Critically acclaimed singer/songwriter/guitarist Christopher Mansfield, who records as Fences, has unveiled his long-awaited new album ‘Bright Soil’ .
Stream the new album ‘Bright Soil’ on DSPs: https://onerpm.link/BrightSoil
‘Bright Soil’ spotlights not only a time of monumental changes in Mansfield’s life, but is perhaps his most cohesive album to date.
Mansfield assembled what he refers to as his “dream band” with lifelong friend Felix Pastorius (son of Jaco Pastorius) on bass and the late Jeremiah Green (Modest Mouse) on drums, Wesley Schultz and Ryan Lewis (Macklemore & Lewis) also add vocals and production respectively. Mansfield’s wife, Maxine, also appears.
Mansfield says, “My friend and brilliant actor Chris Bauer said ‘This looks like a world I couldn’t survive in unless I ate the pancakes.’ I think that’s what is stunning about the video. It is a very uncomfortable world. Although I was there and remember them as merely “locations”… they truly weren’t. It would take years of convincing to tell me what we shot was only pretend. Hannah is an absolute genius and the fact the entire thing was HER alone behind a camera is almost shocking. It’s my favourite video I’ve made and I wish I could film it again and again everyday.“
Fences will be performing at Americana Fest in Nashville on September 21st and has announced an in-store acoustic performance and reading at Nashville’s The Groove Records at 12pm on September 22nd, celebrating the launch of his new book of short stories ‘The Horses in Montana’ out in October.
When asked about ‘Bright Soil,’ Mansfield says, “I just wanted it to sound cohesive. With my previous full-length albums, I’d recorded them in different states with different producers, different drummers, different everything. For this, we had a room for a specific amount of time. That’s it. It was like, ‘Lock the door and don’t kill each other.’”
He adds, “I wanted to get people whose sound I loved so that if I wanted to, I could just leave and I could trust that they’d do their best. Jeremiah has a great natural flow to his playing and Felix is even more technically proficient than his father in some regards. I think he’s the best bass player in the world right now.”
For guitar he turned to Thomas Hunter of The Heavy. “I wasn’t being greedy but wanted to get the best players—it was like picking a soccer team in school. It was a joy.”
Fences also became a father during the cycle for the album. “As much as you feel like you’ve geared up for it, no matter how much you’ve prepared you really have no idea what it’s actually like,” he says. “I think I was blissfully ignorant of the magnitude before. But there was this beautiful thing about my wife being around and knowing that my daughter could hear the music. All the beautiful things that you would think I would think.”
Comments are closed.