DAYTROTTER!

We recorded a daytrotter session yesterday! It was truly an experience in excellence. Look for it in the coming months. Here are some pictures!

review update

we're at Joe Terry's house in Des Moines so I thought I'd take this time to copy and paste some of the new albatross reviews before they fade away.



Happy Happy Birthday To Me [CD, 2007]

They call it a rock opera. Its full title is Albatross: How We Failed To Save The Lone Star State With The Power Of Rock And Roll. The storyline includes a bank robbery, a flee from the law that includes a rock tour, and a sting operation involving a proper name spelling bee. While there are several gems in Albatross, the album is best taken as a whole—as is the case with any album that follows a storyline from inception to conclusion.

Told in the first person, Eric [Fishboy] Michener [Fishboy front-man] follows the storyline from before his birth in “Minus 2” to an epic conclusion in “Farewell Albadross”. Not only does Fishboy plot within the album a fantastic fairy tale of a story, the rock opera makes up their live performances in natural progression—in other words, it follows the story from beginning to end. And the result is astonishing. Albatross may very well be one of the best albums of 2007, a year already packed with top-notch music.

When an album follows a storyline, the basic story elements should apply. Each song is a chapter in the storyline. There is a definite beginning and a definite end. There’s a climax, characters, and a recurring theme and plot. Fishboy covers them all. “Minus 2” sets everything up with a man [the hero of the story] from the age of "Minus 2" in 1981 to present day as a naturally born songwriter. In “Parachute (Using Buddy Holly’s Ghost As)”, a change occurs in the psyche of our hero and he sets out to to save the Lone Star State.

But conflict ensues as every journey costs money. Our hero gets a job and meets the “Taqueria Girl” and the journey commences with two on the run from the law after a successful bank robbery. From here, I’ll leave the plot behind for a moment and focus on the music itself.

Fishboy covers your standard twee-like rock/pop, but they do it with massive amounts of style. Sometimes in-your-face loud, other times softer and mellowed out, the band flows through climaxes and subdued sections with ease. The flow is impeccable with the storyline. There’s not too much power, nor too little. Everything is precise. “Hard Earned Money” takes the album to a lighter note before hitting hard with the anthemic “Racecar”. A major theme here and throughout Albatross is the conjuring of Buddy Holly’s ghost, who appears to dictate elements of the journey, guiding our hero along his quest. In the mind of the listener it could refer to our hero as Holly reborn to continue to spread the joy of rock and roll.

“Blackout” returns the album to the softer elements with a quiet beginning. As a title, Albatross is perfect. The title bird has gigantic wingspans, is known to cover millions of miles during its lifetime, and rarely stops to rest. It is in “Blackout” that our hero comes to the realization that the running may never end. And the album kicks back in the follow-up “Proper Name Spelling Bee” as the trumpet blares and the band backs Eric’s vocals by spelling out the title before concluding in a plot twist: The proper name spelling bee was only a scam / The cops busted in and shouted / ‘up with your hands tonight it ends your crime spree / We had been deceived / So we began to scream / The worst obscenities / At the proper name spelling bee.

“The Details Of Our Trip” continues with the fervor of “Proper Name Spelling Bee”. The climax of our story is near and our hero reflects on recent events. Things fly by and we soon find ourselves at the conclusion, where the band repeatedly chants: Farewell, dear albatross / Fly away home.

After a brilliant story, beautifully written and performed songs, a concept that will touch your heart and make you fall in love; how can you not love this band and this album? Were this Ebert and Roeper, it would be two thumbs way up (hell, they'd throw in the other two just for fun to make it four). Were it a play it would receive massive cheers from the crowd and a standing ovation. Were it a charity, I’d give a million dollars if I had a million to give. Were this site to have ratings out of 10, my answer would be 10 ten times over.
-FENSEPOST.COM


Fishboy - Albatross: How We Failed to Save The Lone Star State... (Happy Happy Birthday to Me) [audio] [upcoming shows]

