang your hat on … these are tracks you want to experience live and loud, where the sonic kick hits your chest and the sing-song choruses get shouted back to the stage… " — directcurrentmusic.com, September 15, 2011
"Dailey’s sumptuously clever lyrics take the spotlight … Dailey’s troubadour persona proves effective." — Music Connection
"Dailey’s melodious, Petty-like approach combines riffs and roots-pop flair, with a touch more crooner soul." — Boston Metro
Now more than ever, his productivity is a step above the rest…and the popularity is steadily on the rise." — The Aquarian Weekly
"Opener 'Peace of Mind' not only swings and sways like a sapling in the cool breeze, but it includes Roger McGuinn … This album is really two separate EPs, and perhaps its defining trait is that both releases are strong enough to stand on their own … a tremendous talent has arrived."
— Boston's Weekly Dig
"I’m gonna win your heart, one attack at a time,” promises this soulful singer-songwriter. And he does just that on this album." — People Magazine
"Dailey gives classic rock a contemporary feel, making his music not only compelling but also extremely relevant...while redefining and reconfiguring the fundamentals of what it takes to make a great album." — ElmoreMagazine.com
GOODBYE RED BULLET "Will Dailey’s latest release, GoodbyeRedBullet, on Wheelkick Records, is a warm, lush, and sometimes epic record, dedicated to the much-loved, well-traveled red Honda Civic which helped pay for its production. Recorded entirely on analog tape machines, it has the feel and sound of a record produced in the 1970’s, reminiscent of some of Led Zeppelin’s milder pieces, sometimes even hinting at Pink Floyd’s musical vastness.” — Shawn Madden, Skope Magazine
"...it's this album that is the accomplishment that will have him going down in history as potentially one of the indie world’s best contributors. I dare you to find a better independently released album this year." — J-Sin, Editor's Pick for May at Smother.net
"Songs from the Heart is what you get when you place this order. Simply amazing songwriting and beautiful lyrics." — Billy Zero, XM Radio
"...as you go deeper into the album,you hear a very long forgotten master being channeled here. I was very taken back to hear a lot of Robert Plant in Will's songs and vocals. Quite high praise indeed,you doubt me? Listen to the song, 'I Have To Get You Off Of My Mind' and tell me different." — Here and There.net
"Dailey is a stunningly lyricist, subtle and underrated guitarist..." — Max Heinegg, The Weekly Dig
"Will Dailey is a multi talented young guy — singer, songwriter, producer and label owner. Imagine a young-non-grumpy Van Morrison..." — Shite N' Onions.com
"...he possesses a fine set of pipes. His sound is reminiscent of both Jeff Buckley and Finlay Quaye (honestly!)" — DV, Americana UK
BACK FLIPPING FORWARD
"...a masterpiece of 10 mini gems, which span every influence and nuance of the greatest songwriters of all time. Dailey seems shameless in bucking the notion of what is hip and acceptable and simply writes songs that can make you smile and songs that can make your heart break.... Dailey reminds us that the world is a bigger place and his music is certainly hitting a higher mark than most of his contemporaries. Repeated listenings make this album a personal favorite of mine." — Joel Simches, The NoisePICK OF THE MONTH
"Dailey’s ability to take a melancholy subject matter and ably apply it to an upbeat tune is part of the genius he displays on his latest offering. Dailey’s songs range from a decidedly pop sound to a darker quality, which is anything but predictable. Dailey seems able to adapt to any sound, and Back Flipping Forward certainly seems to have the ability to enter the mainstream. Before long, Will Dailey’s name will be on the lips of DJs, VJs, and fans everywhere." — Stacia Waraska, Northeast Performer Magazine"As you continue to listen and press the repeat after the album's completion, you will find that all the songs on the album have their own personality and not one is better than the next..." — Tony Gisondi, Thisismodern.net
Will Dailey & The Rivals "In fact, the Boston rockers come right out of the gate with an energetic anthem, 'How Good It Feels', backed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Dailey's voice takes flight on the vapors of hypnotic guitars and robust strings. Then there's 'Big Bright Sun', which swirls from a subdued, sensitive verse into one of the biggest hooks you'll hear in 2011. As a whole, the album proves to be a landmark for Dailey. It's his first for Universal Republic Records, and it's not only his most inspired work yet, it's one of the best rock releases of 2011." — Rick Florino, Artistdirect.com
"My Favorite song is, “Loved You First”. He has a real talent for writing articulate stories and executing them with musical genius. His songs are hooky and grab you instantly. After only one listen, I was singing each song over and over in my head. This, my friends; is what we call a job well done in the songwriting world." — Rebecca Hosking, Skope Magazine