I wanted to share the music that inspired my songwriting style at a young age, the music THESE WOLVES was raised on. I grew up in the 90’s and the first band that I fell in love with was Nirvana.
Kurt Cobain made me pick up a guitar and make noise but Duncan Sheik and Elliott Smith taught me how lyrics can move people. I learned quiet to loud dynamics and how to tell a story through lyrics and melody listening to these artists.
I experimented through the years songwriting, trying to meld what I love: the vulnerability of Nirvana’s “Dumb” or Cold’s “Bleed”, the heaviness of Linkin Park’s “One Step Closer” or KoRn’s “Here To Stay”, with the excitement and unpredictability of Foo Fighters’ “Monkey Wrench” and The Used’s “Take Me Away” and incorporate it in my music.
The creatively titled ‘EG’ playlist is a mix of some of my all-time favorites as well as artists and songs that were instrumental in shaping ‘Conversation’.
-Jim Ford, Bill Withers, Neil Young, Al Green
‘Still Bill’, ‘Harvest’, ‘Gets Next to You’ and ‘Harlan County’ were four records that I immersed myself in as I writing ‘Conversation’. I’d sit down with each, learn some of the music and write out all of the lyrics. My producer, Eddie Spear, introduced me to Jim Ford and now I’ll pay that knowledge drop forward.
-Jason Isbell, Bob Dylan
In my opinion, Dylan is the best songwriter of all time and Isbell is the best of my generation. These guys have set a high bar and I continually look to them as I work on my craft.
-‘Truly, Madly Deeply’, ‘No Hard Feelings’
I always love when an artist finds a way to make a cover song sound like their own. I’m a big Manchester Orchestra fan and I came to find Yoke Lore after ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’ popped up on a Spotify feed.
– Coldplay, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Smashing Pumpkins
These are some of my favorite bands of all time and artists that helped shape me as a young musician. I put a few songs on here that I’ve had in heavy rotation recently.
– Natalie Royal, The Delta Saints, Brendan Benson, James Droll, Elise Davis
Nashville artists! I like to get out to shows when I’m in town and there is no shortage of talent in Music City. Here’s a handful of artists that I’d encourage anyone to acclimate themselves with if they don’t know them already.
On August 7th, G-Eazy and his cohorts – Lil Uzi Vert, Ty Dolla $ign, YBN Nahmir, Murda Beatz, and P-Lo – played a stunning set during a toasty night at Providence Medical Center Amphitheater in Bonner Springs, Kansas. Photographer Rayne Schmidtberger brings us some highlights of G-Eazy’s time on stage below.
When I was about seven years old, I was introduced to my first record by an old man on a train. He was seated with three other older men, as the train car rolled through a warm summer’s evening. His face seemed weary and craggy with years of travel, and despite his small stature he drew me in and commanded my attention. With a voice sharp yet gruff, he dispensed life advice in exchange for whiskey and cigarettes, which he bummed from the silver-bearded man seated across from him.
After the conversation wound down, the old man put his head against the window and drifted off to sleep. And then, quite unexpectedly, this old man passed away in his sleep. He died right in front of me. And unbelievably, an apparition began to fill the train car. It was the ghost of the old man, looming large over the other men. The silver-bearded man was singing this song, and the ghost began to dance and sing along. Finally, the ghost pulled out a deck of cards, threw them in the air, and showered the train car with them. Then the scene ended.
I was seven years old, watching an episode of The Muppet Show. I was completely transfixed by what I had just seen and heard. And the song that the silver-bearded man and the puppets had been singing was absolutely infectious. “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em…” It just completely took over my mind. What was this song? Who was that silver-bearded man? I was possessed with the need for answers.
And after demanding more information on all of this from my parents, they eventually bought me a cassette tape. 20 Greatest Hits by Kenny Rogers. And I played that tape until it wore out, on a little brown Fisher-Price cassette player. “The Gambler” was the greatest song ever written, according to my seven year-old ears. And for the next several months, wherever I went, that song came along in my head. Sometimes complete with the dancing ghost of an old man. And a group of puppets, their voices rising together in that rousing triumphant chorus.
It’s weird. Now that I look back on some of my earliest attempts at songwriting, they are replete with references to gambling and card playing. Despite the fact that I never cared much for either of those things in my real life. As I started to get into other music, I remember hearing gambling references in several Grateful Dead songs. And then on to Bob Dylan. And I began to see a metaphorical thread appearing. I followed that thread for a long time, and it led me to some amazing music. I owe the writer of “The Gambler,” a debt of gratitude for jump-starting a life in pursuit of beautiful song. Thank you, Don Schlitz. Also, while we’re at it, thank you to Jim Henson. And Kenny Rogers! I think of that little seven year-old kid in front of the television, stumbling on a seminal moment in his life. Ears in rapture to a truly great song. Worlds of possibility developing in his little brain. Future songs murmuring from somewhere far ahead in embryonic time.
