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Wide Open Country gives Ben Fisher’s new LP “Does the Land Remember Me?” a wonderful review

Ben FisherThe title of Ben Fisher‘s new album is not a rhetorical question. Does the Land Remember Me? is the existential question of anyone who is raised Jewish. A central tenet of the religion, after all, is that we are the chosen people of a promised land. Conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelstein foots the bill for a program that allows young Jewish people to travel to Israel free of charge to better understand their heritage. But is it truly possible to have a connection to a place that, statistically, your ancestors did not live in for generations upon generations? Especially if the country you grew up in feels most like home?

Musically, Fisher’s album is fairly minimal — it’s mostly his voice with some piano accompaniment, though a few songs have larger backing bands. With no disrespect to the musicians on the album, the music is not the main event here. Damian Jurado, who produced the album, lets the lyrics take center stage. Instead, Fisher focuses on the 60-odd year history of a country that asserts its legitimacy on the basis of ancient history. Fisher is no stranger to the region, having lived there as a journalist, seeking to tell the stories of Israelis and Palestinians alike. Does the Land Remember Me? is an extension of that work.

Fisher’s telling of Israel’s story is wide-ranging: he describes the initial distribution of land among Jewish settlers in Tel Aviv in 1906; the viewpoints of both Jewish and Palestinian children; the confusion of a bomber in the Israeli Defense Force; the blithe optimism of a Jewish settler crossing into what’s now the Gaza Strip.

That’s a song that’s worthy of some attention, especially on this site. “Yallah to Abdullah” opens with some gentle slide guitar and a verse about a train. Textbook country music. By using…..READ MORE

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Adobe and Teardrops reviews Ben Fisher’s new album “Does the Land Remember Me?”

Ben FisherThe title of Ben Fisher’s new album is not a rhetorical question. Does the Land Remember Me? is the existential question of anyone who is raised Jewish. A central tenet of the religion, after all, is that we are the chosen people of a promised land. Conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelstein foots the bill for a program that allows young Jewish people to travel to Israel free of charge to better understand their heritage. But is it truly possible to have a connection to a place that, statistically, your ancestors did not live in for generations upon generations? Especially if the country you grew up in feels most like home?

Fisher’s telling of Israel’s story is wide-ranging: he describes the initial distribution of land among Jewish settlers in Tel Aviv in 1906; the viewpoints of both Jewish and Palestinian children; the confusion of a bomber in the Israeli Defense Force; the blithe optimism of a Jewish settler crossing into what’s now the Gaza Strip.

Musically, Fisher’s album is fairly minimal — it’s mostly his voice with some piano accompaniment, though a few songs have larger backing bands. With no disrespect to the musicians on the album, the music is not the main event here. Damian Jurado, who produced the album, lets the lyrics take center stage. Instead, Fisher focuses on the 60-odd year history of a country that asserts its legitimacy on the basis of ancient history. Fisher is no stranger to the region, having lived there as a journalist, seeking to tell the stories of Israelis and Palestinians alike. Does the Land Remember Me? is an extension of that work.

That’s a song that’s worthy of some attention, especially on this site. “Yallah to Abdullah” opens with some gentle slide guitar and a verse about a train. Textbook country music. By using……READ MORE

 

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Americana UK reviews Ben Fisher’s new LP “Does the Land Remember Me?”

Ben FisherSo, it was with some surprise and no little trepidation that a request to review Ben Fisher’s Folk/Americana album ‘Does the Land Remember Me?’ dropped into the in-box. Why the trepidation?  Well, it’s not every day that you get asked to review what is described by Fisher’s PR company as “an entire concept album” focused on the subject of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict!  Don’t let that put you off though. Seattle based Fisher, who has a degree in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, has crafted a simply brilliant and hugely moving piece of work.

Fisher should certainly know what he’s talking about.  After graduating from the University of Washington, he upped sticks and moved to Jerusalem where he found work as a bartender as well as reporting and travelling for the Jerusalem Post.  However, this isn’t an album focused on his personal experiences borne of three years living in the no man’s land between the Arab East and the predominantly Jewish West of that conflicted city.

