Wally Pleasant is back, Lansing. A new album is coming soon

CHARLOTTE - From a seat in the first-floor living room of his historic 1893 home earlier this month, Wally Pleasant strummed a guitar with his fingers, then launched into a song he wrote about losing his cell phone.

“I got rid of the shackles that bound me,” he sang. “Buzzing and ringing all around me, like a bird in the tree, I found my liberty, the day I lost my phone.”

Pleasant wrote it a few months ago, on a three-hour car drive with only a Jimmie Rodgers' CD to keep him company. The early 20th Century singer/songwriter's music was playing when Pleasant came up with the lyrics, pulling over to the side of the road to jot them down.

It's been 14 years since Pleasant stopped releasing folksy rock albums that poked fun at everything from drugs and relationships to politics and television show hosts.

He gained a following while he was a student at Michigan State University, performing at open mic nights. Then he spent more than 10 years releasing albums — six in total. He was in his mid-30s by the time he stopped touring and performing at college campuses around the country.

Today, at 50, he has a day job as a sales manager at a financial services company and two teenagers.

Plenty has changed since Pleasant made a name for himself with hits like "Small Time Drug Dealer" and "Psycho Roommate," but he never stopped writing songs.

Now a new album, "Happy Hour," is in the works, and Pleasant started an on-line fundraising campaigning to raise money to record and release it.

He doesn't think a comeback is all that far-fetched.

“It could be that," Pleasant said.

'70% music, 30% comedy'

Pleasant is a stage name.

Legally, he's Wallace Bullard, but on a whim he wrote down "Wally Pleasant" on a line-up sheet for an open mic performance in East Lansing in the late 1980s. Then 19, and an MSU student, it seemed like a humorous, anti-punk rock name and different.

"I didn't put a lot of forethought into it," he said.

Still, it stuck.

Pleasant has been playing guitar and writing music since high school, but when he enrolled at MSU he wasn’t focused on becoming a musician. He did want to perform what he was writing though. Hence the open mic night appearances. They were a weekly routine.

“I’d try to learn a new song every week, and people from my dorm would come,” he said. “That’s kind of how I built up the repertoire, I guess.”

Pleasant's songs were acoustic, simple and usually funny. They inspired a campus following, but he credits a local radio station, Impact 89 FM, with exposing a bigger audience to his music.

After he played a few songs live in the station's studio during a visit, staff began playing them on-air regularly.

After he graduated from MSU in 1991, he got a job in Ann Arbor, but an on-the-job injury cut it short and the worker's compensation payment that followed paid for the production of Pleasant's first album.

He sent copies of “Songs about Stuff," released in 1992, to radio stations all over the country.

“We sent them to 800 stations,” Pleasant said. “It was DIY, definitely, and then they actually played it.”

Pleasant started touring college campuses, playing where his songs were popular. He went to California, Alaska and “places in between,” he said. Commercial alternative stations played his songs too.

“The sales on that ended up paying for more promotion and more CD's,” he said.

It became a career for Pleasant. He made a living at it, but still had a hard time thinking of himself as musician.

Pleasant describes his music as “storytelling with a bit of a humorous emphasis.” But his shows aren’t planned like a comedy show. They aren’t structured around the laughs he expects from the audience.

“Probably it’s 70% music, 30% comedy,” he said

Fellow musician and former high school classmate Alex Lumelsky, who played guitar on some of Pleasant’s albums and produced one of them, gives him a lot of credit.

Pleasant calls out hypocrisy in a “non-threatening way,” Lumelsky said, using humorous lyrics to do it.

“He tells the truth,” he said. “We need someone to do that.”

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More to sing about

Richard Turbin first saw Pleasant sing on stage at a local church. Then a few years ago Pleasant showed up at Windwalker Underground Gallery, a performance space and arts nonprofit in downtown Charlotte Turbin founded.

Pleasant started performing during the venue's open mic nights, showcasing what Turbin said is an "incredible talent."

“He takes a different twist on music, makes it funny, makes it a parody,” Turbin said. That makes it hard to categorize, he said, other than to call Pleasant a "storyteller."

Pleasant likes that label. He stopped releasing new music in 2004. By then he had two children and his family became the priority.

He kept up with song writing in his spare time.

“I really like, at this point, writing a lot,” he said. “It’s like putting a puzzle together. You get a few lines and think, how would this fit in?”

In March, he played a few ticketed shows at Windwalker. The performances sold out.

Pleasant may do another show there next year, but said right now he’s focused on recording the new album. It will include 14 new songs he's written that touch on everything from doctors to the somber mood during happy hour.

Pleasant said the new album is inspired by “late 60s, early 70s” country music.

“He’s basically putting the Wally stamp on traditional folk music," Lumelsky said.

A Kickstarter campaign started to help fund the album’s production has raised more than 4,000 of its $5,218 goal. That fundraising deadline is Saturday. The campaign is a vehicle for jump starting the album’s recording, Pleasant said, although he’s never used it before.

“It’s uncharted territory,” he said.

Pleasant said he simply has more to sing about. He wants some of the songs he’s written over the last decade to be heard.

“I’ve had the songs for a long time and I don’t want to forget about them," he said. “If this recipe works I’d like to do more recordings.”

Contact Reporter Rachel Greco at (517) 528-2075 or rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ.

Want to help?

Learn more about Wally Pleasant at his website at www.wallypleasant.com . Individuals interested in contributing to an online fundraising effort to fund his new album can visit: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/824974887/happy-hour-1?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=wally%20pleasant .