the steeltown special is william h. travis of bethlehem, pennsylvania and the building, anthony lamarca, of youngstown, ohio, whose songs wear the garb of abandoned steel buildings, towns attempting new branches from gnarled and agèd trunks. the songs are not meant to distract you from the sorrows of life, but to acclimate you to the waters and the murk and mire – to find peace in the love and kindness every human spirit has the ability to offer.

the building: Anthony LaMarca has released five albums as The Building since 2017. Since 2014, he has been a multi-instrumentalist in The War On Drugs. He also engineers and produces albums for other artists at his Youngstown, Ohio studio, Peppermint Productions. Along with his partners Dean Anshutz and Peppermint founder Gary Rhamy, they also archive and reissues recordings from the studio’s more than fifty-year history.

william h. travis: william h. travis is a person a’times, who writes and sings music that’ll make you laugh and cry separately together. his efforts to make and do music are like that carnival game where when you shoot a small target with a water gun, in response, some horseback rider or race car moves horizontally in a dash against others doing similarly; except in the case of william h. travis, the target mechanism is unresponsive, and so the water is instead shot into a glass and sipped slowly, while its lead content and microplastic varieties are mused.