While writing his latest solo effort Fables in a Foreign Land, available May 20th on Fat Possum Records, John Doe tapped into our current moment by looking back, setting the loose-concept album in the 1890s, following an unnamed cowboy traversing the plains of the western United States at the tail end of westward expansion.
Though he had no idea what lay ahead when he first conceived of the project, the themes of loss and desolation that weave their way through the tales sung, told, strummed and drummed up by Doe and collaborators Kevin Smith (a member of Willie Nelson’s band) and Conrad Choucroun, alongside a guests like Shirley Manson of Garbage, and his longtime collaborator Excene Cervenka of X, are gnawingly prescient.
“I started dreaming this up in probably 2019 and it wasn’t something that was calculated or premeditated in any way. The songs just started coming out like that and then I realized, probably the third or fourth song in this cycle was the song “Never Coming Back” and then I thought: oh, this is a song about pursuit and escape and things like that and I had already settled on… because of being,” Does sighs, “set up with all these modern devices, which I, you know, I’m grateful for.”
Doe sought a return to simplicity, in sound and vision, and found inspiration in reflecting on the often austere lives of those who slogged through the fin de siècle in the mythic west of American empire. As it turns out, the sudden cessation of live music and a nationwide lockdown was just the ticket for Doe to realize these ambitions: “[circumstances] demanded that this is the way that it’s going to be. I suppose we could have had a different rehearsal space and made some crazy psychedelic record but this is what we had and what we ended up doing. Like I said, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity because we’ll all get busy. Luckily, we’re going to be able to carve out some time to do some touring behind it, but there might be a different bass player because we all defer to Willie Nelson, as it should be,” he laughs. “Sometimes the more options that are available makes it difficult. It makes it more difficult to come up with something that has its natural boundaries, and I didn’t even think of this until now, but that’s similar to the way you had to live or have to live if you’re living hand to mouth. In the old days you didn’t have all these options because you just had to make sure that the roof didn’t fall in and make sure the bears didn’t get into their food stores and you could find enough or kill a turkey once a week or whatever.”
The result is an album that, more so than any other solo endeavor by Doe recalls his groundbreaking punk band X in tone, if not style, a similarity that Doe acknowledges emphatically. When asked about his plans on touring and translating the experience and sound of writing the album with friends in a backyard to a stage, he responds with excited expectation: “I can say that with a certain setlist and repertoire you can turn certain X songs and any other solo material into something that sits right alongside these, and I can say that with certainty because I’ve done it and it’s good! One of the reasons I think I went down this path is because I got tired of having to orchestrate more than two or three instruments. Like, don’t play here, play there, don’t do that, and maybe some people play too much. What about just playing a song?”
Earlier, he had ruminated on how a folk album like Fables in a Foreign Land and his songs in a punk band like X shared a common thread, just as a modern audience can relate to the characters that populate Doe’s imagined ‘foreign land’ of the 1890s: “It was actually pointed out to me by my daughter who said, ‘Well you know dad,'” Doe laughs, “‘there’s a lot of themes of isolation and loneliness and that’s kind of what we’re going through nowadays’ and I thought: ‘oh, fair point!’ People might be able to relate to this because of what they’ve gone through, but also the X records had some of that as well and I chalk that up to…” Doe pauses in thought before continuing. “Music is a great communicator, and you can hear things, you can interpret things in the song, differently depending on how you’re feeling, and it will be more meaningful.” He pauses again before continuing, “the stronger you’re feeling it the more meaningful the song can be.”
Watch the video for “Never Coming Back” here:
For more from John Doe, find him on Instagram and YouTube.
Photo courtesy of Greg Jacobs
