Ian Fisher—based in Berlin, Germany, but raised on a farm in Missouri—is a little man with a big voice. He’s played hundreds of concerts all over the world. His songs, like the man himself, are simple and honest. He’s a 21st Century country musician… without a country. His debut album, Nero, comes out Oct. 23 in the U.S., and in Europe January 2016, both on Snowstar Records.
Nero was born in early 2014 when Ian brought a few dozen songs to Berlin. Before the album was done, it had spilled over into three different studios in Berlin, Hamburg, and Vienna, two bedrooms and one concrete basement. “The album has a lot to do with the destruction of who you once were in order to become something different,” Fisher explains. “I’ve really lost my Americanism, the majority of it anyway, and one of the reasons I’ve turned back to country music is in an attempt to find a part of me that I lost.”
Glide is premiering the title track “Nero” (below) which shows Fisher’s emotive directness and his knack at building a pulling composition with acoustic and pedal steel guitar and spacious piano notes. Fisher’s insightful compositions bare a resemblance to the biting folk of Cowboy Junkies, Vic Chesnutt and Hiss Golden Messenger.
“I wrote the song “Nero” on a lonely guest bed in the 16th District of Vienna, Austria, in the autumn of 2009,” remarks Fisher about the composition. “Like myself and the city in which it was written, it’s drowned in a type of hopeless nostalgia. A type that is aware of its own fickleness, but persists in spite of its futility. My personal brand of nostalgia that found its way into the song comes from two common themes—the first being youth and, more specifically, that slow climb down the side of the fence that separates it from adulthood, and the second being the destruction and subsequent reconstruction of the idea of home. I suppose those are two pretty natural themes for a 22-year-old expatriate.”
“I’ve played “Nero” as the first song in my set at nearly every concert I’ve performed since I wrote it,” continues Fisher. “It’s what I want the first impression of my music to be. It’s slow, it’s deep, it requires the listener’s attention, and I like that. I chose it as the opening track of the album to act as a buffer to keep people away who weren’t really going to listen anyway and I picked “Nero” as the title track because the underlying theme of the album is the destruction of who you once were in order to become something different. Maybe it’s just my dark humor, but I don’t think there’s a better name to emblematize that theme than that of an emperor who burned down his own capital.”
Upcoming Ian Fisher Tour Dates
Oct 23 – St. Louis, MO @ Off Broadway
Oct 24 – Ste. Genevieve, MO @ Watertower Winery
Oct 25 – Chicago, IL @ Uncommon Ground
Oct 26 – Indianapolis, IN @ Fat Dan’s Deli
Oct 27 – Nashville, TN @ The 5 Spot
Oct 28 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl (Baby Robot Songwriter showcase)
Oct 29 – Charlotte, NC @ Crown Station Cafe
Oct 30 – Lynchburg, VA @ Benjamin’s
Oct 31 – Washington, DC @ House Show
Nov 1 – Baltimore, MD @ Germano’s
Nov 4 – New York, NY @ The Way Station
Nov 7 – New York, NY @ House Show
Pre-order Nero
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