"The Sound" is the Most Added song on Modern Rock; Switchfoot EF Interview; some old Jon Foreman/Fiction Family videos; Switzerland videos

For up to date (most of the time) news and original opinions before they hit the update, follow us on Twitter!

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In what can be considered a miraculous resurrection, "The Sound" is the most added song at Modern Rock/Alternative radio this week!



"The Sound" also vaults a spot to No. 31 on Alternative songs and is experiencing a resurgence. It falls a spot on Christian Rock.

"Your Love Is a Song" also continues to do well, making it's debut on Christian CHR, entering at No. 27. On Christian Songs overall, the song takes a one-spot jump to No. 36.

Great work with the requesting! See the bottom of today's post for instructions on how to help out!

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EntertainmentFocus on Youtube did a two-part interview with three of the guys from Switchfoot. Check it out:

Part 1



Part 2



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Keith Tutt, the esteemed cellist who has played in many a Switchfoot, Jon Foreman, and Fiction Family record and show, has uploaded a few new videos to Youtube. Here they are:

Southbound Train (Live from the Stageful of Awesome tour)



Learning How to Die



War In My Blood (Fiction Family tour)



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And, a couple of Switchfoot videos from Switzerland:

Needle and Haystack Life



Your Love Is a Song



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"The Sound" is re-surging on U.S. Modern Rock radio. To keep it going, make sure you're requesting the single at your local alternative station! Also, thanks to your efforts, the latest Footsoldiers campaign has been successful so far!

Let's keep it up! We MISSED all the countdowns last night. So, here are the voting links/instructions to get that going again:

Q101's Top 9 at 9 (Chicago)
KPNT's 5 Songs That Don't Suck (St. Louis)
91x Christy Taylor's Really Big Countdown (San Diego) (email christy@91x.com, subject line: Really Big Countdown Submission)

^If we can keep these up until the guys get back from Europe two weeks from now, we will have done an excellent job!

Fiction Family back on the road! Switchfoot to "dream up" their new website

Well folks, in the time we have been "away" (on my part, due to illness), Fiction Family has been back on the road playing shows that will lead up to their prime slot at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, which takes place tomorrow.

We have a fan-blog report about the show last night at the Grey Eagle in Asheville, NC. Here's an excerpt:

I really love the Fiction Family album, and they’re even better live. The venue is small, which lent itself to a more informal mood and allowed Jon Foreman to talk to individual people in the crowd–not me, but some people were lucky. The music was INCREDIBLE, of course. And Fiction Family covered Jon Foreman’s “Resurrect Me,” which they have recorded, but Jon also sang two other of his solo songs–”Behind Your Eyes” and “Your Love is Strong,” which is my favorite song from the seasonal EPs. Admittedly, there were tears in my eyes. So wonderful.

Read the rest HERE. :)

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Well, since Jon Foreman has been out with his other band, the rest of Switchfoot have been having some fun back here at home. They've been tweeting it up on the Twitter of their many doings and goings-ons. Going-ons? Goings-on? help. hehe

June 10th:
- Home from fun morning surf.

- Anyone catch the black keys/yeah yeah yeahs/metric show in Oceanside (north san diego) on Sun? So bummed I missed it, 10 minutes from me.

June 11th:
- What's up, It's drew, and I'm watching one last static tv show tonight, cause it's all digital rabbit ears from here on out.More l8r,-d

- Oh, and thanks everyone for all your messages and mentions. I just read like a hundred and could only write back a few. High fives, drew

June 12th:
- Early surf, then Dreaming up our new website with chad.

- About to destroy an amazing burrito with andy and chad at the camp in costa mesa. -tim http://twitpic.com/77ljb



- @nigeltttan yes, we love Singapore!

- Met some twitter friends on our way out of the restaurant. Headed back to sd with chad behind the wheel. http://twitpic.com/77rdx



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Looks like the boys are having fun. And by all accounts from Mr. Andy Barron, it looks like the new Switchfoot record's artwork is being finalized. We are definitely getting amped up, and it might not be long until we start hearing material from "Hello Hurricane." Plus, the possibility of a new website is definitely something that gets us all stoked as well.

