Willie Heart Eyes returns with a Shrinkwrapped Deluxe package for your ears

Photo Courtesy of Willie Heart Eyes

On Valentine’s Day, Willie Jordan—vocalist and guitarist for garage rockers Drugs & Attics—released Shrinkwrapped Deluxe under his Willie Heart Eyes moniker. His first solo recording since 2021’s “Christmas This Year (We’re Gonna Do Something Fun),” was recorded with the help of Kyle Gowdy, formerly of Mouthbreathers and currently a guitarist with The Whiffs, resulting in a four-song EP that manages to run the gamut in its less than 14-minute runtime.

The chooglin’ rhythm of opener “Train Song” stands in contrast to “Seagulls” and the way it ever-so-slightly nods to INXS’ “Never Tear Us Apart” with its sad strings. The wobbly and off-kilter “Lounge Song” evokes the feeling of being heavily tipsy in a back booth while someone croons onstage, while closer “Same Time As You” goes from quiet to defiant to Morricone epic (replete with whistling) in less than four minutes.

In the aftermath of the first winter storm, we spoke with Gowdy and Jordan to discuss how the project came together.

Photo Courtesy of Willie Heart Eyes

The Pitch: Was all of this just the two of you?

Kyle Gowdy: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Willie Jordan: Well, Kyle’s good at dragging stuff out of me. Like, I have half-baked ideas.

Gowdy: How it started, after the Christmas song, was that you had a bunch of riffs, lyrics, that kind of thing, but no way to do it because your band didn’t want to do it. Post-COVID, I’ve gotten really interested in using modern pop production techniques and making a lot of music on my own. All these drums, this is all MIDI. It sounds really good. I do most of the drum programming if I’m not using live loops and stuff like that and then I’m laying in all the synths and layers.

Jordan: ‘Cause I’d have an idea for the song, I’d have a main riff, and he would start just recording. I’d play the first thing. It might just be that and that is what that song was.

Gowdy: But then, what I was doing a lot of was just not even telling him I was recording.

Jordan: Yeah, I’d be like, “I don’t know, we could do something here,” and he’d be like, “Yeah.”

Gowdy: And then I’d have like five minutes of guitar track. I mean, that’s shit that they’ve been doing since Can and all that. A lot of the songwriting is coming from Willie and then I’m just producing it. But like full producer.

Jordan: Yeah, I mean, I would say you are also contributing. I would say it’s at least 50/50.

Gowdy: I wouldn’t. I mean, you’re writing. These are all your lyrics and you started the ideas, but I definitely came in with song arrangements.

Jordan: Also, arrangement doesn’t get as much credit. The arrangements a lot because, I mean, it’s easy to come up with some words and an idea but making it sound good—I feel like that’s the hard part. Anyway, I don’t know why people don’t get given credit and money for arranging people’s songs.

If you’ve been working on these for three years, what’s the push to finish it up now?

Jordan: I mean, it’s Christmas time, and I feel like every time around Christmas, I start thinking about it because the first song was a Christmas song. We haven’t been consistently working on it for three years.

Gowdy: This is just some stuff that we did and then it’s kind of just been laying around. We spent enough time on it and we’re just starting to work on new stuff, so we’re like, “Let’s just drop this, get it done, get it out so it’s a thing, and then we don’t have to think about it anymore.”

Jordan: We’ve talked about doing more songs and forming a band to play some shows or whatever. Willie Heart Eyes can definitely be a live project, even though it’s a studio project at the moment. Just got to find humans and then make those humans do what we want at the times we want them to do it. That’s the difficult part, but it’s doable for sure.

Gowdy: Yeah, that’s why I like computers.

Jordan: The computer shows up on time. I write so many fucking songs. Mostly, they don’t come to fruition, though. I need a whip cracker. It’s funny, I’m good at staying on focus if I’m with somebody else. I can stay on focus personally if I’m with someone else who’s not. But by myself, the mission gets lost. I either need someone to keep me in line or I need someone to keep in line.

But, I mean, me and Kyle meet up at noon on Tuesdays. We try to show up on time. I mean, it’s been pretty easy since I quit drinking, I feel like, ’cause now this is the most fun thing that I look forward to doing all week, even if we don’t sometimes. If it’s not going off, we’ll at least listen to some music and then play Mario Kart or something. I’m finding that I really don’t like it when my schedule gets messed up. I never knew that about myself. But now, if there’s some reason we don’t get to do stuff, I’m not upset with Kyle, just upset with life, the world.

It’s always the weirdest thing, because people are always like, “No, creativity comes from in your heart,” but sometimes it’s just like, “No, you need to schedule it.”

Jordan: Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t always work, but if you do schedule it—something that I’m trying to get back to is being able to flex that muscle when you need to as opposed to waiting around to be inspired. That’s a tough gig.

Gowdy: I have to do both.

Jordan: Yeah, just find a nice middle ground.

Gowdy: You gotta put in the work ethic. That part’s important, but at the same time, you gotta be able to call it. If it’s stupid, it’s stupid. If it’s not working, it’s not working.

Jordan: But it’s nice if you get inspired while you’re working on something. That’s convenient. And sometimes something stupid turns into something good.

Is it hard, when you’re at this point in making music to change how you do things, where you’re making a conscious effort to keep an eye on stuff?

Jordan: Yeah, I mean that’s kind of my whole deal right now, in general. Just ’cause I had to quit drinking six months ago and so I’m sort of learning how to try to keep things together. Before, I was pretty disorganized, and now, I’m still disorganized, but I’m trying to actively be more organized, and things are going better. It’s easier to do, for sure.

I started doing stupid shit. I made a reminder on my phone to read for 20 minutes at 9 p.m.—Dumb shit like that. I haven’t even done it yet, but I made the reminder, so at least at 9 p.m., I’m like, “Shit, I should be reading for 20 minutes,” at least, as a first step or whatever. It’s weird, but dumb little things like that end up being really, really helpful. But yeah, it sounds stupid no matter what. It sounds stupid and annoying, but we’re making music that sounds different than stuff that I’ve made before, and we’re moving forward in a completely different direction. The music that we’re making right now is not Willie Heart Eyes.

Photo Courtesy of Willie Heart Eyes

How have things changed? Is part of it working on this and being like, “Now I know what I want to do next?”

Gowdy: No.

Jordan: Yeah, it’s a different one. It’s like, me and Kyle.

Gowdy: This one was kind of more my idea.

Jordan: Yeah, and we’ve been working together more. We started this from the beginning. It doesn’t have my name in the title, first of all. Then it’s going all over the place. But it’s definitely pop music and dance music, but then this one has got an alt country vibe to it. We’re talking about trying to get something together but we’re not going to put anything out until it’s really good. We’ve made a lot of weird stuff and some of it’s good.

How do you balance this with your other bands?

Jordan: Well so, just the way this last half a year has been, it’s been pretty goofy. I went to rehab, so I haven’t really been doing stuff with the other band. We’re still a band. We have a record recorded that we need to release, but they’re in Kansas City. I’m not allowed to drive. I don’t have a car. Just a lot of different stuff going on, but I’ll be happier when I’m doing both things for sure. Because I don’t mind parceling out my free time to do this instead of other stuff. I would be excited, too, and I think the boys would be down with that, too.

I don’t give a shit about Saturday night anymore. I still go out, I still been going out to try to see music. But it’s definitely clear that it’s not what it’s really about most of the time. Then, when I’m not watching the band, it’s just really nice—everyone telling me how proud of me they are while they’re real drunk. A lot of slaps on the back and chain smoking at the Replay.