Layered and not lo-fi, there's piano and trumpets announcing "Proper Name Spelling Bee" and a blasting organ carries the number-one-song-on-another-planet "Racecar". In other words, Tullycraft and Crayon team up and wrestle Apples in Stereo to the ground while singing songs about writing songs. This features the doubletracked nasaly vocals a la Daniel Johnston and Doug Martsch. Including the Cheap Trick meets Superchunk feel of "The Details of Our Trip", this is eleven blasts of sugar rush indie power pop. - mark 75ORLESS.COM

It's nice to come across a band that genuinely makes you laugh and enjoy life. Fishboy does that and more. Upon first listen, Fishboy reminds me of bands like The Dead Milkmen and old Flaming Lips. Then after a coupla more listens I was completely sucked into the crazy world that is Fishboy. I guess you could call it Fantasy/Comedy/Lo-Fi/Rock/Other/Thing music. Out of the musical mixing pot that is Denton, Texas, Fishboy, aka Eric Michener, and his band of merry musicians(John Clardy, Justin Lloyd, Adam Avramescu) have just set out on a Midwest to West tour promoting their album, Albatross: How We Failed To Save The Lone Star State With The Power Of Rock And Roll. Released on Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records, Eric says it's "a rock opera about how myself, the band, and the ghost of Buddy Holly attempt to save Texas by going on a tour/crime spree in order to perform all 8,030 of the songs I've written in my sleep since I was in the womb.” I guess that says it all.
PASTA PRIMAVERA


sweet!

be back in a sec with another poster

tour update! from chicago

hey folks,
I'm sitting in the car outside of Quechers in Chicago stealing wifi like a champ. I will take this moment to summarrize the shows thus far...

day one Little Rock:

Thanks to Casey and HFU this was totally sweet. Ilia played a cool song about how Star Trek is real (and her uniform is teal)

day two St.Louis:

We played with our friends Bunnygrunt and Sex Robots. My girl friend always laughs at the name Bunnygrunt because her rabbit Pocket likes to grunt as well and although I've never heard it, she says its pretty cute. So in conclusion, the show went well and at the end of the night a dude by the name of "God of the Devil" got up and did a noise piece and stuck a microphone up his butt. I didn't see that one either.

Also, we picked up our temporary trumpet player who will turn into a temporary bass player after Denver. His name is Joe Terry and he's from the excellent Iowa band the Poison Control Center.

day three Indianapolis: Adam from the amazing Amo Joy set this show up at his friend Rory's giant mansion turned apartment complex. We played in a big old living room to a bunch of nice people. At the end of the set the plastic around my tone knobs and input was smashed to pieces. So being the awesome guy that he is, Adam Macgyvered a new one out of a white faux woodgrain trash can. Totally awesome. Amo Joy is going on tour in January and you should totally see them.

brb, my deep dish pizza is ready.


ok, I'm back. That was pretty good. So then...

day four Toledo, OH: This show was a lot of fun. We played with our old friends The Hat Company and shared some found memories of living in their basement last summer for five days. Hat Co has gotten awesome since the last time I saw them.


So here are some pictures and whatnot. I dont think I have time to put them in order.






If all goes as plan, tomorrow we'll be recording a last minute session for daytrotter.com If things dont then...I guess we...wont...

see you soon!

Fishboy

post release show

Hey folks,

It's Monday night and I'm about to go to sleep, but I wanted to let everyone know how great of a time the band had at Rubber Gloves Friday. Thanks for all coming and listening to me ramble on about whether or not the fictional band from the rock opera eats at subway or quiznos. The tour is rapidly approaching and for once, we have most of the holes in our tour filled. All but Salt Lake City and LA. If you know of something in these places please give me a "holla" at yofishboy@gmail.com It's no fun stressing booking your own tour but it's a very rewarding feeling when its all done with. Much like graduating high school or college or something like that. Or maybe building a giant domino stacker thing. Right now I'm a turkey dinner and a day from pushing all those dominoes down. Anyway, back to the release show...over at www.thingschrisrecorded.com you can hear all of the audio from our release show as well as our two new york sets that I have yet to listen to yet...but I bet they are good! cause I was there and ripped my nice jeans at the second one! If anyone knows of a good place to get jeans send me an email at yofishboy@gmail.com

see you guys soon,

fishboy

preorder apologies

To everyone who has yet to receive the preorders of the new album, I'm really sorry, I dropped the ball and wasn't able to get the comic in the right format and uploaded to Athens to be printed in time. The end result will be worth it, please sit tight. And if there is any way I can make it up to you please let me know.