Switchfoot, we can't wait! :D

Peace out everyone. Have a great weekend.

Complete Fiction Family First-week Billboard Charts

Billboard.com finally published the charts for last week's album sales, and Fiction Family did fairly well in all the charts it entered. Not surprisingly, it shot to the near-top of Christian retail, and fared well on the Internet and Independent front.

Here are the complete listings:

Billboard 200: #71
Billboard Top Modern Rock/Alternative Albums : #20
Billboard Comprehensive Albums: #73
Billboard Top Rock Albums: #25
Billboard Top Internet Albums: #14
Billboard Top Independent Albums: #8
Billboard Top Digital Albums: #14
Billboard Top Christian Albums: #3
Billboard Top Christian & Gospel Albums: #3

Congrats Fiction Family! Keep telling your friends about the album! Speaking of which, the Fiction Family contest ends five days from now, on Friday. Make sure, if you haven't gotten around to posting the banner/video around, it's not too late! It might be too late to win a prize, but that's definitely secondary to helping out a great band! SIGN UP!

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And, a nice Sunday treat. Jon Foreman rockin' the Kanye glasses!

Switchfoot's first show; Fiction Family goes to the Pastiness Magazine; New Album Fan reports

As you may already know, Switchfoot played their first show of 2009 a few days back (January 28 to be exact), and here's a sweet video of the class Jon Foreman cymbal-bash session for "Dirty Second Hands."



RAD.

Jeanna, our friend LOBH, reported that Jon said the following about the new Switchfoot record:

Jon said they'd be back working on the album in 3 weeks, not that that they would be DONE in 3 weeks. Also Thor, their engineer, was telling me they aren't going back into the studio till the beginning of march.

hmmm...?

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Next up, Paste Magazine posted a blog about the live performance that Fiction Family did in their studio. Check it out!

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NPR reviews Fiction Family:

The music has a built-in ache. "There's an icon in your mind that stands for happiness one day," they sing on the song, "Closer Than You Think." Using computer imagery — an earlier generation surely would have said "there's a picture in your mind" rather than an icon — Fiction Family strives to make simple, direct music, rooted in folk and 1960s pop, without going too limp on us.

Sometimes it doesn't work, as in the maudlin "Please Don't Call It Love," with its weepy, sleepy violin. And the lyrics on this album — which consist, for the most part, of carefully phrased examinations of heartbreak — aren't particularly original.

But Watkins and Foreman are smart enough to know which of their collaborations turned out best, and they lead off the album with "When She's Near," which is by far their most attractive, memorable song. With its Beatle-esque melody and soft harmonies, it is a lovely romantic trifle. Its chorus — "When she's near me all the world is new" — is the sort of starry-eyed sentiment that Fiction Family's music is ideally suited to transmit.

FULL STORY

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Another review (InReview):

A major deviation from each musician's more well-known projects, Fiction Family presents an emotional musical journey for the listener. Lacking flow at times, the disc presents itself more as being experimental — tossing out the rules and expectations throughout the recording process. In fact, in some instances, Foreman and Watkins didn't even make the tracks together. While one was touring, the other would add parts to a song, then leaving their product for the other to work on when he got off tour. Which, at times works better on some songs than others.

Fiction Family covers a Radiohead song!

darkmage93 recorded some videos from last night's Fiction Family show in Philadelphia.

The first one that really caught my attention is a cover of Radiohead's song, "Idioteque," which can be seen here:



Oh, and Jon Foreman's song, Resurrect Me

Fiction Family Hits No. 5 on iTunes' Top Albums Overall

Well friends, the reception for Fiction Family's new record is probably even greater than previously imagined. It's hit No. 5 on iTunes' Top Albums overall. Early yesterday, sales were a bit sluggish, as the album was stuck at No. 26 until later in the afternoon, when it shot up to No. 9.

As of right now, 2:51 AM PST on January 21, it is sitting at No. 5. Awesome work promoting so far, guys! Let's keep this up and spread the word even more!

