The appeal of William Fitzsimmons’ sound is indicative of his unique upbringing and consequent life experience. Born to two blind parents, Fitzsimmons grew up in a home where sound – particularly music – was integral to communication. His parents had an assortment of guitars, pianos and other instruments, and introduced young William to the music of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, among others. For many years, armed with a Master’s degree in counseling, he worked as a mental health therapist, and only began recording his songs during graduate school breaks. Over the course of his career, Fitzsimmons has made his living writing a specific brand of honest and inward-looking folk songs that fearlessly and candidly examine the evolving self while dexterously communicating his talent for robust melodies and catchy instrumentation.

In Ready the Astronaut, Fitzsimmons sings about how when Icarus fell to his untimely death, it was a lesson for generations to understand the dangers of denying reality; of “ascensionism:” the belief that our futures are not influenced or dictated by our pasts. But the reality is that our pasts are always with us. The people who have loved us, and whom we have loved; the hurts and angers and resentments and traumas. They may not need define us, but they are with us, and, in forgetting them, we are doomed, like Icarus, to reach for the sun only to fall into the sea.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the astronaut thing,” Fitzsimmons says. “When I was a kid, the idea of escaping my situation was attractive. Having disabled parents, being fat, being a band nerd, and made fun of on the bus every morning…I wanted to escape the corporeal realm, to escape my body and my family. The farthest you can get is putting on a spacesuit and getting the hell out of Dodge. Somewhere that was always in the back of my head. And at that moment in Nashville, at 41 years old and already through one divorce, I had thought this was the relationship that was gonna fix everything. And all of a sudden everything was happening all over again; I was right back to where I started, again. That was an overwhelmingly bad feeling and I just wanted to escape. The album was born out of wanting to not have to live over the same mistakes that I had made so many times already.”

The LP version is pressed on transparent vinyl and includes a bonus CD with three additional unreleased tracks.