A personal interview with American singer-songwriter Will Oldham, who reflects on the artistic path that led him from experimental theatre in Kentucky to a decades-long career in music. Oldham traces the formative experiences that shaped his approach to songwriting, performance, and artistic identity, stating that his songs have a healing potential.
Oldham grew up in Louisville, where the repertory stage at Actors Theatre of Louisville played a defining role in his adolescence. As a teenager, he regularly attended productions and observed actors whose careers ranged from local stages to film. The proximity to professional performers made a deep impression. “Going to this theater, Actors’ Theater, and seeing play after play, mostly with the same group of actors,” he recalls, allowed him to develop “a relationship kind of deeper” than ordinary fandom.
His early immersion in theatre became what he describes as “an invaluable apprenticeship.” During his teenage years, he studied stagecraft broadly—acting, costume work, writing, and production—learning “these basic skills for how to take a text, produce it so that an audience can receive it.” This background later informed his approach to recording music. Instead of treating a band as a fixed entity, he often assembled different collaborators for each project, much as a theatre production gathers a new cast.
Oldham began releasing music in the early 1990s, eventually adopting the now-famous stage persona Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at the end of the 1990s. The creation of that character, he explains, offered unexpected freedom. “Once I decided that there was this disembodied entity called Bonnie Prince Billy, it was insanely liberating,” he says. Distancing the songs from his personal identity allowed him to explore a wider emotional and narrative range. “Once I knew that it wasn’t me, I felt I could sing anything.”
The shift also helped Oldham navigate the complicated relationship between personal experience and artistic expression. For him, the value of a song lies less in whether its story is factual than in the authenticity of its delivery. “Whether the words are fact or fiction doesn’t matter as much as if the delivery is a factual and honest delivery,” he explains.
Discussing songwriting, Oldham describes a deliberate embrace of traditional song structures when making the 1999 album ‘I See a Darkness’. By adopting the conventions of classic pop—verses, choruses, and bridges—he found creative constraints that opened new possibilities. “The more guidelines and rules and constrictions that are applied to us, the more freedom that I feel I have.”
Oldham also speaks about the potential emotional role of music for listeners. He imagines songs functioning almost therapeutically, entering a listener’s inner life and helping them confront difficult feelings. At times, he has thought of his songs as having “a potential vaccine-like quality,” capable of helping people recognise and withstand emotional turmoil.
Throughout the conversation, Oldham returns to the idea of uncertainty as an essential part of artistic practice. For him, doubt is not an obstacle but a condition that can foster trust between artist and audience. “Owning your uncertainty, I think, is something that can attract trust,” he says. “Then you know for the rest of your life you have a job which is to maintain the trust.”
Will Oldham (born 1970 in Louisville, Kentucky, United States) is an American singer, songwriter, and actor. He first appeared in films in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Matewan
and Junebug, before gaining recognition in the independent music scene under several project names, notably Palace Brothers, Palace Music, and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Oldham’s 1999 album I See a Darkness is widely regarded as a landmark of alternative folk and has been acclaimed by critics and fellow musicians alike. Over more than three decades, he has released a large body of work that blends folk, country, and experimental music, earning a reputation as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American songwriting.
Will Oldham was interviewed by Christian Lund in January 2026 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark.
Camera and edit: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan
Produced by Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026
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