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Well, theRemarkableBarefootGhost from the official Switchfoot message boards posted an amazing bootleg of the entire Fiction Family show in Grand Rapids on the 14th. Here's the setlist:

1. War in My Blood
2. When She's Near
3. Closer Than You Think
4. Betrayal
5. Not Sure
6. Somebody More Like You (Sean Watkins Solo)
7. Unknown, nicknamed A Friend You Never Call (Sean Watkins Solo)
8. For The Sender (Sean Watkins)
9. Mostly Prove Me Wrong
10. Elements Combined
11. Learning How to Die (Jon Foreman Solo)
12. Somebody's Baby (Jon Foreman Solo)
13. Your Love is Strong (Jon Foreman Solo)
14. Keep the Car Running (Arcade Fire Cover)
15. Look For Me Baby
16. The Man in Me (Bob Dylan Cover)
17. We Ride

And he recorded it all! Check it out now, and you can even download the mp3's to your computer!

Board Post

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Now, here's an incredible article about Fiction Family from Relevant Magazine. These guys keep on churning out great articles. Here it is, reproduced in its entirety below:

Relevant Magazine: Music Reviews - Fiction Family

In a scene dominated by the gentle, hypersensitive sounds of Sufjan Stevens, The Welcome Wagon and Fleet Foxes, Jon Foreman and Sean Watkins finally inject some manliness back into the acoustic guitar. Fiction Family, the culmination of two of our generation’s most prolific and respected songwriters, debuts as a masterful collection of tales about murder, adventure, lost love, and war that highlight each contributor’s strengths and personalities while managing to defy perceived expectations.

There’s a beautiful carelessness to this project - a work birthed out of rest, friendship, and unabashed innovation. With no immediate deadlines, rules, or formats to follow, Foreman and Watkins embark on a musical journey of the purist, most unadulterated kind. The album keeps one foot in the folk door (a familiar home for both artists) while audaciously messing with everything from techno beats to ’60s pop choirs to fisher price instruments. While the acoustic guitar remains fixed in the foreground, a symphonic cast of unlikely characters join the conversation. Chamber stings, tympanis, accordions and electric fuzz tones somehow manage to play nicely together. A few of the most arresting tracks replace traditional bass lines with resonate piano timbres, dark pounding drones that duel eloquently against intricate finger-picking patterns.

There’s an idea that the farther one departs from the traditional pop format, the less tangible their work becomes to the average listener. Not so with Fiction Family. Wildly inventive and spontaneous (track two entitled “Out of Order” sounds exactly how it reads) the work stands in victorious defiance against a crumbling conventional music industry. Hooks and phrases linger long after their first introduction, and are sure to induce an involuntary foot-tapping episode or two.

It’s the stories, however, that give the project a sense of timelessness. In the spirit of his Season EPs, Foreman channels cultural staples like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, even various Motown voices, conveying raw acoustic narratives like “Betrayal” and “War in My Blood” that read straight out of a great American novel. Watkins attaches his expertise for the hauntingly sorrowful love song that, in his case, always seems to relay more familiar truth than angsty longing. “Elements Combined” sketches the complexities of a woman, an intoxicating mixture of “earth, air, fire, and wine.”

But it’s not all love and war for the Family. Both Watkins and Foreman wrestle with the spiritual complexities of human nature. On “Closer Than You Think” the two critique the widely held notion of heaven as a distant and out of reach destination and suggest it may be “right under your feet.” In traditional Foreman lyrical style, “Prove Me Wrong” is laden with tender screams for affirmation and acceptance as it contemplates every man’s darkest struggles and fears through a solitary voice.

Those who have eased into a level of comfortable enjoyment of Jon Foreman’s solo projects and Watkins’ bluegrass repertoire may be caught off guard by the duo’s progressive departure from the predictable. Those looking for Switchfoot meets Nickel Creek will be disappointed. This is truly a profound exploration deep into the creative wells of two tremendously inventive and forward-thinking songwriters. Fiction Family is genius. It’s progressive without being high-brow, laid-back but fearless.



Listen to the entire Fiction Family album on The Drop.

