Andy Bilinski’s Disappearing Snow’s Cut Park

If there’s one thing in our lives in drastically short supply it is time. With the advent of the industrial age we have been presented with a wealth of technology to save us precisely that. Unfortunately, as opposed to enjoying that time for leisure pursuits or relaxing with our families and friends, we often use that gained time to take on additional work. Coming down the years the digital age did us few favors either. A century ago before electric lights extended waking hours, the average American slept around 12 hours per night. Today that figure is closer to five.  

Time was the washing machine meant our hands were freed from the drudge of one form of domestic labor to focus on another. The modern equivalent, email, means that atop our normal office duties we are also expected to communicate with dozens of sources on a nearly continuous basis. Our cell phones mean we are never truly free from the office or job site, and despite the ability to access nearly everyone we’ve ever met since the rise of the technology, it’s hard to imagine carrying on the same social conversations we used to use the old landlines for.     

We are in closer proximity to each other than at any time in history, yet our technology sometimes makes it feel we are farther apart and more alone than ever before. With every new time saving device we devote ourselves more fully to that extra production and equally rob ourselves a little more away from life. We kill ourselves working, taking on more projects than we can possibly accomplish while trying to maintain the semblance of a social life or pursue personal projects.

Pop stars rarely break into the market on the far side of thirty. The Americana and Rock fields are much more forgiving in regards to age, but a fan base needs to be established rather quickly if a musician is to rely on an audience to support follow up releases. Juggling work against family, against touring and rehearsal means something’s got to be sacrificed.

This time deficit is gravely apparent to working musician Andy Bilinski. From antiquity the idea has been expressed through the image of death and his hour glass. Time runs out as the sand drains away. It is an apt metaphor, but it’s more than just a metaphor for Bilinski. He named his latest project Snow’s Cut Park in appreciation of the concept.

“During the recording of Snow’s Cut Park I was staying with a friend on her father’s old wooden troller in the state park of the same name. The boat was called an Island Gypsy, and the name pretty much summed up my life. I didn’t have much. I was just scraping by living out of my car and gratefully having the old boat to crash on most nights. Shows were far and between. It got pretty bare bones, literately. I just wanted time, I needed time to reconnect with myself and record these songs.” 

Bilinski wanted more time, but so does the park he was living on when recording the album. Amidst the growing body of evidence the Army Corps of Engineers is perhaps the worst thing to happen to American ecology since the Industrial Age’s contribution of massive, near non-regulated pollution is the fact the island of Snow’s Cut Park was artificially formed. At one time a peninsula, the Army Corps decided it would better be suited as a coastal barrier island despite the protests of locals and lack of need for such an island in Wilmington, NC.

“The park itself is rapidly falling into the intercoastal waterway due to heavy boat traffic and the rise and fall of the tide over many years.” Bilinski explains. “There’s places where the sidewalk just ends with a 15 foot drop strait into the water below. There’s a swing set rusted from the salty air and fishing lines tangled in old washed up tires. I was going through a lot of change at that time and was really unsettled. The park was unsettled. We were a team.” 

For the park that unsettlement amounts to 10,000 cubic yards of land washed away per annum. There are no plans by the Army Corps to fix the issue, and it will eventually lead to the island’s complete destruction.

For Bilinski, terms aren’t so bleak. But he’s working against time all the same. His second self- release, Snow’s Cut Park, is a solo record detailing the universal struggle to keep your head above water, both fiscally and emotionally. Primarily a lyric driven album most tracks fall securely within the mid-tempo singer/songwriter format. Exceptions include the endearing piano based “Sweet B.” It’s a whimsical track concerning the more light hearted aspects of young love. Between brass lines Bilinksi sings “We’re in the circus, but the big top is all our own.”  

While the emotive resonance of Snow’s Cut Park comes off closer to the introspective bent of the urban troubadour, production value elevates the record above the done-to-death white-boy-with-guitar format. Unlike the park, Bilinski had some help.

“I sacrificed a lot to make this record but there was a lot of beautiful moments for such a trying time. Talented friends helped along the way. Brian Mason, Victoria Fernandez and I played most everything on the record. Kellie Everett and Mark Evans played the horns and Richard Welsh the steel. Jeff Reid and Ian Millard lent their ears. Alex Perialas (Anthrax, Bad Religion, and Johnny Dowd) mastered it.”   

Time passes as it is wont to do, slowly but without pause. Encountering some modest amount of success in his home country, Bilinski has found a warmer audience abroad. He leaves Snow’s Cut Park in some few days for the interior of Europe. On a highland tour of Switzerland he’ll sing the songs of his home, even as it disappears.