Will Bollinger is an experimental banjo player and electronic musician from Virginia based in NYC.
I caught up with Will to talk about his early musical experiences, how he started playing music and the making of his new record “Shiny Eye Gun Gummy”.
CMM-What was the first music that really made an impact on you as a kid and what artists or bands did you enjoy the most?
Will-Some of the first music that made a big impact on me as a kid was a band that my older brother showed me called Skeletonbreath, an instrumental violin, bass, and drums trio from New York that would tour and play in my hometown in Virginia once a year. I first saw them when I was 12 and I ended up seeing them every year for five years in a row. They have two albums and are not very well-known but they shaped my musical style a lot. Their name is from a poem by Don Van Vliet, Captain Beefheart, who was also one of my biggest influences that first got me into experimental and avant-garde music.
I listened to a lot of punk bands like Bad Brains and I had a CD of the album I Against I that was a huge influence on me. I had a lot of CDs that I was obsessed with like the first jazz CDs I ever had were Birth of the Cool and Miles Smiles by Miles Davis. Miles Smiles was probably the album that made me really interested in jazz and I started listening to other jazz artists like Thelonious Monk, especially the album Monk’s Dream. My brother gave me a compilation CD of no-wave music called New York Noise Vol. 3 for Christmas when I was in sixth grade which was how I found out about no-wave music. James Chance & the Contortions was one of my favorite bands and I listened a lot to the classic album Buy.
The first hip hop I listened to as a kid was Dr. Octagon, Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys, and I later got really into Memphis rap like Tommy Wright III. The first album that got me into metal was South of Heaven by Slayer. I also listened to noise rock bands like Melt-Banana and Lightning Bolt. I started playing bass in middle school and was mainly inspired by slap bass players like in Parliament-Funkadelic and Primus. Later on when I was about 20 I saw the guitar player Mary Halvorson when I was on a trip to New York and her guitar playing influenced my playing a lot.
CMM-When did you first start creating your own music?
Will-I first started writing my own music in elementary school in the form of instrumental piano tunes. I started playing both bass and drums when I was 11 or 12 and mostly wrote a lot of music on bass when I was growing up. I started recording music on Audacity when I was 12 years old and started releasing my own albums at 16. Between the age of 16 and 19 I used to sing and make slightly poppier indie rock music but then I started only making instrumental music after that because that’s what interests me the most. My brother showed me the program FL Studio (called FruityLoops at the time) for making electronic music when I was in elementary school and I always messed around with the demo of it a little bit but I didn’t start getting really serious about it until I was about 19.
I bought my first banjo for $30 at a yard sale in Richmond, VA when I was 21 and started playing it a lot a year or two later. My first banjo broke and was unrepairable so I bought my second one in 2017 and have been playing the same instrument every day since then.
CMM-Your new album “Shiny Eye Gun Gummy” is fantastic. What was the writing and recording process for those tracks like? Any particular gear or instruments you used during the recording sessions that helped inspire you?
Will-Thank you! My new album Shiny Eye Gun Gummy I started writing in September 2024 and I wrote all of the music in about six months. Each song I would start by coming up with the banjo parts and waiting until I had all of the sections of the song written before opening up the computer. Then I open up FL Studio and sit down with my banjo in front of me while looking at piano roll in FL Studio and I play the banjo part slowly and enter every note matching what I play so that I get the MIDI to play my exact part note for note. Once I have every section of the song transcribed to MIDI I build the rest of the song around it on FL Studio. The MIDI banjo and steel guitar most of the time play the exact same notes that I play on banjo, then I make up the drum part after that, then the bass, then a very minimalist piano part, and end by coming up with a lead line played by the whistle. I have a template saved on FL Studio of all of the sounds I consistently use for the whole album that is banjo, steel guitar, bass, drums, piano, and whistle (a sample of me whistling). They are all original samples where I recorded one note and used that as a sample, like the bass sound is a sample of my actual bass guitar but it’s still MIDI, just based off of one note I played. There are some extra noise samples that I also recorded myself. The only non-original samples are the kick drum, hi hat, cymbals, and tom.
Since releasing this album I’ve recorded original samples of those drum sounds as well, so my next album will be 100% original samples. Once I had all of the music composed I started playing it live and practicing it a lot before starting recording in August 2025. I still record on Audacity, but recording takes me a long time because I have a technique where I overdub the banjo having three recordings of it playing in unison. It’s the electric in the middle and two acoustics panned 100% right and left, so I have to record the whole album three times. Mixing takes place between the original FL Studio file and the Audacity file and then I move it over to a new FL Studio file for mastering. I commissioned the album artwork from a really great Berlin-based artist named Sam Lubicz. Sam actually completed the album cover before I even started recording and then I was looking at the artwork while I was recording the album.
CMM-If you could score any film director’s movie who would it be and what would the film be about?
Will-If I could score any director’s movie I would choose the animator Bill Plympton. His movie The Tune was a big influence on me as a kid and helped shape my music composition. I’m not really sure what it would be about, I guess anything that he would be making at the time. I am trying to get into film scoring more and I am especially interested in scoring animation and video games.
CMM-What do you have coming up next?
Will-Coming up next, I’m currently in Maine on a month long tour of my music by bicycle going from NYC to Maine and back, playing a bunch of shows throughout New England. Most of the shows were on the way up but on the way back I have one in Providence, RI on May 30th at Lost Bag and one in Brooklyn, NY on June 6th at Haven Cycles. I’ve toured my music by bicycle a lot and have put a lot of work into obtaining the right materials and developing a way to do this, carrying music gear and camping gear in waterproof bags and my banjo on my back.
Normally I like to go out for a month and aim to play about 10 shows. My past tours I regretted not documenting it enough so this time I’m taking a lot of photos and videos that I want to edit all of the footage once I’m back into a documentary showing how I tour my music in this way. After the tour is over, I’m going to be playing gigs around NYC over the summer. I’m playing at Life World on July 5th and Dada Bar on July 23rd. I also have a banjo, bass, and drums trio called the Beak Trio that is with two of my closest friends I met when I was younger. I want to collaborate with other musicians more, because I’ve mostly focused on solo music and my trio for a while but I really want to start more collaborative projects as well.
