In interviews Anthony LaMarca is soft-spoken, with most answers punctuated by hesitations and long pauses.

As a songwriter, he’s an open book, sharing his most personal experiences.

His 2019 album, “PETRA,” was recorded while undergoing chemotherapy for a relapse of multiple myeloma, a cancer that grows in white blood cells. The video for the song “Purifier” was a four-minute single shot of LaMarca attached to an IV.

On his 2021 release “Indianola Pizza Dough,” the Youngstown native wove together family history with Mahoning Valley history, including snippets of conversations recorded decades ago at his relative’s pizza shop and sound bites from Peppermint Recording Studios Owner and radio host Gary Rhamy in between his songs.

On his upcoming album, “Aspiration,” LaMarca deals with the death of his father, Angelo, two years ago.

LaMarca, who puts out his own songs under the name The Building, hasn’t set a release date for the album, but he’ll play the songs publicly for the first time on Saturday at Westside Bowl.

“It’s definitely very personal,” LaMarca said. “These songs were written over the course of the last three years now. My dad’s always been a figure that loomed large in my songs. He passed away two years ago, and it’s definitely about that and that grief and dealing with that loss and trying to make sense of it all.

“Even the stuff that wasn’t written overtly about that, I feel like on a lot of my records, you start off writing about one thing and something happens that changes the meaning of what you were writing about before. In a lot of ways, having an outlet, being able to write about something like that, is really helpful.”

It was his father’s record collection that helped shape LaMarca’s eclectic music tastes. He gave his children a stack of that ranged from Cat Stevens to Black Sabbath and from The Beatles to The Commodores, and he loved attending his children’s band concerts.

One of the songs that reflects the connection between father and son is “Echo.”

“I look just like him,” LaMarca said. “We always just had that type of relationship, you just knew what the other was thinking. We loved the same music, we loved the same movies. We were just very similar people in a lot of ways.

“I grew up hearing relatives say, `Oh, you’re just like your dad.’ As a kid you’re embarrassed by it, but as an adult it becomes this great badge of honor. Especially after he passed away, that was the greatest thing anyone could say to me.”

But that means LaMarca also didn’t have access to one of the first people with whom he’d normally share those new songs.

“On Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Carrie & Lowell’ record about his mom dying, there’s this great line, something like, ‘What’s the point of singing songs if you’ll never hear them.’ I feel like that a lot of times, but I also feel like he’s hearing them somehow.

“A lot of the imagery in my music is always tied to Catholicism and these relics, this feeling of reaching for this thing that’s not there anymore. I’ve learned in collecting these relics of his, I am also a relic of him, so he’s also making this music in a way.”

LaMarca started recording the album in April 2023 at Peppermint, playing all the instruments himself with Rhamy engineering. He would work on the record in between touring as a member of the band The War on Drugs, and the 10 tracks were completed earlier this year.

He’s not sure yet, when he’ll release “Aspiration,” maybe in August in between The War on Drugs’ European tour in July that includes concerts in England, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark and Norway and a North American tour in September that includes a show a Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls on Sept. 21.

“It’s going to be pretty loose,” LaMarca said. “I’ll probably order some records, book a show and that will be the release date. I don’t know that I’ll do a tour tour, but definitely I’ll do a show here and some East Coast shows, some West Coast shows, a little scattered something.”

On Saturday, he’ll be performing the songs solo in a similar manner to the way they were initially conceived — on guitar, maybe with a drum track accompanying him for some songs.

It will be his first show as The Building in five years.

“When you’re singing your own songs, it’s just a different level of openness involved,” he said. “It’s always a different thing – not that you’re putting less emotional energy into someone else’s song – but when it’s your thing, you’re the one having to really translate (the song).

“I used to play solo quite a bit, and I really enjoy it. It will be fun to do that again. I haven’t done it for a long time.”

If you go …

WHO: The Building, Eamon Fogarty and Powers / Rollins Duo.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday.

WHERE: Westside Bowl, 2617 Mahoning Ave., Youngstown.

HOW MUCH: $12 in advance through Eventbrite and $15 at the door.

Have an interesting story? Contact Andy Gray by email at agray@tribtoday.com. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, @TribToday.