A few years ago, Will Epstein felt it was time to fully embrace his given name.

“I was starting to put out music in all the different guises I work in. I’m a saxophone player and I do a lot of improvised music, and I do a lot of film-score work,” the New York-bred, Woodstock, N.Y.-based musician says in February, shortly after the release of his sophomore set for Fat Possum Records, Yeah, mostly. “They all occupy different spaces and different communities of people in my life, but they also all make up who I am—or at least who I purport to be in my output. I wanted them all to be in direct communication with each other and working under different monikers, for everything felt insincere. And the most natural thing was to have everything under my name and accept that this is who I am—this is what I’m doing—and let it live there.”

Before dropping Wendy, his first Fat Possum LP, in 2022, Epstein had been releasing music under the High Water banner while also making waves on the downtown New York improv scene—in one memorable booking, he even performed at the legendary Russ & Daughters Café as part of a John Zorn-curated series. Simultaneously, he also played a pivotal role in the modern indie-electronic ecosystem through his collaborations with Darkside’s Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington, whom he introduced to each other while studying at Brown University.

But it was Wendy that truly helped usher in Epstein’s current era, focusing on his earnest vocals, signature keyboard stylings and keen storytelling abilities. And the 11-track Yeah, mostly leans into that approach even more, offering a collection of personal short stories that range from the profound emotional experience of attending a grandparent’s funeral to the minutiae of a home dishwasher. However, Epstein sees them all as a reflection of his daily life.

“I’m always looking to evolve and change my practice—clarify some of my process and the way I’m thinking about music and writing,” Epstein says. “I wanted to find an easier path in my lyrical voice that felt more fluid with who I was in my day-to-day life—and to have that process be a little less complicated. Writing songs has always felt like pulling something out of the air. [This time], there was an acceptance that this is just what’s on my mind. It’s easy to brush the thought aside that a dishwasher is worthy of consideration because it’s too small or ridiculous, but giving attention to those details is part of a deepening awareness of yourself and where you are at.”

Epstein started composing what would become Yeah, mostly in 2024, and he recorded the material on an eight-track machine between July of that year and January 2025. Fully embracing the songs’ narrative ethos, he captured his vocals live without editing, utilizing only minimal overdubs throughout the process. Michael Coleman co-produced the set and provided a buffet of instruments while Austin Vaughn—known for his work with Cass McCombs, Luke Temple and Sam Evian—and Kenny Wollesen, who is associated with Tom Waits, Linda Thompson, Laurie Anderson and Bill Frisell, split duties behind the kit and Zosha Warpeha appeared on hardanger d’amore. Meanwhile, Kurt Kotheimer, who, like Coleman, has a deep history with Cassandra Jenkins, and Tuneyards mixer Eli Cruz, who served as a co-engineer for Yeah, mostly, supplied bass duties. Though Epstein initially thought that the traditional drum kit would evoke too specific of a genre, he notes that his collaborators were able to channel a soft, natural feel that ended up enhancing the material. 

“It feels nice to loosen the grip a little bit, and playing the material in more of a live way with other musicians felt like also an exciting thing, too,” he says. “It’s the most natural and simple thing, but sometimes that can be its own revelation, and that was part of the fun in this process. We played without headphones, live in the room. I sang most of the vocals live, so the music, immediately, had a different quality and a feeling than other stuff I’ve done before.”

Each morning, Epstein would wake up and take stock of his environment, jotting down how he was feeling or what was happening in his life. Sometimes he’d then sit down with his keyboard and pick out phrases from what he had written, approaching the creative process in a much more natural way, with his words and music often arriving simultaneously.

“I made a lot of my other albums through a more piecemeal, collage-like process, and I felt some fatigue with that,” he says. “I love making collages and that personal process of painting, but especially with material like this that has a lot of personal emotions pre-imbued, one of my aspirations with this record was to get back to playing with people as the foundational element to the music. Before, it would start with the music, and I would find chords and melodies that I liked. Sometimes there was a phrase or a word that came with it, but other times there wasn’t and then it was a process of trying to put words to the music in a way where I was holding on to the music too preciously. I was afraid of imbuing it with the wrong words and that process started to wear on me a little bit. I felt, ‘Why should it be such a painful process in that sense?’ I wanted to find a smoother way with my lyric writing, so I started writing more outside of thinking about songwriting and writing in more of a diaristic way. It was gratifying. I’d write down what I was feeling and then articulate that to myself before I was even thinking about writing a song. Something about that felt very grounding to me.”

The lyrically vivid, fuzzy pseudo-rocker “Socks in LA” was the first track Epstein completed for the record, and he says that six of the project’s selections were largely written in a single, spirited week. Some of those originals, like minimalist “Little Tony Soprano” and the beautiful, album-opening “Saturday Night,” stem from a “song-a-day” challenge Epstein and his friends undertook a few years ago; he notes that the latter tune and “Dishwasher” are almost opposite sides of the same coin.

“‘Saturday Night’ is the emotional heart of the album and ‘Dishwasher’ has this other element I mentioned, bringing focus to these other details in life,” he says. “Looking back, I felt it gave me confidence to move forward, having those types of songs on here, even though it took me a while to take ‘Dishwasher’ seriously. It’s not about trying to look up into the sky for the answer—it’s about being present with whatever was going through my head, even if it was something that I could have previously deemed unworthy of a song.”

