A bit of a recovery week in The Cube this week. While Boyne’s foot woes continued, Scarfo developed some of his own. Puffer added a burnt arm to the mix and we were a banged up bunch. We focused mostly on vocal layering and mixing so as to not strain ourselves too far. The older you get, the longer it takes to recover. Still, another tune for you this week, “Ugliness in You”.
A History of ….
Songs About Crying, Track 3: Ugliness In You
Simply put, this is a song about disillusionment. It looks at a moment when a person realizes that someone or something else isn’t what they initially appeared to be. The main line, “Now I see it/The ugliness in you” is something that Scarfo scribbled down on a notepad in a hotel room years ago. As the disillusionment grew across the last two years, the song started to come together as a whole.
Three Things I’ve Learned This Week
Don’t start a fart war with an 8 year old boy unless you are prepared to lay waste to your entire home.
For me, 41 is “Get a cane years old”.
A penis themed colouring book is an acceptable birthday gift?
This was an off week for us as we were dealing with some family obligations and injuries. Even though nothing new is brewing The Cube this week, enjoy track 2 from Songs About Crying, “Run”!
A History of ….
Songs About Crying, Track 2: Run
Inspired by the “Milton’s Incident”, Run is a song about bullying. For those unaware, last year, the city where we are from, Kitchener, Ontario, became internet famous for a few days. And as you can imagine, when someone or somewhere becomes internet famous for a few days, it isn’t for positive reasons. A video surfaced of an autistic gentleman being physically and verbally abused by bar owners in the city.
By far the heaviest most ‘rock’ song on Songs About Crying, at its heart, Run is about bullies. Even though there are distorted guitars, we felt that the slower pace and the themes of the song made it fit here.
The three verses look at different aspects of bullying. The first, is the traditional type of bullying that older generations faced. The second verse looks at how the cyber world has now given bullies the opportunity to attack their prey even when they aren’t in the same room. Lastly, the third verse looks at the way that some people now use the term ‘bully’ to actually bully others. Needless to say, this is where some of the NSFW language comes in as it is incredibly infuriating.
Three Things I’ve Learned This Week
Getting older means getting way too excited about buying a new bed.
Through a cat’s eyes, my head resembles a springboard.
All else fades, but if you can find someone who will laugh with you when you have simultaneously smashed your faces into the same thing, that is forever stuff.
It’s Heeeeere!!!! The first track from Songs About Crying, “Shivers and Shakes”! See below for more details, or visit it on the releases page here.
A History of ….
Songs About Crying, Track 1: Shivers and Shakes
Shivers and Shakes is one of the older tracks, one of the ones that predates The Cube. Scarfo was just getting back to piano, and saw an opportunity. Writing in B flat and D minor has always seemed to him to have a special sound – something about D minor just seems a little sadder than the other minor keys. This isn’t something that had been previously explored as this is not a key that is particularly conducive to guitar. It isn’t impossible, it’s just uncomfortable with a lot of bar chords and we can be lazy from time to time.
Lyrically, at this point in Fighting Whiskey history, Scarfo and Boyne were toying with different approaches to writing, and this is one that fell into a particular category. The idea was to have one of the two tell the other a story or what they wanted the feeling to be about, and the other would write the lyrics based on that. In this case, Scarfo presented an idea to Boyne and Boyne did the writing. The reverse of this was done on “Touching Stoves” from Dandelions, wherein Scarfo wrote lyrics to something Boyne expressed.
We wanted this to be the first song released from Songs About Crying in that it is pretty thematically indicative of the rest of the record to come. Sound, tone, different keys, slower – this song has a little bit of all of that.
Three Things I’ve Learned This Week
No one in Fighting Whiskey is as excited about “Fun Drunks” as Euro is.
A child who won’t clean his room will gladly clean a softball or home plate without being asked.
The best beer isn’t just free beer – it’s surprise free beer.
I’m not going to waste too much time with a regular weekly update as we have a big announcement! We’ve talked about it for a while now, and it is finally set to be released. On Tuesday, August 9th, 2022, Songs About Crying will go live to the world.
In the meantime, starting next week, we will be featuring one of the tracks with a ‘history of’ on the song as well as an audio preview. Every Tuesday (I’ll be doing it Monday night, but at different times, so Tuesday it will be guaranteed to be here), there will be a new track, its history, meaning and a chance to hear it before the album comes out. The album cover that you see is essentially a negative of Dandelions – for an idea of why and what’s coming, see the History of “Songs About Crying” below.
A History of ….
Songs About Crying
When we started writing back during the pandemic, we were finding that our songs fit into two general categories – “angry” and “sad”. Originally, we were going to put it all together on the first record, but as we got down to the nitty gritty, it became apparent that the two types of songs really didn’t fit together on one album. We made the decision at that time to split it into two records – the heavier, more upbeat stuff became Dandelions and Failure, and what was left over, we were going to turn into “Songs About Crying”. Much like not every song on Dandelions ended up being angry, not every song on Crying is sad, but there is a unifying theme.
Some of these songs are as old as the first songs from Dandelions – a lot of it was written simultaneously. A few of them are as new as being first conceived less than two months ago, so this really has been a work in progress for more than two years.