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CJ Casciotta is an artist, writer, and cultural commentator with a passion for raising a new generation of innovative artists and forward thinkers. he writes music reviews and features for RELEVANT, blogs at conversantlife.com, and manages the independant artist platform, Undiscovered.

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Here's some other press articles about Fiction Family, most of them positive. We'll start with the not so positive.

The News Star (2.5/5)

The duo, San Diego neighbors and casual pals since high school, began collaborating a few years ago after their respective bands shared a bill with R.E.M. and Wilco. Some of their writing took place in a coffee shop, and that relaxed mood proves deadly for much of “Fiction Family’s” midtempo acoustics.

Foreman and Watkins trade lead vocals and juggle a multitude of instruments, including mandolin, ukulele and steel guitar, but those stabs at variety fail to resuscitate colorless, unmemorable tunes.

CCM Magazine

“You have those conversations with musicians where everyone is buddy-buddy, and you say, 'Oh yeah, we should write together.' But rarely does that ever happen,” explains Foreman. “It's like signing a yearbook where you tell someone to call you over the summer, but nobody ever calls. It's that known thing that you're not supposed to call. But somehow we saw each other again and again, and he ended up giving me the instrumental version of 'Betrayal.' He said, 'Hey, I've got this song and don't have any lyrics for it.' So I wrote some lyrics and a bridge and sent it back, and that was the beginning of it. So it was pretty natural making a record without trying to make a record, which is my favorite way to make music.”

New York Daily News

Celebrate the release of Fiction Family's self-titled debut album at the Bowery Ballroom tonight! You may recognize the members of this musical duo as Jon Foreman of Switchfoot and Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek. In their first collaboration, though, these musical pros are forging their own unique sound. 8 p.m.; $18. 6 Delancey St. between Chrystie St. and Bowery. (212-523-2111).

WSJ

A self-imposed low budget helped the project, Mr. Foreman said. "It allowed us the ability to fail. We worked under the auspices that we were making music to make music. Your limitations are your strengths. When you find the limitations, you work around them."

"It doesn't take a huge amount of money," Sean Watkins told me when we met late last year near Griffith Park in Los Angeles. "Technology has made it easy to make music -- which is why there's so much bad music. It's more about being smart and creative."

....

If the musical menagerie of "Fiction Family" doesn't adhere to a fan's impression of either Nickel Creek or Switchfoot, neither musician seems concerned. "We have so many people in our fan base who are up for anything," Mr. Watkins said.

"You can mix in all the colors you want on an album," Mr. Foreman told me. "Everybody has all their songs in alphabetical order on their iPod anyway. All the boundaries formed by commerce are now gone."

Silent Soundwaves

You’ll know before the end of your very first listen that Fiction Family is a brilliant and fulfilling piece of acoustic art that catches you off guard, thanks to its humble appearance and serendipitous intentions. It’s a combination of writers like this that put The Beatles and The Eagles on the map. Fiction Family is not only on the map, but is a gratifying point of interest for any music lover. If I could give it 5 and 1/2 waves, I would, because it’s really that close to perfection. A must-have, period.

CIAO. =)

Fiction Family plays "Friday, I'm In Love" by The Cure!

Here's a Youtube video of the Fiction Family boys playing "Friday I'm In Love" by The Cure. Ilike!:



"Betrayal" from the same show:


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Tristan Rader from CNC Media in Ohio, emailed us some gorgeous photographs from Fiction Family's First Show Ever, in Ann Arbor. Here they are below:










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CHARTS

Fiction Family keeps moving up the charts. "When She's Near" is sitting at No. 41 now on Triple-A radio! Keep requesting your stations to start playing the song, particularly these three:

WFPK/Louisville, KY:
E-mail: studio@wfpk.org
Call: (502) 814-WFPK (9375).

WXPN/Philadelphia
Phone: 215-573-WXPN
Email: requests@xpn.org
Web: http://xpn.org/requests


WEHN/Long Island, NY
Contact

Fiction Family Launches new Tour Blog!

Fiction Family have started a Typepad account, a la Daily Foot to recount the past tour.

