WATCH: Alan Williams Shares Video for ‘Before My Eyes’

New album, Floating on the Dreamline, out March 2026

November 10, 2025 Ron Hart 0 Comments Alan Williams, Before My Eyes, Floating on the Dreamline, Jack Bruce, Joni Mitchell, Knots and Crosses, Sade, The Beatles

By day, Alan Williams is a renowned ethnomusicologist who utilizes the Ph.D. he’s earned as a Professor of Music at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

But after office hours, Williams continues his work as a longtime musician with the upcoming release of his third solo album, Floating on the Dreamline, which isn’t due out until March 2026.

For Williams, a former member of the Island Records-signed folk-rock band Knots and Crosses in the early 90s, this new LP reflects a more personal, organic approach to songwriting.

“The difference this time was allowing the songs and album to just emerge, without an agenda,” Alan explained from his home in Lowell, Massachusetts. “This record was more like demos that I didn’t really intend anyone to hear … But after a few rounds of song ideas, I couldn’t deny that all signs pointed to ‘album.’ After a lifetime of second guessing and self-doubt, I’m coming around to saying, yeah, it’s fine to just be.”

Influential touchstones on this set include Joni Mitchell, solo Jack Bruce, The Beatles and Sade, channeled through Williams’ love for alternate guitar tunings. Helping him see his self-produced vision through are longtime collaborators drummer Ben Wittman (Sting, Paula Cole, Laurie Anderson) and bassist Greg Porter (Aimee Mann, Talking to Animals), as well as former Natalie Merchant bassist Mike Rivard (Club d’Elf, Boston Pops), with stellar contributions from UMass Lowell colleague John Shirley and former students Matt Swanton and Julia James.

Rock & Roll Globe is honored to premiere the first single off Dreamline, “Before My Eyes,” today on the site.

“‘Before My Eyes’ is a song about the nature of illusion,” he explains. “Often, we consider illusion to be fantasy, an imagined utopia world where everything is perfect, where colors are saturated, sensations are heightened, dreams are made real. But sometimes it is the obstacles and impediments that are the illusions. The anxieties and fears that we project onto our lives, the self-loathing and doubt that keeps us from moving forward, a world where the colors are muted, the senses are dulled. What if the land of Oz was the reality, and the Kansas prairie farm the illusion? Can we learn to suspend our disbelief? What’s wrong with rose colored glasses?

“The recording features a sensual tapestry of percussion from long-time musical cohort Ben Wittman (Sting, Laurie Anderson, Suzanne Vega, Don Byron), and a lovely fretless bass from Mike Rivard (Natalie Merchant, Paula Cole, Boston Pops), a friend of mine for nearly 40 years, though this marks the first time he’s added his marvelous playing to my music. The rest of the sound is me, with a last-minute inclusion of a classical guitar to bring the song firmly into the land of Brazilian bossa nova, where the colors are just a bit saturated, and romance is in the air.”

Recorded at Alan’s workspace, in Wittman’s Toronto basement, and in rented cottages in Vermont and on Cape Cod, Floating on the Dreamline is in part the product of re-examining the recording process itself, from a human and emotional perspective.

“As an academic, this is my area of research: what happens to people in recording environments,” he says. “The systems are really set up to take the pleasure out of the process, but I go about it in the opposite fashion. I’m less concerned with the result than I am with enjoying the process and seeing what can be explored.”

Check out the video for “Before My Eyes” below.