NORTHFIELD — Meredith Fierke’s first album, “The Procession,” almost happened by accident.
Last March, Fierke sat down with Paul Marino, the owner of Xeojax Production Studios, and told him that she’d like to make a short album. Fierke had never done any recording on that scale before, and she wanted to get her feet wet before attempting a full-scale production.
“I envisioned this as a stepping stone to making an actual album,” Fierke said. “I just wanted to do it and get it done.”
Halfway through the recording process, however, a door opened for Fierke.
“I started getting all these ideas,” she said. “It turned out to be this big thing that we didn’t expect.”
The result is a hauntingly dark, ethereal album, on par with anything coming out of the Minneapolis music scene these days.
MEREDITH
FIERKE
Age: 27
Hometown: Northfield
First instrument she ever played: Alto saxophone in fifth grade
On her playlist right now: “Dress” by PJ Harvey, “Bang Bang” by Nancy Sinatra and “The Greatest” by Cat Power.
What music means for her: “It’s something very comfortable for me; it centers me.”
Fierke, a Northfield resident, will unveil “The Procession” at a special CD release party at 8 p.m. Friday at the Grand. Tickets for the event are $8, and are available at the door. The CD release is being hosted in conjunction with ArtSwirl, Northfield’s annual arts celebration.
It’s somehow fitting that local musician Fierke’s debut album, “The Procession,” is about making transitions in life. After all, Fierke’s album marks the culmination of her own musical transition.
When she began the recording process, Fierke wanted to make a bare-bones album, featuring only her acoustic guitar and vocals. Once she began collaborating with Marino, though, things started snowballing.
Marino recruited Minneapolis-based artists Chris Koza, Luke Anderson, Joe Christenson of White Light Riot and Rob Morrow of Scaredy Cat Blackie to come in and collaborate on “The Procession.” Koza played bass and acoustic guitar for the album, Anderson backed Fierke and Koza up on drums and Christenson and Morrow added some additional flavor to “The Procession” on electric guitar and organ, respectively.
“Once we started adding things like drums, we started diving into a fuller range,” Marino said. “It eventually just progressed into being a little more elaborate than what we originally planned.”
Fierke had already done recordings before, but she says her level of involvement with “The Procession” affected the way she approached her music.
“I’ve learned to think about songs in a different way,” Fierke said. “I knew there was more, I just didn’t know how to get there.”
Fierke credits Marino, Koza and the others with much of her musical growth.
“I loved every minute of the recording process,” she said. “Those guys are the professionals; those guys are the ones that come and sit down for three hours, and by the time they leave, you have something you didn’t know could have been.”
Still, Fierke knew what she wanted when it came to her own album.
“I didn’t want it to be super-compressed or poppy,” she said. “Generally speaking, I wanted it to feel more raw, like you could be sitting there.”
Many of Fierke’s songs also circled around the theme of transition or change, so much so that she decided to name the album “The Procession” — a title that she says centers upon an image of a funeral procession, and all the ritual, ceremony and transition the image implies.
“It’s about this move, or this transition in life,” Fierke said. “And how do you get there? It’s through these rites of passage.”
“She’s very talented,” Marino said. “She hears what she wants.”
— David Henke can be reached at dhenke@northfieldnews.com or 645-1100.
Registered members who identify themselves by name are authorized to automatically post comments to stories. Readers who wish to remain anonymous submit comments to a pending queue, where they will be reviewed for approval within 24 hours of their submission. To determine the author of a comment, click on the user name. Those who identify themselves will be given broader boundaries to express their opinion. Only those anonymous comments that contribute to the conversation in a thoughtful, respectful, civil manner will be approved. The decision to approve or reject a comment is a subjective one and is ours alone. Authors of rejected comments will receive an email response.
Email
Print
Digg
Del.icio.us
Facebook
MySpace
StumbleUpon
Google
Yahoo!
