Ian Fisher - Koffer

Tracklist Hide Credits

1	If You Wanna Stay Bass, Engineer – Simon BauerDrums – Daniel SchrötelerMixed By, Backing Vocals, Organ – Ben MajchrzakVocals, Lyrics By, Guitar, Banjo – Ian Fisher
2	Candles For Elvis Bass – Kevin BachmanMixed By, Drums, Backing Vocals – Ben MajchrzakPedal Steel Guitar, Piano, Organ – Ollie SamlandVocals, Lyrics By, Guitar, Banjo – Ian Fisher
3	Koffer Bass, Engineer – Simon BauerDrums – Daniel SchrötelerMixed By – Ben MajchrzakVocals, Lyrics By, Guitar, Banjo – Ian Fisher
4	Thinkin' about it Bass, Engineer – Fabian KalkerMixed By – Hannes BiegerPedal Steel Guitar – Olli SamlandPiano – Ryan Thomas CarpenterVocals, Lyrics By, Guitar, Banjo – Ian Fisher
5	The Way To Go Backing Vocals – Rike SchefflerBass – Simon BauerDrums – Max AndrzejewskiElectric Guitar – Andreas LaudweinGuitar, Backing Vocals – Ryan Thomas CarpenterMixed By – Hannes BiegerPedal Steel Guitar – Ollie SamlandVocals, Lyrics By, Guitar, Banjo – Ian Fisher
6	Seriously Who Backing Vocals – The Reverend John DeLoreBass – Jordan ScannellaDrums – Tim NeuhausEngineer – Bryan PughGuitar – Curtis BrewerMixed By – Ben MajchrzakOrgan – Ryan Thomas CarpenterPedal Steel Guitar – Ollie SamlandSaxophone – Stefan ZeniukTrumpet – Dan BrantiganVocals, Lyrics By, Guitar, Banjo – Ian Fisher
7	Settlin'In Mixed By – Hannes BiegerVocals, Lyrics By, Guitar, Banjo – Ian Fisher
8	Whole Lotta Room Backing Vocals – Alexia Peniguel, Tim NeuhausBass, Engineer – Fabian KalkerMixed By – Hannes BiegerPedal Steel Guitar – Olli SamlandPiano, Guitar – Ryan Thomas CarpenterVocals, Lyrics By, Guitar, Banjo – Ian Fisher
9	Hail Mary Bass – Simon BauerDrums – Max AndrzejewskiElectric Guitar – Andreas LaudweinGuitar – Ryan Thomas CarpenterMixed By – Hannes BiegerPedal Steel Guitar – Ollie SamlandVocals, Lyrics By, Guitar, Banjo – Ian Fisher
10	Koffer (acoustic demo) Pedal Steel Guitar, Engineer – Ollie SamlandVocals, Lyrics By, Guitar, Banjo – Ian Fisher
11	Nothing Bass – Simon BauerDrums – Max AndrzejewskiElectric Guitar – Andreas LaudweinGuitar – Ryan Thomas CarpenterMixed By – Ben MajchrzakPedal Steel Guitar – Ollie SamlandVocals, Lyrics By, Guitar, Banjo – Ian Fisher

Notes

Tammo Kersbergen - Mastering on Tracks Expect 5 & 9
Calyx Mastering - Mastering on Tracks 5 & 9
Roy Knauf - Engineer at Track 5 & 11

Photos by Katharina Rabl
Logo by Anna Kohlweis
Layout by Brent Stolzer

Liner notes:
Ian Fisher is always writing and always traveling. With over a thousand songs under his belt and hundreds of concerts behind him, his new album Koffer highlights the diversity of his songwriting and captures some of the electric energy of his live performance. Koffer, which is the German word for “suitcase”, is Fisher’s most uptempo record yet with a one-of-a-kind mixture of Viennese flirtatiousness, Berliner grit, and Midwestern Country longing that only a farm-raised American boy living in Europe for the last decade can pull off. It is a collection of singles written over the last ten years and recorded over the last five. As Ian says, “A song that I can’t share feels like dead weight. Like a bag you carry around but never unpack.” Koffer will finally be “unpacked” on November 18th in corporation with Snowstar Records in Benelux, Popup Records in Germany, Earcandy in Austria, and Rocketta in Italy. Read more about each individual song of the album in the artist’s own humorous words below…

1. If You Wanna Stay
- I spend a lot of time in the Alps. The folks up there have perfected the art of drunken flirtation. After a night of a little cultural exchange, I wrote this song about that timeless tradition of theirs. I stumbled down the mountain when the hangover finally wore off and took the song to Berlin to share it with my friends Simon Bauer and Daniel Schröteler, who both play with the German experimental songwriter Hans Unstern and occasionally with José González in the Göteborg String Theory. We started playing and recording the song live in Simon’s studio. I came up with the idea to double all the drums, guitars, and bass and pan them to the far left and right sides of the mix. Simon doubled the bass line with contra bass and electric bass guitar in classic Lou Reed style and the song was finished quicker than a bottle of Tyrollean schnapps.

