From
A Fountain
Shale
& Sandstone (Park The Van)
From a Fountain is the name for all varieties
of music by South Dakota artist Douglas Kirby. Kirby has been
in Philadelphia's National Eye for years and continues to
collaborate on their recordings. Shale & Sandstone,
From a Fountain's debut album featuring a rebel band of time-traveling
Native Americans, is the proud release of Park the Van Records.
Though Kirby has lived in many places across
the United States, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, one of the safest
and more isolated cities in the country, is From a Fountain's
forever-home. He considers South Dakota to be an incredible
state that deserves to be honored musically in every way possible,
which he's illustrated on the labyrinthine website, fromafountain.com.
As you navigate through fromafountain.com, you traverse mostly
through America, as seen through South Dakota. There's much
about swimming pools, beaches, ice and outer space, in the
form of childhood ceiling-star-stickers. The site presents
older and forthcoming From a Fountain songs, attached to place-memory.
Much of the genesis of Shale & Sandstone can
be traced on this site -- beginning with early piano meditations
and demos, leading to the final album.
Shale & Sandstone visualizes a
rogue band of Native Americans, far in the future, who have
successfully remained hidden for generations. Organized in
present day and persevering throughout the years, they have
waited for the advent of time travel, with the intention of
going back to offer their pre-contact ancestors antibodies
to the European diseases that would eventually decimate them.
Thus safe-guarded, the Natives would likely be able to withstand
the onslaught of the European population and hold on to much
of their homeland and identity. The time-travelers' plan,
however, takes an unexpected turn - the ancient people turn
down the option of being innoculated, though not without much
wailing and despair at what was to befall their people. A
lost song called "Rise, All You Moderns" captures
this meeting and lamentation. As the old ones refused the
antibodies, the story ends there, for history goes on un-changed.
The remainder of the album reflects on meeting with the infinite
in this manner and tries to make sense of their decision.
Recorded over two years time, most of the instruments
and singing on Shale & Sandstone were played,
recorded, and arranged by Kirby in Philadelphia, with additional
drums, viola, cello, harp, and vocals provided by friends.
Mixing was done in a 7,000 square foot warehouse in Tea, South
Dakota, just outside Sioux Falls.
From 2006-2008, after living in Philadelphia
for many years, Kirby formed and spearheaded the art and music
collective, Cities of the Red Night, in Sioux Falls. They
rented the giant warehouse mentioned above. Cities of the
Red Night hosted a show on the local college radio station
in Sioux Falls called the B&G Marshmallow Malt Radio Spectacular,
named after a featured dessert from a local roadside soft-serve
stand. (Kirby is an ice cream/malt/shake enthusiast. He was
the only customer in the history of the Franklin Fountain,
an old-timey soda fountain in Philadelphia, to be offered
a line of credit at the shop. He paid his ice cream bill with
them at the end of each month.) After living in a cabin in
Joshua Tree, CA for a year, Kirby now lives in a reclusive
town in Marin County, CA where he spends much of his time
working on music, surfing and eating lots of ice cream.
Shale & Sandstone is out August
31, 2010 on Park the Van Records.
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