fun tip: stream the album during your read (if your brain allows)

The story of this project between artists from across the world begins three years ago when Marlon Williams, a New Zealand based singer-songwriter, heard “Springtime of the Year” by Canadian duo Kacy + Clayton, thinking he had stumbled upon a record from a past time. When Marlon learned that Kacy Lee Anderson and Clayton Linthicum were a couple of other “old timey kids,” with an affinity for americana, he looked them up while on tour, they met, and the idea blossomed into making an album: Plastic Bouquet. 

Two years ago, never having met Kacy or Clayton, Marlon flew from New Zealand to Canada to record this 11-track beautiful melding of voices, hemispheres, and stories. Today, Plastic Bouquet, the debut project between Kacy + Clayton and Marlon Williams is released. 

A week ago I caught up with Marlon and Kacy on a call spanning three time zones and countries. We chatted about how this unlikely project came to be.

Collaborations can be unpredictable – especially among people who have never met. Right away I picked up on a genuine friendship and mutual adoration manifested through jokes, jabs, appreciation, and lots of laughter. Kacy was a little more relentless with her humor, pushing me to pronounce her hometown “Saskatchewan” until I got it right, and sharing that she made Marlon star in her tiktoks (he didn’t know what tiktok was). 

Their banter flips between goofy and introspective, a dynamic reflected in their songs. While their sound is grounded in folk tradition, the stories add a whimsical spin. The song “Old Fashioned Man” sarcastically highlights the arrogance in old-time chivalry as Marlon sings “Just think of what I could provide! / Believe me, there’s no obligations / but I can’t stand being denied!” The music video for opening track, “Isn’t It,” brings us into pioneer-era Saskatoon, Canada. Written and directed by Kacy and Clayton’s cousin Breanna, the main husband and wife characters are played by women, challenging marriage roles and ending the scene with the bride’s gunshot.  

The way their voices sound together, overlapping in songs like “Light of Love” make the collaboration worth it alone. The descriptor “crooner” has become affixed to Marlon William’s name. I asked if it bothered him and he kindly said he doesn’t pay too much mind to descriptors. Kacy chimes in, “he IS a crooooner!” But if Marlon is a crooner, Kacy’s voice is just as swoon worthy. In that track, when she repeats lines like “Go tell your mother / You’ll be home before the snow flies,” you’ll understand why Marlon says if he could have, he “would have listened to Kacy sing the whole time from the background.”

Kacy, Clayton, and Marlon draw upon early country influential icons like Merle Haggard and Mississippi John Hurt. But Marlon’s “pacific country music choral elements” connects folk music in a global way. He points to the tracks “One by One,” recorded by Johnny Cooper and Margaret Francis Cooper’s “Manu Rere” for examples of New Zealand’s choral country sound from the ’50s. As listeners, we can learn and appreciate the overlap and disconnect between folk traditions across the world – north, south, east, and west. It’s a subtle tool of education, enticing us to explore sounds from other places. 

On the songwriting process, Kacy shares, “I did one, then he did one, then I did one, then he did one.” Alternating songwriting allows each to start a story from his or her own perspective and finish it together. Location and geography become characters in the songs themselves. The title track, “Plastic Bouquet,” has a lyrical focal point on a highway in Crestwynds near Kacy + Clayton’s home: “On the cross by the highway with the plastic bouquet / Up through the Crestwynds speeding for town / That’s where they found him thrown out.” A couple songs later, Marlon’s track “Arahura” echoes from across the world as he embodies the Arahura River, known for its richness in Pounamu (jade/greenstone). Kacy chimes in that she loves this track and we all laugh at the difficulty of another hard-to-pronounce location. Marlon invokes New Zealand’s Māori culture when in the song, he depicts the 19th century chieftain Te Rauparaha; “Te Rauparaha / Had the greenest of eyes / He came a long way / For a shimmering prize.” 

With mentions of Saskatoon, Crestwynds, Saskatchewan, Arahura, and Te Rauparaha, their songs narrate places of home while learning what life is like on the other side of the world; as Kacy asks, “Would you tell me what the winter’s like down in the Southern Hemisphere?” (in “I’m Unfamiliar”). For unfamiliar ears, these places are easy to mishear. I mentioned a lyric I had imagined and Marlon shares that the two misheard some of each other’s lyrics at first. Kacy remarks, “Who cares? Make your own lyrics, make them up and sing them over the songs.” That’s a part of the sharing process of blending the familiar with the unfamiliar in creating something new. 

The two share a duet in the final track, “Devil’s Daughter,” with the addition of recording banter serving as bookends at the beginning and end of the track left in as an afterthought.  The recording opens with Kacy saying “sorry for laughing,” Marlon responds, “it’s okay.” I mentioned that Marlon sounded a little annoyed at the beginning of the track and they both laughed and agreed. But it just comes off that way. Marlon closes the album speaking the word “nice,” leaving us with a sweet and honest closure to the Plastic Bouquet chapter, until we can see its revival in live performance. It’s a good thing it’s plastic because we’ll be able to hold on to it until that time comes.