Ian Fisher Finds Solace For His Grief With 'Independence Day'
(Reybee) The dichotomy of mourning the death of a loved one from a lingering illness is something that songwriter Ian Fisher explores in his inspiring and emotional new single "Independence Day." While the grief can be overpowering, the sense of relief that they are now at peace can balance out the loss. "Knowing your mom is gone, but more free than she'd been in years... No more broken body to wear her down... Unfettered and free for her to travel to anywhere she wants to be... Anywhere I want her to be... Death as liberation... The freedom to be no one anymore and in being nothing to be everything," says songwriter IAN FISHER, in a stream of consciousness flow about mourning the loss of his mother. "Independence Day" offers solace in a sombre time, "feeling a hand on your shoulder when writing a song in front of a dark window looking out on the fields of the farm where your family was raised and seeing nothing but your reflection."
"In the immediate aftermath of my mom's death, I remember feeling like a planet had been removed from the solar system," he explains, reflecting on her 26-year fight against cancer that she ultimately lost last year. "Everything looked the same, but gravity was different. The orbital pull of things had been altered." "Independence Day" shows us that through loss and death, we still can find ways to celebrate our loved ones, see their spirit in everything, and know that they aren't in pain anymore.
Filled with cathartic emotion and release, he sings, "just outside / just outside the city limits / you're buried in the fields you played in" with a gutpunch of reality. "Death is something that we conveniently shove to the side and don't address very often. It can be unhealthy because it creates a situation where we think we'll live forever," Fisher says. "But everyone we know and have around us is going to die eventually. It's a miracle that we even have this moment right now."
Ian Fisher is a Missouri-born artist, and a dual citizen of the U.S. and Germany who considers Toronto, Vienna and Missouri all as his "home", he excels at making a style of music that Rolling Stone which has been described as "half Americana and half Abbey Road-worthy pop." "Growing up in a small town in Missouri in the '90s limited my options. I was raised on the country music that was on the radio and my dad's collection of classic rock vinyl," he says of his upbringing. "The boredom gave me nothing better to do than write songs and my dissatisfaction with being there made me dream so much of the world outside that it acted like a slingshot pulling me back till it released me and threw me to the other side of the world. Musically, my folk roots come from Missouri, but my time abroad made it more urban than country."
A prolific songwriter (he is rumored to have written nearly 2,000 songs) with over a dozen released studio albums, Fisher has caught the ear of the music world at large. Rolling Stone describes his music as "a world traveler's perspective on American folk-rock," while PopMatters applauds as "captivating," and No Depression describes it as "simple, yet emotionally complex meanderings... His voice is a hoarser Jim Croce, with pen ready to strike a la Billy Bragg meeting an old Johnny Cash notebook." Glide adds, "folk-rock sentimentality with imagery that would be at place in an old Ray Price song, Fisher taps into a sound that is at once moving and different."
With previous single "The Face of Losing" and new single "Independence Day" he concludes, "If they're going through hard times or something similar to what I experienced, then I hope that these songs will make them feel less alone."
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