Let us imagine (it will never happen) I was commissioned to write an essay on Will Oldham. I would have to avoid, straight away, any attempt to get hold of all his recordings. They must reach me: no – they must have already reached me. The accidents through which I found the songs must be part of my account of ‘Will Oldham’. He insists upon it – which is why he scatters his songs like the sower in Van Gogh’s great pictures. Disseminated are the song-seeds which cleave onto the hearer, growing as we grow, but never allowing us to possess them entirely. Will Oldham has said it on many occasions: he did not make his songs. We, the listeners make them. Or we own them as they own him – each of us possessed, dispossessed by what we hear.
Lars Iyer's Blog 
This is exactly how I stumbled upon Will’s work, I felt like it found me. I overheard the name in enough discussions, skimmed over it in enough pages on the internet, that it finally found me. Starting with “Black/Rich Music”, an album that didn’t impress me much at first, but possessed some otherworldly staying power. I then found “Arise Therefore”. Then, with “Days in the Wake”, I knew I had found something uniquely incredible. And yet, almost no mention of him anywhere, now that I had to read more about him!
Will is truly a genius, one whose contributions will be finally recognized most likely in years to come.
Isn’t most great art like that though?
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I heard Will’s first single, Ohio Boat Song, on the John Peel show. For some reason – though I never did this – I taped it. Never knew who it was by until years later.
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