Oh sweet release date!
What a wonderful feeling to finally – after such a laborious half year – be able to give you the first proper glimpse of what The Fisherman & The Sea is all about. It's now no longer in my hands but in the hands of Spotify, Apple Music etc. My baby's finally left home to find out what this big wide world has in store for it!
If you're still into old skool CDs, you can get those too. We're selling a (very) limited edition at our gigs and I'm looking into possibilities of opening an online store on our site to sell the CDs and maybe some other stuff as well. I'll keep you posted on that one.
But hey, I'm gonna enjoy this moment now and I hope you "find dem tunes agreeable" as well!
Whole Lotta Love to you and here's a couple of thoughts on dem tunes if you like:
Beggar Princess – A Quick Track by Track from Jon
01. Beggar Princess
”This is the first song I recorded properly for this project and the one I spent the most time with, figuring out what I wanted The Fisherman & The Sea to sound like. The first version that I did at home sounds close to something …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead might do. The next version I did with a friend of mine in his studio with him producing sounded way better and had an 80’s kind of Bruce Springsteen vibe. But it still didn’t sound like the thing I had in mind – there was too much reverb on the lyrics, the guitar parts started sounding plain real fast and the programmed drums lacked any kind of edge.
Still, I took all of those recordings back home and started messing around with them. Then one day I was shopping for guitar strings at my local music shop and stumbled upon this new cajón drum set. I tried it and knew instantly this was the drum sound I wanted for this project. So I re-recorded the drum parts at home with that and used the recordings from the previous session after toying with the guitar arrangement and the dynamics. And that’s what you hear on this final track.”
02. Sea of Pleasantries
”One of the newest songs I included for this album project – there’s 22 songs altogether – I wrote this after the then candidate for the US presidency Donald Trump had said something along the lines of ’I could walk out on 5th Avenue, shoot a man and nobody would care’ on the campaign trail. Obviously appalled by the notion itself, in the end I was still more interested in the kind of psyche that might lie behind such a statement and so this song is written from the perspective of that person, i.e. the now president. It feels eerily accurate in hindsight, to be honest. Also probably my favourite song on the first EP.”
03. Trail of Lies
”This is one of the oldest songs. I had the hardest time coming up with an arrangement for it. In the end it’s one of only three songs to feature a drum kit instead of the cajón drum set that I use on most of the other songs on this project. I like the way it’s a journey both musically and lyrically. It feels like a quintessential The Fisherman & The Sea song, really, and the guys in the band love it. But it’s got a drum kit on it, so it’s not going on the album. End of story. Haha. Besides, I love the idea of these EP’s not only having obscure tracks that couldn’t have made it onto the album anyway, but also to have these tracks where someone might go ’Wow, that’s actually my favourite track and they’ve buried it on the b-side of an EP’. It’s probably really bad marketing though…”
04. Sick Song
”This is based on an ancient demo I made in GarageBand. I would’ve loved to’ve kept the original vocal takes as well, but unfortunately the lyrics were a bit naff so I had to re-do them. Still, the vocal effects, the guitars and the background noise are all from that demo and I ended up just adding stuff towards the end. The funny thing about this song is, that sometimes it’s my absolute favourite song and sometimes I can’t wait for it to be over. Fuck knows, really. Might be a problem that comes with mixing and producing your own songs from start to finish. But you know, it’s a trip – I think with this song it really depends on your mood whether you love it or hate it. But in the end it’s my baby, so of course I love it.”