Memory is a funny thing. Why did this record make such an impact on me? Was I merely seduced by Muppets with a clever hook? Or maybe it was my own budding interest in ghosts, cemented by the release of the film Ghostbusters at around the same time. Or maybe it was the fact that I almost died myself from anaphylactic shock resulting from an allergic reaction that same year. I can’t really know for sure. But that record, and that song, stuck with me. Somewhere deep in the darkness of my mind, the Gambler sleeps. On a train bound for nowhere. And there will be time enough for counting, when the dealing’s done…
The year before I moved to Israel, I worked at a restaurant in my neighborhood. I would walk to work through Seattle’s leafy Ravenna neighborhood listening to Meir Ariel’s 1997 record Bernard VeLouise, generally arriving at the restaurant somewhere in the middle of the fourth track.
Meir Ariel was an Israeli singer-songwriter often referred to as the Israeli Bob Dylan. On top of that, his ability to create words and turn phrases in Hebrew is heralded as somewhat Shakespearean. A supremely talented lyricist, he never enjoyed the fame in life that he found in death. He fought in the Six Day War (and the Yom Kippur and First Lebanon Wars), and he initially gained a following after he wrote a parody of a nationalistic song circulating in 1967 called Jerusalem of Gold, by Naomi Shemer. Ariel’s version was called Jerusalem of Iron, and speaks of the horrors he saw fighting in the city. In Shemer’s version the chorus is, “Jerusalem of gold, and of bronze and of light.” In Ariel’s: “Jerusalem of iron, and of lead and of darkness.”
Bernard VeLouise isn’t his best known record, but for some reason it was the first of his that I picked up. And when I say picked up, I mean listened to on Spotify. Seattle’s Easy Street Records doesn’t exactly have a well stocked Israeli music section. It was the last record the Israeli folk troubadour would release before his death at 57 in 1999, caused by an infected tick bite.
Before I learned how to speak Hebrew, I had no idea what the record’s opening track, “Etzel Zion”, was about. With an upbeat, meandering, Eastern European melody, and the word “Zion” (biblical Israel) in the title, I thought the subject matter must be some pretty heavy shit.
Later, once my Hebrew had improved, I learned that Ariel had in fact penned an ode to the fast food chicken schnitzel shop across from his apartment in Tel Aviv.
At Zion’s on the corner of Hayarkon and Trumpeldor
Between the post office and the Dan cinema
They put a lot of heart onto your plate
For just a little pocket change
They put a lot of love into your pita
And they don’t make you wait.
In August, 2014, in the midst of Operation Protective Edge, I was outside a hotel in Jerusalem, in a cloud of cigarette smoke surrounded by a circle of Israelis, listening to Meir Ariel on a shitty iPhone speaker. A string of military helicopters buzzed overhead and someone said it was the ceasefire team returning to the Knesset from discussions in Cairo. Then the rocket sirens started wailing and we had to scramble to the bomb shelter, with Meir’s music still coming out of the phone.
Six months later, I had two suitcases, and an apartment with a lease in my name waiting for me in Jerusalem. Everything else was up in the air. As my flight dropped below the clouds and the lights of Tel Aviv came into view, I noticed that the Israeli guy next to me had started sobbing, and I could tell it had something to do with the music he was listening to. I peeked over at his iPod. Annie’s Song by John Denver. Weird. I put on Bernard VeLouise. By that point, Meir’s music was no longer foreign to me. It was a comfort, a constant, when moving halfway across the world was full of so many variables.
A few years ago, an Israeli winery put out a limited edition Meir Ariel series of wines that featured illustrations found in his notebooks on the label. I wrote the song “The One Who Shines, The Lion of God” on a hot July evening in Jerusalem after polishing off a bottle. In English, the name Meir Ariel can be translated to “The One Who Shines, The Lion of God.”
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Keep up with Ben Fisher – and keep your eyes peeled for the release of Does The Land Remember Me? – here.
Over the last 3 years I’ve been writing and working on my debut album SARRA. It’s a 14 track concept album and the first single “Kerosene” drops this Friday. I’ve consumed and have been influenced by a massive amount of music since the beginning of this process, and so much of this journey was spent trying to pinpoint my sound. My love of music spans from Pop, Electronic, to R&B so it was a really fun experience getting to pull from those genres and create the right sound that represents SARRA. This is a playlist of songs that have influenced me as an artist throughout the process of making this record. There’s so much good music being made right now and one of the best things about this process was discovering new artists!
Over the last year my tastes in music have changed pretty dramatically, and with it how I’m moving forward with my writing and creative process. This playlist is a combination of new styles for me that influenced the creation of “We Should Both Be Here” and the rest of my current original set with a genre range from r&b, neo-soul, chill wave, and funk to soul pop.
It’s a playlist of all our influences & our favorite artists that inspire us. All these artists have contributed to our sound in some way, and each song is on this playlist is very important to us. These are artists and songs that molded Black And Blue as a group and our sound.
