by Jane Roser
photo by EA Zimmerman
Dodging rubber bullets while participating in Occupy Oakland in 2011, performing a concert in a cave in Germany, touring with Dropkick Murphys and getting banned by Disney (“the best fucking show I never played”), folk-punk musician Bryan McPherson is one bad ass rebel with a cause.
Melding Americana, folk, alternative and punk into one exhilarating sound, McPherson’s latest album, Wedgewood (released on June 10th), pays homage to those who influenced him most- Bob Dylan, The Sex Pistols, The Violent Femmes, Ani DiFranco and Bruce Springsteen, as well as the eye opening time he spent witnessing the Occupy movement.
The title, Wedgewood, comes from the wood stove in the hut McPherson was living in while making the album. Located on the Chicken Foot Ranch in the Sierra Nevada foothills, McPherson isolated himself from the outside world for four months in 2013, working on his songs and figuring out arrangements. He then went to nearby Flying Whale Studios, located in an abandoned gold mine, to record the tracks.
“I had been living a minimalist lifestyle for quite some time already,” says McPherson. “I had everything I needed [living in the hut]: food, shelter, friends and music. One thing I missed while being in the mountains was the ocean. I grew up on the east coast, about a half mile from Boston Harbor, so I found myself getting claustrophobic; I need the ocean, the breeze, the sea gulls…but I didn’t miss traffic or driving.”
Photo by John Lacroix
McPherson explains that one of the greatest benefits of working in such a closed off environment is that it created the vibe and sound for his record. “It was wonderful to be able to work on the album all day and hammer out the arrangements. The forests, the trees, hills and canyons are all on this record. It’s a wood stove album, a campfire album; the smoke and fire are all in there.”
On Wedgewood, McPherson was able to spend all of his time exclusively working on the record. With no day job to go to, he could work on arrangements and performances all day, concentrating on creating an album you can listen to in one sitting, rather than making a record of songs that didn’t follow a cohesive theme.
McPherson’s vocals are distinctive; gritty, but comfortable, bringing an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia to his songs. He almost seems to me as a sort of modern Bob Dylan. One track off of Wedgewood I really loved was “Burn It Down”. McPherson explains that he had been attending several protests, including Occupy, and was angry at the government and all the corruption he was seeing.
“I saw the raw deal that people were getting and I thought I was witnessing the beginning of a revolution. I wrote that song in the middle of the night in a London hotel room. I had pretty bad jet lag so I was wide awake. Jet lag is trippy; it’s kind of like doing acid and washing it down with sleeping pills. All of that went into the song; it was just; ‘fuck it, burn it down, burn the whole thing down.’ It’s an angry, ugly, frustrated song. Destruction and fire are not necessarily nice things, but they do lead to rebirth and recreation and revolution.”
Currently on the U.S. leg of his tour, having just completed a trek around Europe, McPherson notes that the hands down best thing about touring is the live shows. When he gets time off, he tries to check out his surroundings, but touring is a lot of hard work and the majority of the day is spent traveling to the show, the day to day operations of being an indie artist and then, of course, the concert itself. “As a result of the shows, you get to connect with the people who connect with your songs,” says McPherson, “it’s an amazing thing.”
Once, while performing a show in France while touring with the Dropkick Murphys, McPherson recalls going onstage to a crowd shouting “Let’s go Murphys!” “That’s basically a fuck you, we want the Murphys, so I just rolled with it. I raised my arms up to make them shout louder, which they did, then I blasted out the first song in my set, full of piss and vinegar and they went nuts. I’ve never heard a crowd so loud.”
McPherson will be at Kung Fu Necktie June 16th, so at the show, be sure to yell loudly, go nuts and encourage the piss with a tinge of vinegar. Beats going to Disney World anytime.