If you are expecting more of what happened on Dandelions, you will want to adjust your expectations. As I mentioned a few weeks back, this will be ‘your mom’s favourite Fighting Whiskey album’. For everyone who has ever said, “Scarfo, why don’t you play more piano?” or “Boyne, try and do something a little more serious”, this is the album for you.
Stay tuned next week for information on the first track, “Shivers and Shakes” … fun little video teaser below. Okay .. maybe not fun, it’s just Scarfo playing one of the parts on the piano for less than a minute, but it’s fun to us.
Three Things I’ve Learned This Week
If you are going to buy groceries for your vegan friend, they’d best be sexy groceries.
I need to start ignoring my phone on Friday afternoons.
Learning a Harry Chapin song teaches you an important lesson – Harry Chapin was a dick.
A heavy recording week this week in The Cube. We added more layers to the newest song, tentatively titled, “Happens to You” and completely re-recorded the mystery cover that we were talking about a few weeks back. We wanted to slow it down a bunch from the original, but what we had put down was simply too slow, so we started again 10 beats per minute faster and think we have a version that will work much better.
A History of ….
The Cube, Part III: From Dandelions to Crying to Fun
Now that we were set up, it was time to get back to work. With the limited space, we had to hang the guitars from the walls and mount a number of shelves to cut down on the clutter. Still, once it was ready to go, the minimalist approach really helped. Having the piano next to the recording rack led to a whole lot more piano tunes, a lot of which ended up going on Songs About Crying. One or two are even sneaking their way onto “Fun Drunks”.
The current setup is one that we are very comfortable with and are hoping to work with for a very long time.
Who or what will the next history focus on? Only one way to find out …
Three Things I’ve Learned This Week
The more you scream, the more water gets in your mouth.
When a “Barry White” part is needed, somehow Scarfo is the go to.
Boyne jazz scatting is hilarious. Cause we needed more scat.
Howdy folks – sorry I missed last week, I was feeling more than a little under the weather. The focus over the last two weeks has truly been on the third record. I know that seems silly with the second not even being released yet, but we are in a ‘sit and let the mixes marinate’ part of the process with “Songs About Crying”. My hope is that by the next time I am writing the news, we will have a release date for SAC put together for you.
In the meantime, a note about the third album – tentatively titled, “Fun Drunks”, we are taking yet another complete left turn. Following almost a year of focusing on serious and the more melancholy, the songs for Fun Drunks are the complete opposite. They’re meant to be exactly what the title suggests – fun. On Friday, as we were doing a group lyric session for a new track, there were multiple times that we had full on giggle fits. 3 middle aged men, sitting in a room (or a Cube, see below), giggling like idiots. The rule was, if it gets a laugh in the room, it gets written down.
A History of ….
The Cube, Part II: From Stink to Party Cube
When the time had come to move, one of the issues was the loss of square footage. The new room was going to be far smaller, and while we picked up a separate area for storage, the actual recording/jam/hang space was about a quarter the size of the ‘hallowed hall’. We aimed to be optimistic about this and Puff had the line that really turned things around, “It will be our party cube!”. From this statement came the name . . .
What is now The Cube started as a plumbing company’s storage supply room. There will be a ton of pictures that will accompany this part of the story, but the pictures can’t tell the most important part of the transformation – getting rid of the smell. Anyone who has ever been in a jam hall knows that, by nature, they don’t smell like roses, but this room had an olfactory bite that was beyond even our ability to ignore. We ripped out the subfloor, tore down a wall, bleached, sealed and painted. Once Puff had thrown down the carpet tile, we were finally in a spot where it could live up to Puff’s billing – it was now our ‘party cube’.
Once we were set up, it was back to work and we were weeks away from finishing Dandelions.
Three Things I’ve Learned This Week
Being grown up doesn’t mean not talking about how funny farts are. You just talk about how funny it is to fart loudly in a bank.
I now know what a ‘piss dot’ is.
Saying, “There are already a lot of scatological references here . . .” doesn’t keep the rest of the references out of a song. Or out of the 3 things I’ve learned.
The countdown is on to the release of Songs About Crying! We are hoping to have a release date out to you by next week. I know that we have been mentioning it a lot here in the last little while, so a little note for those who are new to the concept. As we were writing Dandelions and Failure, we had a number of slower, more piano and acoustic based songs that didn’t really fit with the first record. We had put them aside and are now looking to release them as a full album. This will be nothing like Dandelions – slower, softer, more introspective. Maybe this becomes your mom’s favourite Fighting Whiskey record?
A History of ….
The Cube, Part I: Plucked From The Hallowed Halls
Dating back for more than ten years, Scarfo had always jammed out of a room in what was called the “Hallowed Halls” of Courtland. This is where For The Hard Way and The Dexter Holmes story wrote, rehearsed and recorded. After a leak made the SexDwarf room uninhabitable, Boyne joined the boys and the hall was always a bustle with creativity. It was in this room that Fighting Whiskey was born. Songs like Old Gil from Dandelions and Impression of You from Songs About Crying were laid down here.
