FisherKing, an Aussie band you really should know

Someone has been reading this blog… You know that always makes me a little bit happy inside And I know this because I got a cheeky little email from an Aussie which said, “I’ve just got a real easy going indie band I thought you’d possibly like…some of them are kind of pretty like Better Than Ezra too (but with aussie accents).” Now darlin’s, wouldn’t you just fall for that?

Hook

Line

Sinker

And so I clicked on the MySpace link this Aussie gave me and sure enough, FisherKing are more than “kind of pretty” and their music is just really poignant and amazingly varied. For a band that’s not been together very long, these guys have a true breadth of talent. This self-titled EP, 5 tracks long, has some “coastal” sounds – I mean some of what I would call the beach music (growing up on the coast as I did, it’s the kind of stuff we listened to while wearing shorts and t-shirts and flipflops at the bar. It’s not full out reggae by any means, but has a certain kind of off-beat syncopation even done with guitars and drums that marks it as definitely not Minnesota woodlands!) – other tracks are straight up indie/folk, “God Don’t Make Them” – and then there’s “And Back To War” which I’ve picked for you to hear. It grooves, it smolders, it’s got lyrics that stick with ya. Yeah, watch this band… they could go in any of about 16 directions in the next year. Already tagged by major radio stations in Australia as an up and comer, FisherKing will surely rise. Now let’s get them over here, eh?

God Don’t Make Them mp3

Back To War mp3

….. buy the EP here

here’s some info about the band, in their own words:

Sam Stephenson (vocals/guitar) talks about the band, late 2008, with the release of their EP FisherKing.

We started FisherKing in March 2008, so we haven’t been playing together for very long. We’ve all known each other and been mates for ages though. Paul and Luke used to play in Winters Underground, who were doing pretty well for a while there before they disbanded. Paul went on to play in 5th Nation and Luke still plays in a few other bands, including a Foo Fighters cover band. Josh and I have been jamming for years but never really taken bands too seriously until now. A couple of years ago, we used to have these rehearsals for this guy who was really serious about ‘making’ it and we’d spend our time and money practicing this other dudes music. It was pretty good stuff but the whole time I was thinking “we could do this”. So I started to write songs to see if I actually could. A few weeks later, after we’d both quit the other band, I showed Josh my first few songs. So pretty much, FisherKing was born from the desire to play good, fun music with my mates., we never thought we’d end up recording and planning a tour.

Josh runs a construction management company called Join Constructions but finds the time to play bass with FisherKing. Luke’s a full-time muso, always gigging to bring in the big muso dollars. Paul’s a graphic designer, (he does all our design work…) but is studying music at UNSW. I’m also studying music and education there but I’m just about to finish up.

Songwriting process

It really depends… I’d like to say that everyone of my songs deals with some deep-seeded issue and sometimes that’s true. Generally I write about whatever I’m thinking about at the time… so there’s a lot of songs that talk about and question the existence of God and wondering about the impact that it has on my life… There’s quite a few concerning love, both lost and found, conversations with friends and family. And then there’s some about nothing in particular. I find that it’s easier to write about my own experiences in everyday life rather than pretending to understand and fix all of the world’s problems which can seem convoluted. I guess I just love music and I love to explore all that it’s capable of being to a person. Good, honest music will always mean something to someone, somewhere. I don’t try to keep to a specific style as the music I write will always sound like FisherKing because I’ve written it and we play it. But I really value a decent melody in a song, it definitely goes a long way. I really admire writers like James Taylor, Lior and Ben Harper that write these amazing melodies that force you to sing along. And I love music that takes you somewhere. So in terms of the writing process, sometimes I start with a lyric and work from there, writing music around it. Other times I’ll have a musical hook that I can’t get out of my head and I’ll fill in the lyrical blanks, which can be interesting because I can end up writing about things that I didn’t even realize had been on my mind. It can be a bit of an adventure.

The EP

The recording of the FisherKing EP was a long time coming. It had only ever been an issue of finding the money and the right person to record it. Paul and Luke have both been in other bands that have done some recording but Josh and I were recording virgins. I’m pretty protective of my songs and I didn’t know the first thing about how to achieve a good recorded sound. So we wanted to find someone who would understand us as a band and our sound and then produce and record the EP for us. The Band manager of the Whitlams, Kim Thomas suggested we talk to Genevieve Maynard (who recorded Blue Juice) and she was perfect. Genevieve knew how to make us feel comfortable in the studio and then get the most from us. As soon we started tracking, we could tell were in safe hands. She never fed our egos and she’s brutally honest when the project’s at stake. She put up with our joking around too. You know you’re on to a good thing when the women laugh at a (damn fine) fart joke. We had her talking in a Kiwi accent by the end of the week too, Flight of the Conchords-style. The EP came up really well, probably better than any of us thought possible. Each track sheds a different light on what we do as a band and it still sounds really fresh and honest like our live set. We’re really stoked on it! Who You Praying To? is the first track on the EP. The song itself is about the way we seem to call out to “god” whenever life gets out of our control. It’s a question that’s meant to challenge that whole idea of praying to a god that we may not even know. Genevieve was kind enough to sing some backups on it too after we’d finished in the studio. I think she laid like, three vocal parts down in that middle section. We kept it cause it sounded so sweet and she’s Genevieve Maynard. Smellin Roses came up really well too. I wrote it years ago, I think it may have even been one of my first ever songs. I was sitting outside on the balcony one night playing my guitar just loving every second of it. I was really struck how good it was to take some time to write, play and think about things. I wrote the verses like a train of thought, each verse jumps to a new topic. When we recorded it, we ended up using one of my slides on Paul’s strat and a volume pedal to get the whine over the song. It was the perfect thing to give it that haunting sound.