2. Candles For Elvis
- I wrote this song ten years ago, recorded half a dozen versions of it, and played it at nearly all of my thousand or so shows in the last decade. I just can’t shake the damned thing. I guess it’s because it’s a bit of a timeless and borderless theme. A guy grows disillusioned with the world and further away from society, turns to idol worship, and prepares for the apocalypse. When I wrote it, that guy was a Vietnam War veteran in my hometown in Missouri and that idol was Elvis on the thirtieth anniversary of his death. Nowadays when I sing it I imagine that guy could be just about any scared, hateful, rightwing, conservative person anywhere and that idol could be Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Hoffer, Le Pen, Wilders, or any other psychopath, wannabe demagogue. I wrote this song as an attempt to understand them. That’s the only real way to defeat them or get them to change their minds. I recorded it on Cherokee Street in St. Louis, Missouri, with one of my oldest friends and musical partners, Ben Majchrzak, at Native Sound Studio. Ollie Samland, otherwise known as the best pedal steel guitarist in Germany, was there and he played piano. I played electric guitar so loud that my ears are still ringing.

3. Koffer
- I like old Austro-Pop and a few classic German divas. I suppose that puts me in a lucky group of about four and a half Americans who even know who the hell Helmut Qualtinger was. The way I see it is who needs Rosetta Stone or any of that shit when you have Wolfgang Ambros and Hildegard Knef teaching you vocabulary? I usually start thinking my poor German is pretty great when I’m back in the US and don’t have to talk to anybody in “Deutsch”. That’s where I wrote my first and, so far, only song in the language of the countries I’ve been living in for the last eight years. I was in my shower in my cabin on my farm thinking of Marlene Dietrich nostalgically singing about how she still has a suitcase in Berlin. “Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin… blah blah blah something in German blah blah…” I myself had the misfortune of living in that city for about five years and every time I had to go back I looked forward to it just about as much as going to the dentist. There in my shower in my cabin on my farm I thought to myself, “I still have a suitcase in Berlin like Marlene, but that’s about all I have”. “Ich hab NUR einen Koffer in Berlin”. I dried off and wrote the song in a few minutes. Oh, I thought I was pretty damned clever. I went back to Munich a few weeks later and showed it to my friend Rosalie Eberle, who happens to be one of my favorite German lyricists, and, with a grin, she helped make sense of my babble. Danke Rosalie. From Munich I took my experiment up to Berlin and Simon Bauer and Daniel Schröteler turned it into a rock song. I screamed my lungs out and we ran my guitar through a doctored old East German radio while Hans Unstern sat in the mixing room with Simon engineering the song. Hans said that it would be a hit. I think he was joking, but Hans Unstern can say whatever he wants. He’s a fucking musical genius and a big inspiration behind this song. Danke Simon, Daniel, und Hans.

4. Thinkin’ About It
- Originally intended for the “Nero” album, this song was written on a hotel bed one afternoon between a soundcheck and a concert in some shitty little town somewhere in the Netherlands. I was feeling sorry for myself and a little in love with a girl in Amsterdam. I was in the middle of a hardcore Townes van Zandt and Jason Molina binge, thinking I was going to turn into an alcoholic and die alone sooner or later. Fabian Kalker produced the “Nero” album and forms the bedrock of this song with a simple and beautiful bass line on an old Hofner like the Beatles. We recorded the vocals on an old Neumann microphone from the sixties like the Beatles. My friend Cedric Muyres from Snowstar Records in Utrecht told me that the Beatles wrote some songs in the Netherlands too, so I guess I did that like the Beatles. I’m trying to think of other things about this song that would be like the Beatles, but nothing is coming to mind. Maybe that’s why it didn’t make it on to the first album and only made it on the second one with a collection of singles and a song or two in German… like the Beatles.