I just got off the phone with Gabe from Red Pony Clock telling him how the fantastic folks at retrolowfi named us finest twee album of all time or whatever they said to which he replied "Congratulations! finest album of the shittiest genre ever!"

Touche Gabe.

Before that he complained about how I wrote about him in a previous blog entry and I was like "whatever, no one reads that blog, all I do is repost nice things people have said about me."

speaking of which here's a good one from the UT college paper called the daily Texan:


Artist: Fishboy
Album: Albatross: How We Failed to Save the Lone Star State with the Power of Rock and Roll
Label: Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records

The ghost of Buddy Holly trapped in a parachute hangs over Albatross. Holly floats through the songs, guiding Eric Michener (Fishboy) in his quest to fulfill a prophecy that he would write that definitive song with the harmonic power to redeem the entire state of Texas. Though it's bold, even if facetious, Michener's comparison between himself and Holly is apt.

Albatross, billed as a rock opera, demonstrates Fishboy's most serious, mature song writing without losing much of the quirkiness and whimsy present on Little D and ZipBangBoom.

The burden of maintaining a narrative strand throughout the album does make for some ponderous and overly contrived situations in the lyrics, as in "Half Time at the Proper Name Spelling Bee," but the vigor and melodiousness of the music - fast-paced drums, whirling keyboard, the occasional bleating of a horn - make the kinks trivial. Some highlights are "Race Car," which sounds like a lo-fi Pavement outtake, "Blackout/Flashback," a mellow country-folk reminiscence, the riotous "The Details of Our Trip" and the defiant, uplifting closing track, "Farewell Albatross."

For a twee pop album with glimmers of early rock and roll, Albatross is quite often epic while being a thoroughly rollicking good listen. It's unclear what the 8,030 songs claimed to be penned by Michener were supposed to save us from, but the 11 tracks on Albatross sure make the prospect of salvation sound sweet, even if it only gets us on our feet.

- Priya Hora

Thanks Priya!

Also, here is an interview I did with good old Hunter Hauk from the Dallas Morning News/Quick. Hunter called our last album Little D the best local release of 2005, so I wasn't too nervous talking to him like I am most interviewers...trying to think things out before I say them and whatnot because I know I'll be quoted. As a result I kind of rambled and got all of my words condensed for print. Here is that thing:

Denton's Fishboy talks about his new rock opera

03:18 PM CST on Wednesday, November 14, 2007

By HUNTER HAUK / Quick
hhauk@quickdfw.com

Eric "Fishboy" Michener did the only thing that made sense in his attempt to follow 2005 nerd-pop tour de force Little D: He wrote a rock opera about a singer who, at the behest of Buddy Holly's ghost, robs a bank to try to save Texas by taking his act on tour in an armored van.

And so we have Fishboy's new album, Albatross: How We Failed to Save the Lone Star State With the Power of Rock and Roll, which came out this week on Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records. It's a half-hour of catchy ditties about falling in love, following dreams and dealing with failure, Fishboy-style.

We had a phone chat with Mr. Michener in advance of the band's CD release show Friday at Rubber Gloves.

Aside from a couple of new band members, what else has changed since the last album?

Well, with Little D, there was a definite difference between what was on the album and what we did live. It had all those slow, atmospheric songs, and we ended up just going with the more straightforward rock ones in our live set. With this album, I wanted to totally go with a rock sound, so it's good that we've got John Clardy on drums. He's heavy. And I switched to electric guitar.

Albatross is a rock opera, but parts of it seem autobiographical. How did it come about?

