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| Date |
City |
Venue |
Details |
| Tue 5/20/08 |
San Francisco, CA |
Rickshaw Stop |
! |
| Wed 5/21/08 |
Los Angeles, CA |
Troubadour |
! |
| Thu 6/5/08 |
Allston, MA |
Great Scott |
! |
| Fri 6/6/08 |
Montreal, QC |
Studio JPR |
! |
| Sat 6/7/08 |
Toronto, ON |
Horseshoe Tavern |
! |
| Mon 6/9/08 |
Detroit, MI |
Magic Stick |
! |
| Tue 6/10/08 |
Chicago, IL |
Lakeshore Theater |
! |
| ! Supporting Adam Green |
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I
don't feel quite up to the task of writing about Tim Fite, because
Tim Fite is a really smart guy with a god-given way with words,
and I am...well, not. I'm tempted to just transcribe a conversation
I had with him today and let him tell his story, and the story
of this record, thusly. Still, this is my job, and I love this
new record Fair Ain't Fair, so I guess I am compelled to man-up
and give it a try...
I was also tempted to start by saying that Tim Fite has no history,
mostly because of the dearth of biographical information my
Google search turned up on him, and also because then I could
make this clever reference to Athena springing fully formed
from Zeus' head, and the idea of Tim Fite arriving complete
from anywhere tickled my fancy because he is nothing if not
a work in progress, a constant evolution, a growing up on record.
He followed his 2005 folky/indie/alt-country Anti- Records debut
Gone Ain't Gone with a hip hop record, for god's sake! And then
a Halloween record that was around for a single day. And in
between those, some drawings and illustrated stories and lots
of multi-media one-man shows. But after talking to him, I realized
that Tim Fite has a history, as long as this continent and as
deep as the fundamental conflicts that fuel the wars Fite concerns
himself with these days. And in spite of references to his own
bloodlessness (it's a reoccurring theme), Tim Fite has the blood
of us all running in his veins, and he carries the burden with
an earnestness that is disarming and intimidating at the same
time.
"I had to work up to Fair Ain't Fair," he said. "I
did [2007's web-only, free LP] Over the Counter Culture to get
over the anger I feel at what is happening in the world, what
we are doing to each other by accepting greed and war into our
hearts and minds. I had to get over the anger so I could get
to the human-ness that I wanted to put into Fair Ain't Fair.
On it, I am still thinking of the repercussions of our actions
on this planet, but also about the power in a simple apology."
Apology and apocalypse are the constant threads running through
Fair Ain't Fair. "The first and the last," as Fite
calls them. On a grand scale, they turn up in "Trouble,"
where Tim Fite growls:
how's about a little avalanche for your avarice?
a landslide for your lavishness?
some happenstance for your happiness?
A first hand taste of averages
you better hope to God your shit float
Topics cursed and spit out on Over the Counter Culture, sure,
but sung here with more empathy, more understanding. And, as
we all know, catastrophe and forgiveness also work their destruction
and magic on a personal level. In "Yesterday's Garden,"
Fite explores the idea of losing one's way, and having the heart
to know it:
How could a girl with a thumb so green
be in love with a man who's become so mean?
oh I could do so much better than yesterday
We lose sight, we fuck up, but we carry within us the power
to set things right. "Evil is the doubting heart,"
he says.
The sounds on Fair Ain't Fair are equally as big and ambitious
as the topics it contains. A year in the making, the record
does sound like a gleeful experience. To get the expansive sound
Fite was looking for, he and drummer Justin Riddle went back
to his old high school, where they played and recorded the orchestra's
drums after hours in a deal his mom, an employee at the school,
brokered with the security guards. "It was fantastic,"
Fite enthuses. "They had tympanis and those big bass drums
the marching band uses. The drums became the foundation for
many of the songs, more like a rap record than a rock record."
On top of that, Fite sprinkles his signature samples, but with
a more restrained, mature hand. Famous for mining record store
bargain bins for long-forgotten CDs, Fite takes tracks from
their musical obscurity, dusts them off and reburies them in
his own tunes. Like a dog jealously guarding its bone or a thief
hiding his loot, Fite covets these discarded pieces of work
and makes them his own. On Fair Ain't Fair, these bits of musical
flotsam serve as punctuation of sorts: just as we are lulled
by the melody and pretty songs, they slap us awake and keep
us on our toes.
Finally come the voices. Layer upon layer, Fite plays with note
and melody in a way that he never has before. Some of the voices
come from his brother, Doctor Leisure, and some are friends
in other bands, but mostly it is just Fite on top of Fite on
top of Fite. Harmony rules, and the results are a collection
of beautiful songs. "Big Mistake" is the perhaps the
most straightforwardly catchy song Fite has ever penned, in
spite of a touch of his pervasive self-effacement:
Everyone gets to make one big mistake
and if you're waiting on me, well I guess you're gonna have
to wait cuz I'm saving mine up for a very very special day when
I can fuck it all up in the most spectacular way
The ire and humor of such songs are interspersed with short,
two minute pieces that sound almost like modern hymns/spirituals/nursery
rhymes.
Gorgeous and sweet, they come off like interludes between acts
of soul-barring, a welcome breath before plunging back into
the fray.
The fact that Fite could let most of the songs on Fair Ain't
Fair be exquisite without chopping them to bits or stopping
them short before the beauty spools out shows a certain maturity.
Both the crafting and the subject matter on Fair Ain't Fair
are, admittedly, a result of more years.
"I think getting older played a part. I am less interested
in one-sided inflammatory rhetoric, and more interested in the
quiet attack of awareness." And while the listener may
be tempted to view the album title itself simply a clever play
on the title of his earlier Gone Ain't Gone, Fite explains its
significance: "I think a lot about destruction as it relates
to fairness, and how everything we love could wind up disappearing
because of the wrong that we have done or will do. In the big
picture, it seems only fair that you reap what you sow, but
as you focus destruction for destruction for destruction, fairness
becomes obsolete. The flipside to this thinking about fairness
in terms of beauty, and how things that we think, or are made
to think, of as beautiful are actually not beautiful at all."
Fair ain't so fair fuckers
So starts this new record, and it seems telling that the first
song on the record is closed with this first, apt sample:
"'you can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree,'"
Apt because it is seemingly impossible to "get" Tim
Fite's music without first getting to know the roots of Tim
Fite. From his birth without blood, to the woods he grew up
in, to his parents who praised social consciousness and gun
control in a town full of NRA devotees, to the violently creative
life he now leads in Brooklyn. Like his treasured samples, Fite
takes our follies and burdens and makes them his own. "Fair
Ain't Fair sounds like a happy record," he admits, then
adds, "but the emotions behind it are some of the saddest
I've ever felt." |
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