'Three Farmers On Their Way To A Dance' - New Release!
Photo: Heiko Ritt
Hey everyone!
Happy to announce my new release, ‘Three Farmers On Their Way To A Dance!’ Finally I have some new music to share with you all!
It's also on Bandcamp, Amazon, tidal etc.. Everywhere!
A little about the song...
I wrote the song after running across this old photograph (below) of these three farmers looking sharp in a field. The photo was taken by German Photographer August Sander when WWI had started and later these guys were pictured in war uniform. I think one of them ended up dying in the war. I got thinking about war and how easy it is to slip right back into it. This was pre Ukraine-Russia, which made the song even more sad on top of all the other conflicts that were rumbling around the world when I was recording it.
The music...
Anyway, regarding the music, I had a little riff line on the acoustic guitar after trying to learn Hozier's 'Cherry Wine', and after dropping into my familiar drop D tuning, and after a little research on the photo, I ended up writing this song pretty fluidly. I think it was back in 2018 or 2019 when it was written. The song then became a kind of precursor for the rest of the album which I eventually finished over the Covid period.
At the end of that time I was able to secure some Post-Covid, culture restart funding in Germany to record this song and record the whole album which I'll be slowly releasing for you over the coming months.
We did the album in Berlin at the Famous Gold Watch Studios, in Luke's (Lucas Laufen) little annex room. For this song, I played Eric's (Eric Timmann) Fender Stratocaster. We got a little retro kick going through the amp, which lifts the song out of the pure folk world, and that is accompanied by Eric on his Fender Jazzmaster, and he came up with some airy electric licks with his gigantic pedalboard. Eric also plays the drums on this track - It was him and I who tentatively got back into the pre-production room on the edge of Covid and just laid down some stuff, Micha joined later on some other songs.
While he doesn't play live with me at the moment, I managed to convince Felix to lay a bass line for this track. I remember when he came to the studio to lay the track, he had to leave straight away for dad duties. Thankfully he was able to come in just before the mix a year later and put his spin on the arrangement.
The moment when this song crystallised for me (and Luke) was when Luke's violinist and friend Jean-Louise Parker added her string parts onto the track. For me it's kind of a centerpiece which ties the beginning and the end of the song together.
She recorded the strings in the Funkhaus in Berlin, where she works. I already had a kind of arrangement down, which had been recorded by my friend’s violinist Andy in the little live video we did in the Greenhouse (Watch here), she just worked on that and it ended up magic.
Final touches: was me singing as high as I possibly could on the vocal harmonies back in the rehearsal room in Hamburg.
And that's it.
Next month I will release a music video with the track, which looks incredible. And in the meantime I hope you all enjoy the new song!
Musky x
