10 Years in the Making: Liam Bauman Releases Emotionally Grounding Debut Album ‘Good Try’

The passage of time is an ever-present force that can become overwhelming when you start to become aware of it. As time creeps on, you look in the mirror and see a grey hair peaking out of your freshly trimmed bangs– or maybe you haven’t called a friend from childhood in a couple years, and you lose track of someone you once would have called your best friend. 

PHOTOS BY ZAYNE ISOM

Nashville-based songwriter Liam Bauman captures the passage of time beautifully in his debut album Good Try– a record that moves through the precariousness of childhood friendships, the grief of losing family, falling in and out of love and making the most of what you’ve got. Bauman’s strength lies within his wording, creating a mosaic of formative moments 10 years in the making. 

“When I started to look at the songs as a whole, the passage of time was probably the biggest theme I could find in it,” Bauman told Pleaser over a cup of coffee at Bongo East. “It’s 10 years of proof of me being anxious about time. The oldest song on the record is 10 years old. I’ve been holding onto this thing for so long, and then I let it go. It’s not mine anymore— it’s up for the world’s interpretation.” 

Bauman often finds ideas in crowded rooms, either around with his buddies or in a packed bar– an unfortunate tendency, according to him, but he’ll write down whatever he’s thinking in his notes app to play around with at a later time. 

“I typically start with melody. I’ll just kind of be mumbling and spitballing until something feels right. And then it’s usually the first one or two lines that will guide the rest of the song,” Bauman said. 

Good Try is the product of moments piled into notes app or scribbled onto diner napkins. Bauman understands that these moments are important, hence keeping them safe within his back pocket, but it's not until he's writing about them that he truly begins to process them. Sometimes it takes years of sitting with the things that have happened in his life for him to feel fully prepared to begin writing about them, like with the title track of Good Try, a song that details Bauman’s grandfather, who passed away right before he moved to Nashville about four years ago. 

Lyrics like “Last Saturday, we took your dust out to the ocean / But I couldn’t cry / Left feeling mad about it / I’m getting clean / Learning how to practice moderation / So your legacy can live on in me” live as a confessional within the song, Bauman’s truth feeling like a lifted burden through the verity of his words. 

“I feel like for the first two years of living here, I was trying to write something about it. I couldn’t figure out how to do that. It ended up coming out in a song that was entirely not about it,” Bauman said. “It was more about trying to be happy with the work you put in for yourself. I was trying to get out of the habit of beating myself up over the mistakes and choices I’d made in the past. It kind of just slipped into the third verse, talking about him.

He set the bar of excellence for me– he was a very put together guy. He owned a business and did very well for himself. I think there was a lot of me that felt like maybe I was letting him down with the way I was living my life. I didn’t realize that his influence had anything to do with that wrestling for a long time until the song came out. And then I realized ‘oh, that’s what I was feeling.’” 

Throughout the entirety of the record, Bauman pours himself into his work. It’s obvious through his breathy vocals and moments of deep breathing heard throughout Good Try that the songsmith has created something that is deeply rooted in his own personal truth. Through imagery of being stoned in driveways, pressing faces against the glass window of a moving van and dust on the shoulder of a person who’s coming to terms with the ever-so unforgiving change that comes with aging, Good Try is honest, sentimental and becoming. 

Bauman’s words create space for connection, and it’s easy to connect with him through his personal narratives. There’s comfort in his stories, wrapping the emotional nostalgia of childhood with the excitement of growing older– into a version of himself that his past self, the one who started working on this record 10 years ago, can be proud of.