As the mastermind of sludge lords Crowbar, a key member of New Orleans supergroup Down, and one half of Kingdom of Sorrow, Kirk Windstein has been playing in seriously heavy bands for over 30 years. But Dream in Motion is his first-ever solo album. “The idea of doing it has been around for a long time,” he tells Apple Music. “Of course, the immediate thought was to do an acoustic record, but instead I decided to show a different side of myself.” The result? A soaring, melodic doom record with mostly clean guitars, on which Windstein plays everything except drums (which were handled by his longtime collaborator and producer Duane Simoneaux). Below, Windstein takes us track by track through his solo debut. Dream in Motion “This is basically about my life. My whole dream since I was a teenager was to play guitar and write songs and get onstage and go on tour and all that type of stuff, and I've been able to do it for the last 30 years and I'm continuing to do it. I’ve been blessed and lucky and done a lot of great things. It’s not easy, but when you want something and it comes through, that’s always great. I think the title is very fitting, and it's totally autobiographical for me. It's a song about my life's journey.” Hollow Dying Man “Thankfully, the lyrics have nothing to do with me. I write in metaphors a lot and in what I call one-liners, where I’ll just come up with one line that I like. I like the wording, the way it’s phrased, and I’ll just write from there. I’m very spontaneous as a lyricist. ‘Dream in Motion’ is a regular heavy-tone guitar track, but I put this song second because it sets the tone for what the majority of the rest of the record is like—a lot of clean guitar, a dark vibe, a lot of melody mixed in with some cool heavy guitar stuff.” Once Again “Lyrically, this is a song that’s written about my wife, so obviously it’s personal to me. Musically, it’s different because it’s got a triplet feel, which is a different feel than what I would normally write in. In the beginning, I liked this song the least. Then the lyrics came in and I started adding extra guitars and stuff, and it ended up being a really strong track. Now I couldn’t be happier with it.” Enemy in Disguise “Originally, the lyric for this was ‘Enemy in my eyes.’ As I was singing in the vocal booth, Duane, the producer, said, ‘What did you say there? An enemy in disguise?’ I said, ‘No, but “enemy in disguise” sounds a lot better, and that’d be a great title for it.’” Toxic “My wife wrote these lyrics about someone we know, but it’s actually not just about one person. It’s really about negative people in general. The phrase in there ‘Your presence is toxic’ says it all. I try to surround myself with people who are upbeat, who have a positive attitude on things, who are optimistic. Unfortunately, when you’re in this business, and even just in public, you're not always able to choose who you have to deal with and be around. You’re forced to be around some negative people, and [this song is about] how unpleasant it is.” The Healing “This song is an instrumental. Duane and I were listening to it, and we both looked at each other. I said, ‘I don’t think it needs any lyrics or vocals.’ He said, ‘Me either.’ To me, lyrics weren’t going to make the song any better. ‘Less is more’ is usually my attitude on stuff, and lyrics would just be forced. It’s already got a great vibe to it, so I’m very happy with it just the way it is.” Necropolis “That's actually the first one I wrote for the record. For lack of a better term, it’s one of the prettier-sounding songs on the record—maybe not so much of a dark vibe as a lot of the others, and a little more upbeat emotionally. When you write a song, it's like painting with colors, and the majority of the songs [on this record] are painted with darker colors. This one’s got more light and brightness to it, musically and melody-wise.” The Ugly Truth “This was one of the first ones written as well, maybe the second or third song I wrote when I started this in 2017. Musically, I think it’s got a lot of dynamics. The chorus has a Beatles-type chord change. I was actually thinking about calling the record The Ugly Truth at one point, but I talked about it with [Hatebreed vocalist and Windstein’s Kingdom of Sorrow bandmate] Jamey Jasta, who co-manages Crowbar, and he said he looked it up and there are a million bands with albums called that.” Aqualung “I’ve always been a Jethro Tull fan, and I’ve been fooling around with this song for about 25 years. Crowbar did a weird version of it live once or twice back in the mid-’90s. It’s really a brilliant piece of music. I was only six years old when it was released, but it was heavily played on the hard rock station I listened to growing up. Every time I heard it, I cranked up the stereo. It was quite a task tackling the whole song, especially the guitar solo—it's not that it's fast, it's just so long. During the middle section, I added some guitar harmony stuff that's along the lines of Crowbar, to try to give it a little more of my own feel. We spent a lot of time getting all the parts picked out correctly, but it came out great. I’m very, very proud of it.”