This is instead a bleak but honest portrait of the Israeli and Palestinian people, who have been locked in a cycle of violence for the better part of the last century. “One of the biggest issues is that people are no longer interested in what happens there,” Fisher says. “It’s gone on for so long, the peace process is so gridlocked and there have been so many people killed. The world has become numb to it.”

His PR company states that ‘Does the Land Remember Me?’ is a “career-making record, timely and crucial”.  They are not wrong.  This is a politically charged album that may well alienate those with a differing worldview to Fisher’s, but it’s an immensely inspired piece of work that examines the Israeli/Palestinian conflict through multiple lenses.  This is an album that truly matters….READ MORE

 

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Atwood Magazine premieres new Lindsay Kay track “Sunday”

What are you searching for? What do you need for your life to have meaning and purpose? For Lindsay Kay, faith is a five-letter word she’s familiar with yet a stranger to at the same time. The artist exposes her struggle with faith in her poignant new song “Sunday,” a heavy, mellow ballad full of sorrow and searching.

Based in Los Angeles by way of Canada, singer/songwriter and producer Lindsay Kay prides herself on crafting “quiet, melancholy music centering around themes of femininity and womanhood.” Kay’s third song release of 2018 comes on the heels of February’s “Invited” and August’s “Too,” which epitomize her aforementioned self-descriptions. A purveyor of Intimate, raw lullabies, Lindsay Kay has a distinct ear for the melancholic, and she knows exactly how to evoke heartfelt emotion in her audience.

“Sunday” carries the intimate and intense weight of Lindsay Kay’s previous material as the artist recounts, in vivid detail, a particularly emotional experience during her artist residency in rural France in early 2016. “’Sunday’ was inspired after attending Catholic Mass in a very small, somewhat conservative French town,” Kay tells Atwood Magazine. “It came fully formed, a true gift which doesn’t happen often. At the time, I was feeling sad, angry, and frustrated. This feminine pain was beginning to stir within me, and I was looking for faith and explanations as to why things are the way they are. These questions led to all of the other thoughts and themes

I explore on the album – they were the catalyst. It’s track one because it was that initial spark that started the journey that culminated in this album.”

Kay explains, “Sunday is about the desire I had for faith at a certain time of confusion and questioning. I have always been, unconsciously or consciously, very drawn to and have found myself……READ MORE

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Wide Open Country premieres Nick Dettmeier & the Sawdusters new single “Love Me Like You Did”

Nick Dittmeier & the Saw Dusters“Love Me Like You Did” the lead single off Bloomington, Ind.- based Americana band Nick Dettmeier & the Sawdusters‘ forthcoming album All Damn Day, features a lead character who totally gets what George Strait says to his ex in 1991’s “You Know Me Better Than That”. Both songs are the country music equivalent of a drunken, late -night phone call to a former lover with an impeccable record collection to gripe about a new flame’s less than cosmopolitan tastes.

Dittmeier, a wordsmith inspired more by Ernest Hemingway than Ernest Tubb, offers rich details about his leading man. “It’s a story about a guy falling in love with a younger woman, but there are things he misses about a previous relationship,” he says. “The narrator doesn’t have the same history he had in a previous relationship and the age difference brings riffs in little stuff like cultural differences.”

In this case, “cultural differences” mean the younger woman doesn’t quite get the appeal of Townes Van Zandt, Shotgun Willie or Little Feat–just three decipherable influences on the Sawdusters’ heartland rock riffage meets classic country storytelling approach. It’s not just the story of a man narrow enough to judge his current partner for her musical taste, as his ex really does seem to better understand vices and strengths that have nothing to do with country and Western.

Dettmeier and bandmates JP Payton (guitar), Rev. Bob Rutherford (bass) and Mark Wayne Minnick (drums) tell such a vivid story on this and nine other album tracks that the singer finds himself reminding potential fans that he’s not necessarily singing about his own experiences…..READ MORE

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VENTS Magazine interviews Lindsay Kay

Hi Lindsay, welcome to VENTS! How have you been?

I’ve been well thanks! Quite happy that the summer is nearing its end and the weather is cooling off…

Can you talk to us more about your latest single “Too”?

“Too” is about the ways in which women and femmes compress themselves to make space for their masculine counterparts. I have watched many women I love dim their own lights to help brighten the lights of the men in their lives, and I too have done this, and the song is about finally acknowledging that our space/time/energy is equally as important…….READ MORE