history of – Page 2 – Fighting Whiskey

News From The Week That Was

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.

News From The Week That Was

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”.