If you didn’t know Denison Witmer has deep Mennonite roots, one listen of his latest album will make it abundantly clear.
Witmer, a Lancaster native who moved back home about a decade ago, has spent the better part of the last 30 years as a singer-songwriter. He’s a longtime collaborator of Sufjan Stevens, a prolific musician whose work is so celebrated, it sparked a Broadway musical, “Illinoise.” Witmer is also a carpenter, having built a studio for Aaron Dessner, a founding member of The National and frequent collaborator of Taylor Swift.
But Witmer is still a humble Lancaster County guy at heart. And the lessons he’s learned in life are captured on his latest album, “Anything at All,” a musical code-of-ethics of sorts that Stevens had an integral role in creating. It debuts Friday.
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The album’s title — also a repeated phrase in its lead single, “Focus Ring” — is rooted in a spirit of giving. It’s what we tell a friend in need, Witmer says: “If you need anything at all, just let me know.”
“Securing others’ oxygen masks before your own is not what you’re taught, but I think it is actually maybe the best way for a society to function,” Witmer says.
Acting with kindness, finding joy in nature and connecting with neighbors are motifs throughout “Anything at All,” an album with intentionally direct and unfrilly lyrics.
“I think the record is about learning to be generous with yourself and others, and kind, and loving and trying to make the world that you want,” Witmer says.
Leaving, and returning, home
Witmer grew up attending Erisman Mennonite Church, now Crossing Community Church, in Manheim. He spent summers as a high schooler working at the now-closed family business, Witmers’ Greenhouses.
As a teen growing up in the ’90s, he listened to grunge artists who dominated the era. But he also found an affinity for singer-songwriters like Nick Drake, Jackson Browne and Carole King.
Witmer wrote and recorded his first album as an assignment for a creative writing class his senior year at Lancaster Mennonite High School. At the time, he was taking guitar lessons from another accomplished Lancaster musician: Don Peris of the Innocence Mission.
“He was kind of the person who encouraged me to record my songs first,” Witmer says of Peris. “He was also learning engineering at the time. He was learning how to record. He had purchased some equipment and was like, well, if you want to try, I need to learn. So, that’s kind of how it all started.”
As his songwriting career began to bloom, Witmer eyed bigger cities. He spent years living outside of Lancaster, mostly in Philadelphia, with stints in Seattle; Madison, Wisconsin; and New York City.
He moved back to Lancaster after becoming a dad. Naturally, there was an adjustment period.
“I came out here kicking and screaming,” Witmer says. “I know that sounds bad. But, I think for me, I just was so invested in my community and my neighborhood in Philadelphia. I didn’t necessarily want to move back home.”
He found peace of mind in walking, which helped reacquaint himself with a city that changed a lot in the time he was gone. It was on a walk he saw The Wooden Plane, a custom cabinetry and home-restoration business on West King Street. The owner, wood artisan Gene Shaw, was a former client of his father, a certified public accountant.
Witmer had been helping friends fix up houses in Philadelphia and found he was pretty handy. Shaw eventually took him on as an apprentice, which was the catalyst for the carpentry business that pays Witmer’s bills and allows him to keep music a purely creative pursuit. He’s built pieces for Passenger on Plum, Passerine and even Lancaster Central Market — the last he calls a “national treasure.”
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Denison Witmer of Lancaster will release his next record, “Anything at All,” Feb. 14.
Lindsay Elliott
Making the record
In 2020, Witmer released “American Foursquare,” an album he says is about “reintegrating back into Lancaster” and figuring out his next chapter of life.
His latest record is a continuation of that story.
“ ‘Anything At All’ is kind of about putting those systems in place, really embracing the community, doubling down,” Witmer says. “Best practices for how I want to live my life, really. And also, looking at my children and being like, as you get older, you’re watching me. You’re watching everything I do.”
He started writing the songs that would become “Anything at All” during COVID-19 lockdown. He wasn’t sure how to get started on the recording, though, as he told his friend, Stevens. Stevens offered him a way.
“He said, would you want to just book a couple days with me? We can just sketch some ideas,” Witmer says.
The pair agreed on a few house rules, the foremost agreeing on a no-judgment zone. After three days, they had a “solid sketch” of six to eight songs.
Anxious to finish the project, Witmer flew to Seattle to finish the record. When he returned, he couldn’t help but feel like he rushed something. He played the tracks for Stevens, who asked why Witmer tried to finish the record so quickly.
“He was like, ‘Well, I’d like to finish it with you,’ ” Witmer says. “ ‘I’d like to see it through together.’ ”
The project would hit a pause as Stevens faced an unimaginably difficult chapter in his own life. Stevens’ partner died in April 2023, and later that year, Stevens shared that he had been diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that left him unable to walk for a time.
Music was put on the back burner as Witmer sought to support his friend.
“Every album has its own timeline,” Witmer says. “Every project has its own timeline. I just shelved it … I was really comfortable to be in the ‘I don’t know’ for a while. I just sat on the songs and said, ‘It’s not important right now.’ ”
Eventually, after necessary rest and rehabilitation, Stevens was ready to return to the songs.
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Letting go
“Anything at All” was recorded and produced by Stevens, and fans of his music will hear that influence all over Witmer’s new album. It’s the first time Stevens has engineered and produced an entire album for Witmer. He’s also featured on two tracks, and his backing vocals are present throughout.
“I like the simplicity of the songs he wrote, how they’re mostly about domestic life, family life, housekeeping, etc.,” Stevens says in a news release. “And yet, there’s a lot of spiritual and emotional insight too. The songs have a nice balance of the sacred and the mundane.”
The collaboration pairs Witmer’s deft and direct style of songwriting with the lush, orchestral swells that characterize Stevens’ best-known work.
“He sees the big-picture arrangements,” Witmer says. “I’m not that kind of guy. I’m a small-arrangement guy and a songwriter.”
At some points, that took a fair amount of letting go from Witmer. Stevens’ influence is particularly potent on “Shade I’ll Never See.”
“He said, ‘Just so you’re aware, between the time you leave and the time you come back, this song is going to be an entirely different song,’ ” Witmer says.
Witmer’s response? “Have fun.”
While the record’s creation was a journey, all paths seem to lead back home to Pennsylvania.
“Clockmaker,” another track off the record, is steeped in Lancaster County clock history. Witmer wrote it after befriending a woman, Elizabeth, who needed help fixing her screen door. They chatted about Elizabeth’s experience building clocks. (He isn’t sure which company she worked for.) Witmer enjoyed the conversation so much that he returned the next day for a glass of lemonade on her porch.
And “Older and Free,” an anthem for embracing slowing down, was written on a camping trip at French Creek State Park.
While no plans have be determined as of yet, Witmer said he hopes to play these songs at a hometown show followed by a tour. But carpentry projects have his calendar booked for the immediate future.
Now that “Anything at All” — a record that took the scenic route in its own creation — will soon be available, Witmer’s trying to let go of expectations.
He points to two rules he and Stevens sought to adhere to while making the record.
“No idea is a bad idea, and don’t get attached to outcomes,” Witmer says. “Because you just don’t know. You can’t know what’s going to happen, what you’ll like in a song, what you won’t like in a song, so, (it’s) really trying not to get attached to an outcome. I try to take that same mentality when it comes to releasing it, too.”