Joël Fafard

Joël Fafard
LIVE at The Back Room
27th February 2020
Doors at 6.30pm

Presales $20 or $25 at the door

Tickets available instore at Lotus Realm
or online at undertheradar.co.nz

Joël Fafard

Harlan Howard used to say that all you need for a great country song is three chords and
the truth.
Maybe so, but when you take simple, southern-style country, folk and blues music and put
it in the hands of a killer guitarist, a whole world of people who never even knew they liked
country, folk and blues music in the first place, start sitting up and paying attention.
After successfully making old sound new again with his last two efforts, Borrowed Horses
and Cluck Old Hen, Fafard set out to reverse the tide and make the new sound old with his
latest album, Fowl Mood. The songs were born in the woodshed next to Fafard’s Studio.
The first melodic themes and bone structures came from chopping wood in the rain to heat
the family home.
“It seems there is nothing harder than keeping a song simple. It’s the reason the last two
records were based on old classic southern tunes. I was studying how to get inside a
simple song.” muses Fafard. To get the right feel for Fowl Mood it had to be recorded live
off the floor, which has become the standard recording practice for Fafard ever since he
recorded the Juno-nominated record, ...and another thing... in 2006. Such a humble
recording practice can reap great benefits, but is not very common in the digital era of pitch
perfect polish. Over half the tracks on Fowl Mood are first takes. “The vibe was good and
we just kept moving onto the next song”, recalls Fafard. “I was feeling free, the solos were
improvised. It turned out pretty much the way I hoped it would.”