Last year, Jason McNiff delivered his seventh full-length album, Dust of Yesterday, “an autobiographical journey of his life so far, a threnody to past places, events and people, a lamentation for lost youth…”
Later this month, Jason returns with his new album ‘Tonight We Ride‘ (24th June), an album that grew out of his lockdown online ‘Sundowner’ gigs which surprised him with how live and intimate they felt. Most of the thirteen songs on the album are by songwriters that inspired his writing and playing. They include Leonard Cohen, Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan and Bert Jansch. It was from watching Bert every week over a six-month residency at the 12 Bar Cub in Soho that he learned fingerstyle guitar that he puts to great use in his latest single.
Today, we have the pleasure of sharing the video for his new single Fisherman’s Blues, the title track of The Waterboys’ 1988 album, which saw the band shift to a more traditional folk-roots inspired sound. Mike Scott once revealed that some of the lyrics were inspired by W. H. Auden’s poem “The Night Mail”, in which a night train carries the mail through the Scottish countryside. Interestingly, in his comments below, Jason picks up on that railroad theme, imagining Woody Guthrie writing the song in a box car across America. However, what makes his cover work so well is his stripped-back approach. His fingerwork on that beautiful National guitar was made for this song, and his well-travelled vocals bring those words alive again. It’s like hearing the song for the first time again, alive with poetic vibrance. Even the video by Minus Tone, while filmed on the South Bank in London, often looks like a scene from a trackside on the Delta.
Jason: I love Fisherman’s Blues. I feel like it could’ve been written by Woody Guthrie in a box car across America. It was an immediate choice when it came to picking tracks for my covers’ album and I loved seeing how it fared played on a National steel guitar, like some kind of depression-era blues.
The video was made by the very talented Minus Tone. We went down to the river in central London, at a place on the South Bank, where the quick receding tide reveals a beautiful beach! The idea is I’m some kind of City worker type, yearning for escape…
Tonight We Ride
1. Running From Home – Bert Jansch
2. My Proud Mountains – Townes Van Zandt
3. Tonight We Ride – Tom Russell
4. Tomorrow Never Knows – The Beatles
5. One Too Many Mornings – Bob Dylan
6. I Remember You – Jason McNiff
7. Fisherman’s Blues – The Waterboys
8. The Open Road – Bert Jansch
9. Tunnel Of Love – Dire Straits
10. Shadow Ships Of Deptford – Jason McNiff
11. Hard Times – Stephen Foster
12. Precious Angel – Bob Dylan
13. Moving On – Leonard Cohen
Release date: 24th June 2021