http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2013/nov/13/264543/

Raised in rural Pennsylvania, folk songwriter Vikesh Kapoor attended college briefly before leaving to be a mason’s apprentice and surrounding himself with hardworking blue collar individuals represented in new album “Ballad of Willy Robbins.” With minimalist accompaniment, and dark snapshots of struggling souls who lose family, shelter and eventually ambition, Kapoor’s album is likened to works such as Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie.

He will performing at the Replay Lounge on Nov. 16 at 10 p.m., but to give you a taste of what to expect, I got to chat with the (by far more) eloquent artist about his writing style:

Imafidon: Who is Willy Robbins?

Kapoor: Willy Robbins is just a name. It’s insignificant in the sense that I just made it up. The newspaper article inspired the album didn’t have a named subject; it was written by psychiatrist talking about patient. But that name just popped in my head, mainly for metrics when I was writing the title track. It worked out with the beat. Soon after I quickly realized that William and Margaret were typical names for a ballad like that in folk music. Maybe it happened subconsciously, but I just decided to keep it. And his wife whose name only comes up a couple times is named Margaret. But the story is about his journey.

The album cover, for instance, has a lot of faces on it and really any one of those people could be Willy Robbins.

Explain the narrative behind the working class man who loses it all.

Generally it starts off in the middle of things. He is working and they’re already starting to struggle, and he is just trying to make ends meet. It shows the process of that derailing and him losing his job and losing his wife. Searching for himself, lusting after things and feeling apathetic at times. There are a lot of themes on the record other than typical working class problems. There’s apathy of government, health insurance, and love, of course. And lust.

But as far as finding the narrative, that’s up to the listener.

Why did this particular message inspired by an article resonate with you?

I was working as an apprentice to a mason in Boston; I had taken off some time from school, and I also started writing folk songs. During my lunch break I would buy the newspaper and scour it for song ideas like some of my heroes did. Just looking for something, a good story or something that felt potent.

I happened upon this story written by a psychiatrist on a construction worker. Initially it peaked my interest just because I was doing that kind of work for the first time. It was a disturbing article so that was something that stuck with me, made me want to clip it out. It didn’t leave me after I read it. At the end of the article she outlined what happened to this guy and my record isn’t a narrative of that story, it’s just a jumping off point. She talked about him waiting in line for beds at shelter, and how he ended up building a lean-to in the woods (makeshift shack leaning against a tree) because he had nothing else. He would go there to sleep. It was the only time he felt peace. That’s how [the article] ended, and it was an uncommon and grim story. It didn’t read like just any other story.

Do you think it’s a universal message?

People don’t sing about that kind of stuff, at least in the genre I’m working in. It goes hand in hand with a general apathy that’s plaguing younger people now. If I want to do this, I want to say something worth saying.

I saw a lot of older people who maybe worked for three or four decades for one company who weren’t loyal to them, and are left as shells. Just to see the heartbreak that occurred or the kind of despair that came about at a person’s last chapter of their life was really disturbing to me. It made me angry and I wanted to sing about it. And it’s just one aspect of the record.

There’s already enough love songs. I love singing them, but there’s already some amazing one out there and I wanted to sing about things that I felt were contemporary problems. I’m not trying to be a politician or a protester by any means. It’s the balance of touching on something specific but keeping it general enough that it would be universal.

Who are your music heroes?

At that time, Peter Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Skip James and John Jacob Niles. Leonard Cohen sang about dark things and I feel like he gave me the strength to sing about things that aren’t necessarily fun, or I’d first want to hear. Even the album “Nebraska” by Bruce Springsteen; that’s an album I surely looked at to formulate this one.

What was the writing process like?

For this album, it was a gradual process. It took two years to record it piecemeal as I was writing it. I just let the poems come to me. They wrote themselves over a period of time. I wrote the lyrics first and sometimes they came up quick. Songs like “I Dreamt Blues” or “Blue-Eyed Baby,” the recordings of those songs were very fresh. I finished writing them musically and lyrically in the studio that day and then recorded them. So they were really raw and honest.

Have you been to Kansas before?

No I haven’t and I’m so excited. I’ve heard great things about Lawrence. I remember a long time ago when I heard the song “Lawrence” by Josh Ritter. Kansas has been on my mind for a long time.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2013/nov/13/264544/