Unfortunately, on an evening in May of 2021, Scarfo received an unnerving phone call. There was water pouring out of the room. Boyne and Stroker (long time friend of FW and guest vocalist on “Good Man” went to investigate and the news was grave. There had been a leak from above and the hall was flooded. Even worse, the damage inside the ceiling was inevitably going to lead to black mould, so there was no choice – Fighting Whiskey had to move.
The only remaining available room in the building was a former plumbing company’s supply room. More on the transformation of this next week in part 2 – “From Stink to Party Cube”.
Three Things I’ve Learned This Week
Baseball games played by 8 year olds do not have stellar defense.
When Boyne and Linz get chatting, you either need all of the context or to ignore random sentences you hear.
I know that we have been silent for quite some time and you have our deepest apologies. Going forward, we will be adjusting the blog post dates to Mondays to avoid ‘life getting in the way’ issues. This will serve as the post for this Monday, and then starting Monday May 9th, we will get back to doing this on the regular – I mean it this time.
News From The Week That Was
We’ve been making progress on all fronts across the previous few weeks. Songs About Crying is nearly locked in – we don’t have an exact release date at the moment, but you can expect that it will be released by early summer. On the acoustic performance front, we are putting together a set that we are pretty proud of – it will be arriving at a fine establishment near you very soon. For any fine establishments looking to book us, please email booking@fightingwhiskey.ca and we can discuss. Additionally, we have the bones of 8 songs written for the 3rd album, which again will be a complete left turn from everything that we have done up until now. Lastly, in the spirit of ‘Get To Know Your Whiskey’ and ‘Fighting Whiskey Recommends”, we will be starting a new feature next week “History of . . .” wherein we will look at the history of all things Fighting Whiskey. Next week will be part one of “History of The Cube”.
Three Things I’ve Learned This Week
It appears that I have unfairly besmirched the reputation of Grimsby, Ontario. I apologize to all Grimsbians.
It is possible to, in the same day, get high and mighty about a child getting spaghetti sauce in his eyebrow while later not noticing a glob of icing in your beard. Humbling.
I drastically under promote the awesome relationship I have with my mom. Sorry mom.
Hi everyone, apologies on the couple of missed weeks. I just wanted to give a quick update so that you knew that we were still kicking. The reason for the lack of updates over the last couple of weeks is due to a couple of personal issues on my (Scarfo) end. The first is a very happy one, I recently got engaged! The second, less so. Last Wednesday, my family tested positive for COVID, and while initially testing negative, I tested positive on Thursday. I’ve been pretty laid up in bed over the last little while, so I haven’t had a chance to get word out to everyone. The regular updates will return next week. In the meantime, see below for the 3 things I’ve learned this (these past three) week(s).
Three Things I’ve Learned This Week
A slip of the tongue led me to my new favourite way to agree – “Okie dick”.
During an illness, there is a number of times that people can say, “You sound like shit!” wherein it stops being comforting and starts to get offensive. That number is around 19.
Being out of The Cube for two weeks leaves me a little twitchy …
As things start to open up again here in Ontario, the focus in The Cube this week went back to bringing up our acoustic chops. We saw Puffer return after beating COVID and made some serious strides in terms of being able to perform live. I didn’t take any pictures this week in The Cube, so the side picture this week is Sam, Scarfo and Linz’s brave boy who suffered an injury this week. Sorry for the goofy lookin cone, dude. Glad you’re gonna be okay.
Get to know your Whiskey!
What is something you have accomplished as an adult that your younger self would be proud of?
Boyne: I broke some cycles.
Scarfo: My younger self was kind of a prick and wouldn’t appreciate who I am now. But he’d be into Dandelions and Failure.
Puff: My younger self was pretty blasé, but he’d probably be pretty stoked that I got a driver’s license… And still have all my hair. (A hearty middle finger from Scarfo on this one).
Who is your hero?
Boyne: Blindboy Boatclub.
Scarfo: Well, in second place for my hero is Chris Boyne. The rest of humanity is tied for first***. Joking aside, there are 3 people that I look to in terms of how to be a good man – my late grandfather, my dad and Steve Strohack.
Puff: Ringo Starr, cuz he’s to them good music skills and ye never seen him be a dick about anything to anyone. Just seems like a gracious and kind person, which is something to aspire to. (Scarfo suggests starting by not maligning the follicly challenged).
What did you want to be when you were small?
Boyne: The first thing that I can remember wanting to be was a Marine Biologist – that did not last long.
Scarfo: A garbage man. I think they call it ‘sanitation engineer’ now, but when I was a kid, it was garbage man. Hanging off the big truck, lifting the dumpsters with the truck forks – it was like working inside of a transformer.
Puff: An artist, cause I wanted to spend as much time as possible drawing. I’d like to spend more time drawing now …
***Note: Line borrowed from the late, great Bobby “The Brain” Heenan
Three Things I’ve Learned This Week
Boyne isn’t shy about telling you when you look orange.
Hamsters are nocturnal. (Not funny, just didn’t know that and learned it this week.)
There are some people out there who have a real disdain for Grimsby, Ontario.
