On Wednesday July 10th, WagonWheel Presents… welcomes Seattle’s Massy Ferguson back to The Greystones. They will be touring the UK in support of brand new album Great Divides. Their songs are steeped in classic Americana, rich with imagery of highways, truck-stop coffee, whiskey, road-weariness, and bad motels. Massy Ferguson make cinematic roots music about the blue-collar aspects of life.
After two years away from the stage, Dave Woodcock & The Dead Comedians make their live return to open the show. Advance tickets priced at £8 are available from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/469738 and the venue (12-6pm), or entry will be £10 on the night. Doors open 7.45pm.
***MASSY FERGUSON***
For more than a dozen years, Massy Ferguson have proudly planted their boots on both sides of the country-rock divide, carving out their own brand of amplified Americana along the way. Based in Seattle, they’ve become international torchbearers of a sound that’s distinctly American, with a touring history that spans nine different countries. On their fifth album, Great Divides, they double down on their rock & roll roots, mixing bar-band twang with raw, guitar-driven bang. Gluing those sounds together is the songwriting partnership of bass-playing frontman Ethan Anderson and guitarist Adam Monda, whose songs spin stories of small-town adolescence, big-city adulthood, and the long miles of highway that stretch between.
Long before Massy Ferguson played their first show 2006, Anderson spent his childhood outside Seattle in the rural reaches of the Pacific Northwest. His parents were strictly religious, and he found himself at the local Pentecostal church almost every weekend, watching as his fellow congregants beat their Bibles and spoke in tongues. The spirit didn’t move him in quite the same way. In search of his own kind of clarity, Anderson turned to music: first to the country and folk artists whose songs reminded him of home, and later to the hard-edged rock bands who ruled the roost in Seattle, where he’d eventually relocate as an adult. Those two stylistic extremes — country and rock & roll — continue to rear their heads in his music. Anderson’s past continues to rear its head, too, and its woven throughout the dark, moody music of Great Divides. Massy Ferguson’s records have always sounded cinematic, like a Springsteen-worthy portrayal of blue-collar life in America’s northwestern pocket. If Great Divides continues that tradition, it does so in montage-form, zooming into various scenes of Anderson’s life for four minutes at a time. The details are rich, the context is implied, and the writing is stunningly simple, like the literal minimalism of Anderson’s favorite authors: Cormac McCarthy, Raymond Carver, Dennis Johnson, and Willie Vlautin. Songs like “Don’t Give Up On Your Friends” root themselves in his teenage years, delivering dual blasts of adolescent angst and anthemic, heartland-worthy hooks from the perspective of a boy who’s never left the county limits of his hometown. Meanwhile, “Can’t Remember” shines a light on Anderson as a 21 year-old Seattle newcomer, drunkenly talking to the cocktail waitress who’d later become his wife. By the time Great Divides reaches its ninth track, Massy Ferguson brings everything full-circle with “Wolf Moon,” a song that finds Anderson — no longer an out-of-place teenager, but now an adult with a wife, two children, and perhaps Seattle’s roots-rock band — dispensing road-worn advice to his sons.
Don’t mistake Great Divides for an Anderson solo project, though. Adam Monda, who helped launch the band in 2006, continues to play an integral role in the songwriting process, contributing melodic ideas and other launchpad ideas. Made complete by contributions from bandmates Dave Goedde and Fred Slater, Great Divides shines its light on dark memories, pivotal moments, small details, and the wisdom gained by years of doing unwise things. Massy Ferguson recorded the album with Martin Feveyear, known for his work with artists like Kings of Leon and Brandi Carlile. Some of the tracking sessions took place at a studio in Seattle. Others were hosted by Feveyear at his home on Vashon Island. Looking to capture a sound that was raw and immediate, the band kept things loose, throwing together arrangements on the spot and finishing lyrics moments before recording them in the vocal booth. As a result, there’s an urgency to Great Divides, from its widescreen-worthy anthems to its mid-tempo highlights. This is an album about a man’s attempt to understand the world around him, moving from the limited horizons of his childhood to the (slightly) clearer reality of his adulthood. It’s the punky, half-cocked confidence of college rock mixed with the hungover honesty of alt-country. In short, it’s Massy Ferguson — a band whose electric stomp sounds like the soundtrack to the American Everyman.
“First and foremost, Massy Ferguson are a rock band raised on crashing guitars and a driving beat but are not afraid to mix in a bit of refined country to shape their music in true American tradition.” Three Chords and the Truth, UK
“Seattle band Massy Ferguson further cement their alt country /roots rock status with another solid new album Victory & Ruins. The thirteen song collection focuses on the easy going narrative vocal styling of Ethan Anderson, who is mix between Tom Petty and Steve Earle.” – No Depression Magazine
http://www.massyfergusonband.com
***DAVE WOODCOCK & THE DEAD COMEDIANS***
Described by Americana UK as “The next big thing from Sheffield”, Dave Woodcock & The Dead Comedians released latest album Medicine in 2015 to great critical acclaim. The follow up to their 2011 album “Poisoned Nights & Bar Room Nights”, it found its way on to several end of year ‘best of’ lists and saw them raise the bar once again. They deliver booze soaked rock ‘n’ roll echoing Springsteen, Strummer and with a nod towards the likes of The Hold Steady.
“9/10….the finest blue collar heartland rock this side of the Atlantic” – Toast Magazine
“The perfect rock and roll band… absolutely alive with electricity and excitement” – Now Then Magazine
http://www.facebook.com/davewoodcockandthedeadcomedians
Facebook Event page:
http://www.facebook.com/events/400993794031360