Epstein is also quick to cite Coleman’s contributions, highlighting the kinship they felt as accomplished keyboardists with roots in jazz and improv worlds who also have a deep reverence for the classic songwriting approach.

“He has a facility with his instruments, but, first and foremost, we wanted to be sensitive to the material and to have the song come through,” Epstein says. “I leaned on him when we were working out an arrangement, then we recorded it and that’s what’s on the record.”

In addition to ushering Yeah, mostly into the world, Epstein remains active as a film composer—he recently scored the documentary Joybubbles, which debuted at Sundance in January—and he has worked in a variety of other mediums, including dance.

“First and foremost, it’s a collaboration,” he says of his scoring work. “I love collaboration. I love working with other people and I love film. I studied music and film theory separately, in school and film music has been an inspiration since I started. With my first songs, I was thinking about film and creating very strong moods and atmospheres—this portal into another world. That’s always been something I’ve had a strong fascination with. I love when that envelopes you and it can overwhelm you in a beautiful way. Working with a director can be like collaborating in a band, and there is a sensitivity to how you approach and respond that’s similar to how you respond to your feelings when you are writing a song. With Joybubbles, I made a lot of music on Mellotron, so it’s also an opportunity to try our new instruments and explore new textures.”

In a parallel world, Epstein also remains close with Jaar and Harrington and recently supported Darkside on their most extensive run in over a decade, the high-profile tour behind 2025’s Nothing. Epstein explains that he grew up with Jaar in New York, where the budding musicians cut their teeth busking on the street and improvising in their spare time throughout high school. Likewise, Harrington and Epstein have participated in all sorts of jam sessions over the years. That includes both Relix’s 40^th anniversary concert celebrating the Grateful Dead in 2015 and last year’s Relix 50 show, where Epstein joined Taper’s Choice and Tom Constanten for a heady take on “Dark Star.”

“Nicolás and I both went to Brown, and I then, separately, started playing with Dave,” Epstein says. “Nico was looking for a band to play music for his first record, and I recommended Dave and that’s how [Darkside] came together.”

That continued interest in improvisationally music led to Epstein’s second LP of 2026, Magic Object, a swirl of jazz and Kratrock minimalism crafted with percussionist Booker Stardrum and synth player Ben Vida under the bandname Play Time. The set, which will be released on July 3 via Balmart, was recorded in an Upstate New York barn during two sessions, where the trio played freeform music for seven or eight hours and then edited the results into nine tracks. Epstein says it was a welcome break from their “painterly projects,” and they continued to hone their connection at dates at Kington, NY’s Tubby’s, electing to play on the floor in front of the audience instead of the venue’s proper stage. 

Thinking back on the chances he’s had to meet some of his musical heroes while in the Woodstock area, Epstein also recounts the time he put together a show with The Band’s Garth Hudson, though the experience, unfortunately, turned out to be something of a missed connection.

In 2018, Epstein was guesting with Alex Bleeker & The Freaks at the Huichica Festival East in Pine Plains, N.Y., when he caught an “unbelievable set” by Hudson and his wife, Sister Maud, which turned out to be one of their final public appearances. The experience inspired Epstein to reach out to Hudson through his friend Raymond Foy—who helped Rick Danko out in the ‘80s and ‘90s—and hatch a plan to perform a live soundtrack to the experimental films of Harry Smith and Jordan Belson at BSP in Kingston, N.Y. with The Band legend later that year.  “We were going to do a soundtrack for these abstract films and then a set of songs with Garth and Sister Maud and I brought in some other musicians, including Peter Silberman from The Antlers. Garth was totally down, and he took it on so fully,” Epstein says. “Garth asked Raymond for every piece of music I’d ever recorded, including live bootlegs. And he wanted it all burned onto CDs so he could listen to it before the show. I thought that was totally wild and so out there.”

Hudson and Epstein had what the younger musician describes as an incredible hour-long conversation, bonding over the fact that they are both keyboardists who also play the saxophone.

“He really responded to my soprano saxophone, and that felt like a real point of connection,” Epstein says. “He had this whole system in mind where he would be listening to my music and be taking riffs and stuff from it and then I’d be responding to it, but he’d be the only one listening to it and he said nobody would know, not even the soundman. It took half an hour to fully comprehend what he was saying. I just was bowled over by the whole thing. It was hard to accept, and he wanted me to play his curved soprano sax that he plays in The Last Waltz and play his solo on ‘It Makes No Difference’ note for note.”

On the day of the show, the musicians linked up for an amazing soundcheck and ran through some songs, making Epstein the rare player from his generation to create music with Hudson. However, between the soundcheck and the show, Hudson came down with the stomach flu and was unable to perform. He played a few more dates before the pandemic, but then entered a nursing home and ultimately passed away in 2025 at the age of 87.

“It was very special to have that interaction with him, and I wish we got to actually do the show, but I’m grateful for contact at all with him,” Epstein says. “I was just so impressed with him. He was so brilliant and had all these just totally psychedelic ideas. He adds such incredible textures and layers to The Band’s music, but I still wasn’t totally prepared for how cosmic his thinking would be. He was the all-time maestro.”