Photograph by Maxmillian Lottman
While many of Ian Fisher’s musical ambitions lie in his own sublime brand of folk and Americana, in the past year, he’s branched into an unexpected form of musical expression. “Ian got a role at the wealthiest theater in Germany, playing the narr [fool] in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night,” reports Ryan Thomas Carpenter, Fisher’s partner in the duo Ian Fisher & The Present. The production of Was Ihr Wollt is being staged at Munich’s Residenz Theater. “He dresses like a woman, is onstage the entire play, and sings songs with lyrics by Shakespeare and composed by himself and the musical director of the piece, Fabian Kalker,” Carpenter says. (Kalker and Fisher have also formed a band called Junior.) “After opening night, the play was called one of the biggest successes the theater has seen in years, and Ian was called a ‘shining star.’”
Contemporaries at Webster University almost a decade ago, Fisher and Carpenter eventually, naturally gravitated towards each other, and they’ve been on an adventure together since, spanning two continents and a variety of musical pursuits. These days, Fisher spends most of his time residing in a handful of European cities. Meanwhile, Carpenter summers at home in St. Louis, working as a musician at The Muny. A son of Ste. Genevieve, Fisher writes that he’s maintained his roots in Missouri and his role in The Present, while spotting in European shows both solo and with Junior.
“My summer has been spent on trains through and planes over Europe,” Fisher writes via email. “Every week or two, I dress up like a woman and sing Shakespearian sonnets in front of 900 people at the Residenz Theater in Munich. Two days ago, I headlined a festival with my band Junior in front of 3,000 or 4,000 people in Stuttgart. In between those performances in Munich, I’ve been recording music with friends in the forests of Bavaria and visiting friends in various countries of the EU. Now I’m with friends in Spain, in two days I’ll be back in Germany, next week I’ll be in Hungary, the week after that I’ll be in the Austrian Alps, etc.”
Through it all, Fisher and Carpenter have kept in touch, maintaining their musical partnership through new and old means. Sometimes that’s a matter of trading musical files digitally. But the pair prefers working in tandem, in the same place and in the same musical mind. In March, that meant gathering in Berlin for the initial work on their second Ian Fisher & The Present album.
“It’s the best album we’ve done thus far,” Fisher says. “These songs have been stewing for so long, it feels like the songs are really happy to have finally found a home on a record… We hope that it will be ready for release by September of 2015.”
Carpenter adds that the duo spent all of March and much of April tracking and arranging. “I spent the majority of that time in a basement room/studio in East Berlin with our pedal steel guitar player,” he says. “No bathroom, no running water, sharing it with two other artists (if you don’t count the band of 50-year-old psych-punk rockers next door, and by next door, I mean on the other side of a half-destroyed brick wall). Still quite a lot to do, but it’s looking really, really good—like Elvis good.”
The pair, he says, also found time to record “a completely mad EP in Brooklyn with The Reverend John DeLore,” set for release in September. “We are doing an ‘Are you serious with this thing?’ special edition, only 150 copies, only vinyl. It’s three songs. It’s called Canadian Patriot Waitress. It’s the most fun I’ve had recording music in a long time, and when I listen to it, I smile so big.”
It’s that EP that the duo will feature during their local stint this month. On Saturday, September 13, the pair will team up with DeLore at Off Broadway. (They’ll also play Ste. Genevieve on Friday the 12th, at a winery owned by Fisher’s family, Watertower Wines.) While their recordings more than highlight their music, it’s the live setting where Fisher and Carpenter truly shine, two voices and two guitars blended in near-perfect harmony.
“We would really like to play in the USA more,” Fisher writes. “Europe is great, but we’d love to come back to our roots if we can find an audience beyond our beloved STL.” As it is, our region’s lucky to claim them.
For more info, go to ianfisheronline.com.
Now Hear This
John Donovan, Bernadette: In crafting an EP of lovely acoustic indie-folk, John Donovan (johndonovanmusic.com) was seeking simplicity. For starters, he wanted a lean handful of tracks, so as to be “easily digestible as I try to break into the local scene.” In addition, he’s the sole musician on a mini album that he constructed at home, using only a pair of condenser microphones and the PC-based software Reason. “I’m very meticulous,” Donovan says of his home recording habits. “It is enjoyable for me. I like the amount of control, the amount of flexibility it allows me. I’ve recorded in studios before, and it’s intimidating to me to have someone else pushing all the buttons.”
Donovan came to St. Louis in 2007, as a music student at Saint Louis University. He’s lived here since then, save for a year when he headed back to his native Dallas. “I originally came here to attend a good music program,” he recalls. “But I fell in love with the city through that and decided that this is where I wanted to be.”
As someone who’s “worshipped them equally through the years,” Donovan’s comfortable with people citing Bob Dylan and Paul Simon as influences. (References to Mumford & Sons, though, confuse him.) He’s also a member of the folk band Trotting Bear, and the folk-rooted tracks on his current EP come from a two-year cycle of songwriting. “I’ve been hearing a lot of positivity about it,” he says. “I wanted this whole thing to be viewed as a full work. That was definitely a goal of mine, not to be a hodgepodge or sampler. I’ve done a seven-song release before, but never something as short as five. It’s a little challenging to be that concise, but I really enjoyed that challenge.” Bernadette is available as a digital download on his website.