5. The Way To Go
- I never intend to confuse my audience, but I’m just so damned good at it. A few years ago I had the bright idea of forming three different bands (Ian Fisher & The Past, Ian Fisher & The Present, and, you guessed it, Ian Fisher & The Future) to denote the three different groups of musicians I often played with. Nobody ever understood it. Hell, I barely even understand it myself. Back in 2011 we recorded an entire album as Ian Fisher & The Past, but never released it. I put out a few of the songs on a 7” vinyl. If you’re among the seven people who bought that vinyl, then thanks. The other 493 copies are still in my basement where I’ve built with them a shrine to thank the creators of Spotify for their merciful €0.003 a song play. “Thank you kind sirs. Thank you.” (Insert Oliver Twist accent.) I digress… This song was supposed to be on the Ian Fisher & The Past album, it was on the 7” vinyl, and now it’s on the “Koffer” album. Recycling is a beautiful thing. Ryan Thomas Carpenter is a genius on piano and that’s what he usually plays with me now, but he played the second acoustic guitar line on this song. I don’t think he ever really liked playing guitar, but after that recording session with The Past we formed an acoustic guitar duo called The Present and he had to play guitar with me for the next three years. We ended that project though, Ryan’s back on piano where he belongs, and we’re back to my four syllable, googleable name.

6. Seriously Who
- I met the Reverend John DeLore at a flashmob music festival on a subway to Coney Island when I was living in New York City. We decided to release split 7” vinyls together that would be named after our favorite bartender, The Canadian Patriot Waitress. It’s a long story. Anyway, this song will be on one of those split singles one of these days. It’s more or less about the reoccurring existential crisis that follows concerts to audiences that don’t seem to give a shit. We recorded it in New York at Rubber Tracks Studio. It’s some studio that Converse shoes owns. They let us record for free and gave us shoes. Pretty good deal. Tim Neuhaus, who plays drums in the Blue Man Group in Berlin and with the German pop-star Clueso, is one of the nicest guys on earth… and an awesome drummer. He was on tour with me in the US when we recorded this and he is the backbone of the song. The horn section is a nice touch too.

7. Settlin’ In
- A friend’s ex-girlfriend lent me her banjo a few years ago. I looked up a couple chords online and started playing around with it on my bed in my cabin on my farm. I started singing along to the chords and something that sounded like a godless church song came out. I got out my phone and recorded the idea. This is the godless church song idea phone recording.

8. Whole Lotta Room
- Back when the album “Koffer” wasn’t even a spark in her father’s eye, the album “Nero” was released. I spent about two and a half years working on “Nero”. I spent about two and a half weeks on “Koffer”, but who’s counting? This song was intended for the “Nero” album. Then I decided to blow all my money on printing the album as vinyl records and not just CD’s. Aside from being expensive, fragile, and a pain in the ass to transport, another one of vinyl records fantastic qualities is that they’re only able to fit about forty minutes of music. Due to that fact, I had to cut three songs (“Whole Lotta Room”, “Thinkin’ About It”, and “Settlin’ In”) from the “Nero” record. I was so invested in the album that leaving those songs behind felt a little like sacrificing my first born. One of my main reasons to release this new record is to finally put out the unreleased “Nero” material. I love this song. It was written after my last relationship fell apart. Alexia Peniguel’s backing vocals capture the feeling behind it better than words could ever do.

9. Hail Mary
- Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, is a midwestern American farm town with a population of about 4,410 the last time I checked. Highway 61 runs through it. Bob Dylan wrote about that. The Mississippi River runs through it. Mark Twain wrote about that. And this girl named Mary used to run through it. Really. She was on the high school track team. I wrote about that.

10. Koffer (Acoustic Demo)
- I already told you all about the background of this song, so I don’t have to say anything more about that. The reason I added the demo version of this song to the tail end of this record is because I think it’s reckless and beautiful somehow. The whole thing was recorded live with a little ZOOM recorder in Ollie Samland’s apartment in Hamburg. Ollie had never heard the song before when he sat down and improvised that beautiful pedal steel guitar part that you hear. The song also wasn’t really finished yet. It’s filled with grammatical mistakes and I even improvised some lyrics at the end. To all you German speakers out there, I know some of the things I sing sound ridiculous. I know. I know. All that being said, it just feels young and fragile to me, which is the opposite of the other version of this song on this record and which is probably why I think it’s beautiful. The spontaneity behind this song and the entire album, for that matter, is probably why I’m releasing the thing.

11. Nothing
- Back in the US people really love their Jesus stuff. A friend of mine told me about a book in the Old Testament that he thought even a heathen like me could appreciate. I took his word for it because apparently Pete Seeger had written the song “Turn, Turn, Turn” after reading it. If it was good enough for Pete Seeger, then I thought it’d be good enough for me. He was right. The Book of Ecclesiastes was really inspiring in a non-traditional Christian way. It inspired me to write this song. I’ve performed it with several of the ninety three bands I’ve played with in the last few years. I played it with The Nowhere Train and with the Tour of Tours. We usually used it as the show closer. What better way to end a concert than with a song about death and rebirth. You got to tell the people the show is ending, but could go on if you ask nicely for an encore. That’s the basic gist of the Bible too, right?

Barcode and Other Identifiers

• Barcode: 8712488979137