So, I guess it’s kind of an odd thing how a small not-for-profit arts collective based in Santa Fe, NM would end up putting out an album by an active duty soldier engaged in combat operations on the other side of the world, in the heart of our “War on Terror.” I guess for this reason, it is an interesting note to add how this project came into existence.

I met Will Thompson in March of 2001 in New Orleans, Louisiana. I had gone out to visit my good friend Milton Villarrubia (who appears on tracks 7-9 on this recording), for a week of eating, drinking, and music. Will and Milton had recently started playing music together as they had met in school at U.N.O. I remember a couple things about Will from that time. His music had incredible sensitivity; it was delicate, and deeply riddled with emotion. He was pre-occupied with music, but especially in composition.
At the time I did not know of his involvement in the National Guard, as it was never an issue in our friendship. For the next 3 years on further visits to New Orleans we continued to play music and hang out together. When I went to New Orleans in early 2004, I remember Will telling me about his situation with deployment. He was initially supposed to be released from duty in the next couple months, but was being forced to continue his service beyond his “commitment” to go into Iraq, in a law called Stop Loss. He had accepted his situation, but had yet to conceptualize how he would artistically deal with the situation.

A month or so into his tour, I got an email from Will telling me about his website WATIV.com and he asked me to check out his music. I was quite surprised by what I heard. I had never known Will to embrace electronic sounds, yet he asked my opinions on the music as he knew that I had been experimenting with these types of sound for a long time. I was truly blown away by what he was doing; taking his compositional approach into the combat arena provided a new outlet and situation in which his music could manifest. It was more than that though; it was Will’s way to cope with his newfound reality, to artistically manage his own sanity.

Over time, he began to get local (New Orleans) and national press checking out what he was doing, and asking if he had any releases available. He did not, and could not conceive how he could put something out from Baghdad. I told him that High Mayhem would be interested in facilitating this release and we began this journey, which I believe is a first. I do not know of any other released music that was created by a soldier while serving on active duty in a combat theater and released while that soldier was still engaged. Previous to this, technology would not have been advanced enough to allow such collaboration.

This was not an easy task. The only line of communication that existed between Will and us was that of email. We had tried to use the phone as a means of communication, but my wonderful Qwest phone service would not allow Will’s calls to come through. I tried to rectify this situation with them, yet they could give me no explanation why I couldn’t receive his calls. “Sir, you should be able to receive those calls.”…Yeah, my feelings exactly!

Anyways, it was email and only email that would be possible. Now I know the majority of people use email all the time and understand the confusion that can go along with email communication. Questions are asked and not interpreted properly; you ask many questions and get answers to only a few. This communication can be further complicated when the person you are communicating with is fending for their life on a day-to-day basis and can become a little pre-occupied with their situation and struggle for survival.

Nonetheless, Will has been commendable in communicating; despite our difficulties. I would guess that this project required around 200 emails written between us, on average I have sent Will about two emails a day for the past 2 months and to each of these Will has responded.
There are other technical issues. What does one do when Will’s computer fails in Baghdad and he loses all his audio files? What happens when Internet service fails? Audio got lost in the mail, and when it did arrive it turned out that the CD burner on Will’s computer was on the fritz and the recording was riddled with digital glitches. In a “normal” situation you could simply burn another copy. However that information is on a computer too far away with a troublesome mail system in between, and really, how good are CD-R’s from Baghdad?

We tried to get up a server on the Internet where Will could simply upload his files and we could extract them, however that did not work either. Will spent four hours getting one song up due to slow internet service and when we went to extract it, only the first 50 seconds of audio made it. As a result, we had to compromise and make due with the audio that was available to us regardless of its digital errors. In a way, I guess its appropriate, “Will was unable to make his scheduled session at the Falluja Recording Studio” (he said jokingly) and instead of waiting for a package that may never arrive, we used the audio we had and depended upon Quincy Adams in Albuquerque, NM to patch it up in mastering. So yeah, the audio has a few minor issues here and there, but we felt that this project could not be delayed any further.

In addition, Will had to move from one situation to another, getting displaced and befuddled in the process. We rarely spoke of Will’s combat situation; instead we discussed the music, the art, the packaging, the timeline, always trying to focus on the positive. However, over time, I could sense Will was increasingly becoming pre-occupied with his situation. We often had to discuss the same issues over and over as he had simply forgotten what we had talked about or the decisions we had made.

Packaging and art were another issue. Will sent us some artwork by his brother Matthew Thompson, which we based the packaging ideas upon. Generally, one works directly with the artist to create their aesthetic and their presentation of the music. In this situation, Max Freidenberg and myself arranged all the imagery from Matthew’s art and Will’s photos. Hours were spent trying to represent his work in the finest manner. Our dedicated crew at High Mayhem and myself did all the screening of the packaging by hand. Each is a unique creation.

Max pulled the multimedia portion of the CD together from images and ideas at Will's site and from photos and a telling recording of Will's voice.

Our good friend and audio engineering mastermind Quincy Adams was extremely supportive and blocked out times for mastering this enhanced CD, despite his incredibly busy schedule to make sure this project had no “hold ups.” However, the hold ups came often. Due to delays in various forms we had to cancel three individual mastering sessions with Quincy, each time he was understanding and quickly re-scheduled us when we thought we would be ready. Generally when one goes into master a recording, they are the artists that composed the music. However in this case, it was up to us to listen to the recordings as often and thoroughly as possible to try and go into the mastering session with a direction for the recording. We had to make our own decisions regarding fades in and fade outs, and what we thought "sounded better." Will understood all that was involved with this and gave us artistic license to make such decisions. As a result, what you have in front of you is not the work of a single individual, but a co-operative of people, who felt the importance of getting this to the world at large.

Yes, putting out this release has been a crazy process, but in no way approached the insanity that Will, all our service men and women and the people of Iraq are experiencing. They are the one’s experiencing this reality first hand, as a society we should listen to THEM before all other media to truly try and understand what is happening in our world. This release is our way of supporting a single soldier, a friend, a fellow artist, a brave soul, and one hell of a composer and musician.

Thank you for picking up this release,

Carlos Santistevan
Program Director
High Mayhem