Here are the first two posts that Jon Foreman have posted up:

January 13, 2009

show numero uno - ann arbor
well well well...

there is a first for everything and tonight was the first true show for our fictitious family! 

other firsts today include: 
my first time playing the ark. 
my first time eating at zingerman's. 
and my first fictional "blog" entry. 

(I'm not sure that I like the word blog,  incedently). Tonight was truly a crazy ride for me I haven't been that nervous/excited in a long time. It felt like caffeine... It was most certainly the deep end of the pool, or maybe like a musical bun-jee jump- where every song could quite literally smash into pieces on the rocks below: I loved it! So far the bun-jee chord is holding just fine. But the risk is always there- and I think that's wahat makes the whole thing so enjoyable. Sean, Aaron, and Tyler are such great guys. Together with andy, ryan and marshall off stage I have a really incredible feeling about this tour... 

Also, It feels so great to be out in a van again. I was talking to my friend Dustin about how nothing brings a band together like a van tour. As always, the only problem is the van itself. The belts are squeaking like a flock of birds, it has about 300,000,(000,000) miles on it, the door broke tonight, and it's uber, uber cold up here... We're taking it in to get looked at tomorrow. Well, off to the the rapids that are grand tomorrow in- we'll keep you posted!

peace,
jon 

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January 14, 2009

day two - grand rapids
yes
it's starting to come together... spent the first part of the day stuck in a red roof inn cause the van died on our way to grand rapids. Spent the second half of the day in an incredible old theatre in GR. The show was beginning to feel much more comfortable- much more intentional. loving it... playing a set of entirely new songs!


three things about today:
consumed: (among other things) two shakes. 
confessed: (among other things) an undying love for ice cream
conversed about: (among other things) the way to make ice cream from fresh fallen snow, lemon juice, and milk. 

I'm skeptical about the third item but I do sense a trend of sorts.

jon

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Some press about Fiction Family's full album stream:

Absolute Punk
Indie Vision Music
Driveby Media
Swearimnotpaul.blogspot.com

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And, here's an article from Relevant Magazine, interviewing Jon about his solo ep's, Fiction Family, Switchfoot, Kierkegaard, and the meaning of life. We've posted the entire thing below:

RELEVANT Magazine

There are only a handful of “Christian bands” who have crossed over into the mainstream without losing their roots. Jon Foreman and Switchfoot have been playing rock music full time, and surfing on downtime, for about 13 solid years. And even though the band has gone from Christian labels to majors and elsewhere, they’ve not yet fallen into musical (and spiritual) obscurity.

Before playing a solo show for To Write Love On Her Arms in Orlando, Foreman reminisced about the various projects he’s taken on over the past few years. “You do all these songs with a band, and you have an identity with them," he says. "But I think in music you’ve got all sorts of different styles and ideas that you’re always coming up with. Every artist that makes music listens to a variety of different sounds, and sometimes it’s amazing to venture off into new territory and explore some new places. That’s what the EPs are for me.”

Foreman’s EPs were released throughout the course of 2007 and 2008, and eventually came to be known as Limbs and Branches. Each EP was released under the name of a season—four total made for a complete year of acoustic music. “Switchfoot pays the rent, but I love doing the EPs,” Foreman says. “After Switchfoot shows for years, I’d go out and play another set at coffee shops or a bar down the street. I think the EPs were kind of the fruition of that. All of these 'I wish I were Bob Dylan' songs that I could just let slide out.”

Limbs and Branches was one of RELEVANT’s Top 20 Albums of 2008, and has garnered him respect as a singer-songwriter capable of subtle introspection. Most of the songs Foreman played at the To Write Love On Her Arms show were from his solo album.



But that side project is so 2008.

On Jan. 20, 2009, Foreman will release an album called Fiction Family. “Fiction Family is myself and Sean Watkins from Nickel Creek," he says. "We did it several years back, and we were hoping to get signed by a certain ... coffee company that puts out music. But then their music department fell apart. So it has actually been done for almost three years now and we’ve just kind of been sitting on it.” Starting tomorrow, Fiction Family will be touring the country. Foreman is excited to finally release the album: “It feels really great to be partnering up with ATO Records. To have My Morning Jacket and Paul McCartney as label-mates is not a bad thing! We’re amped.”