I knew I wanted to make a rock opera – I love albums where the songs flow into each other. And I used to be a film student, so I like telling stories. But I've found it's a lot easier to do that with songs than with films. With Albatross, I had two songs already written and then wrote the rest in order of how I wanted the story to go. The biggest challenge was the ending. At first, I wanted it to be this big, dramatic thing, but then I figured it'd be better to fail at the mission and end up in jail.

Why involve the ghost of Buddy Holly?

I was listening to a Buddy Holly album around the time I started writing the song "Parachute." I had this weird train of thought that was basically this: Landing with a parachute is as easy as falling in love. [Laughs]. I know, I know. Strange. But it made me think of [Holly's song] "It's So Easy." And that set it up from there, for me. Plus, Buddy Holly is a huge influence for me. He and the Beatles and the Who and the Kinks are my big four.

The story begins with the singer sitting in his room writing songs alone. Is that how childhood was for you?

That had more to do with the way I felt while writing the songs for the album. It's the concept of how you can go about your life pretty much alone, thanks to technology. And sometimes you can create something great but you're too scared to get out there and share it. And even if you have to rob banks to get it done, it's better than sitting at home and never doing anything about it. [Laughs.] That's the extreme solution in the story, but it is sort of autobiographical in that we're about to go out on tour and I don't even have a car yet.

[Mr. Michener gets another call and clicks over to answer it. Two minutes later, he comes back.]

I just found out that my loan was approved, so I can get that car.

Wow, it's like you willed it to happen by talking about it. [Creepy silence] So, where are you going on tour?

We'll be out for three weeks after Thanksgiving – Chicago, Denver, Seattle and a few other places.

And what can we expect from Friday's CD release show?

We're going to attempt to immerse the audience into the story. I don't want to give too much away, so that's all I will say. Plan your life

DETAILS: Fishboy plays Friday night at Rubber Gloves, 411 E. Sycamore in Denton. With Man Factory and Cavedweller. Doors open at 9. $5 to $7. 940-387-7781.

HEY THATS TONIGHT! You should go to this show if you live close. It'll be worth it.

xoxox
Fishboy

Album Release tomorrow!

Thanks to everyone in Austin that came out! The record and 7" are now available at Waterloo and End of an Ear, two fine record stores in the state capital.

TOMORROW we play Good Records and its going to rule...just you wait. We're looking at starting things around seven so don't be late! We have yet to play at the new Good Records location but it is truely an honor considering all of the bands I've seen there for free since they opened, many of which went on to much larger audiences.

Also, here is a new review from the Ft. Worth Startelegram.

"Fishboy stays afloat

Ambitious, quirky and fantastically melodic, Eric Michener (who performs, with a bit of help from his friends, as Fishboy) is one of North Texas' bona-fide art-pop geniuses. His latest opus, following 2005's Little D, is the fantastic, freewheeling concept album Albatross: How We Failed To Save the Lone Star State With the Power of Rock and Roll, which spills over 11 addictive tracks. Fishboy will celebrate the release of Albatross with a performance at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Dallas' Good Records and a CD release party (featuring support from Cave Factory and Mandweller) at 9 p.m. Friday at Denton's Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios. Admission $5 for the party."

niiice! (props to cave factory and mandweller!)

don't forget this!

wow. (a blog update)

my new favorite blog Retrolowfi.com (linked on the right) made a mix of recent releases and called Albatross "what may stand up to be one of the best records of the decade" (!!!!!) THE DECADE! Take that Last-Ray-Charles-Album-Put-Out-By-Starbucks and Soundtrack-to-the-Motion-Picture-O-Brother-Where-Art-Thou! The rest of the mix is pretty swell too. Thanks guys!

Also, Cable and Tweed (also linked on the right) has been getting some rad playlists from some pretty excellent comic book writers. The lastest one is by freakin MATT FRACTION whoes Punisher War Journal has been one of the finest reads of the year in my opinion. It only makes him more of a badass to be a gigantic Moutain Goats fan.

In other blog link news Marmaduke (see right) is up to is hold tricks again!