The album is another that sees Foreman in singer-songwriter mode. Sounding a little more Nickel Creek with acoustic guitars and strings, Fiction Family requires Switchfoot fans to put away their rock fists for the sake of a more mature folk rock. But one thing that is as present here as with all of Foreman's projects is a clear lyrical search for deeper meaning. “The real project is just figuring out how to live," he says. "That’s the ongoing project.”

Influenced by the time-tested soul music of Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder, Foreman’s music is an existential journey for the spirit. “One of the best verses ever written is the dialogue between God and Abraham on [Bob Dylan's] 'Highway 61 Revisited,'” he says.

The song reminds Foreman of how Soren Kierkegaard brought Abraham and Isaac to the philosophical world in Fear and Trembling. “Kierkegaard is pretty hard to nail down, and I think he would want it that way," he says. "He wrote from so many surnames and pseudonyms and different perspectives, sometimes satirizing the very things he had said in the past. But he was against Christendom, which is kind of everything about the Church sans Christ. I think that’s something I can relate to in our times, when the church has become a business. You’ve got CDs and magazines and all these 'Christian' things. The question is, not only as a consumer but as a human being, how do you find your soul and dig underneath the veneer? I feel like there was quite a commonality between Kierkegaard’s time and ours.”

Like Kierkegaard’s restless dread of the Christian life, Foreman continues to ask life questions through song. “Kierkegaard stressed the ever-present now, the pressing needs of the moment that we have right now that will never transpire again," he says. "He was very specific about what a great honor it is to be in this moment. The fear and trembling that you face standing up on the cliff that is now.”

And for this reason, we will not see Foreman tire of music-making anytime soon. “I think the bottom line is that I’ll be doing music whether I get paid for it or not. I’m still digging...”

All of these projects have not gotten in the way of Foreman’s day job, though. “We are making a Switchfoot record," he says. "We wanted to start with a clean slate because the last couple of records felt kind of compromised.” Switchfoot recently left their major label deal to become a truly independent band again. Foreman explains, “With Sony, they fired people so quickly that it was hard for us to develop any sort of traction, so we fired ourselves. We got off the label because music is very sensitive to the place that it’s coming from. We wanted to create an environment where we were going to be with the same people for a long time and trust is established. We built our own studio and we’ve just been honing in on people we love to work with.”

The next Switchfoot album should prove to be something new altogether. “We’ve tracked about 75 songs in our studio and now we’re weeding down, working with engineer Daryl Thorpe who is Nigel Godrich’s right hand man for Radiohead, Air and Beck," Foreman says. "He’s incredible, he’s really helped us find some new territory. Another place we’ve gone for inspiration is our producer Mike Elizondo—he’s worked with Mary J. Blige and Eminem. He’s, like, Dr. Dre’s right hand man. We’re trying to find a new playing field for the next 10 years to throw the ball around in.”

With the soulful influences and the new producer, will the next Switchfoot album top the R&B charts? “I’m as white as it gets, but I love hip-hop! ... But, no, I’m not going to be spitting any phat beats.”

Foreman never runs out of brilliance, I swear...! But, the new Switchfoot album tidbits have been added to the New Switchfoot Album page. Be sure to check it out! It's a timeline of everything that's happened in the recording of the album so far. Enjoy!

Side Note/P.S.: The move to work with Mike Elizondo sounds interesting... we've got Radiohead's engineer and Dr. Dre's right-hand man! It sounds like a rock-meets-hip-hop fusion. Interesting!

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CHARTS

Fiction Family's "When She's Near" is still No. 45 from Triple-A, but it's starting get spins from these two stations. Be sure to call-in, request, or email them to play the song!

WFPK/Louisville, KY:
E-mail: studio@wfpk.org
Call: (502) 814-WFPK (9375).

WXPN/Philadelphia
Phone: 215-573-WXPN
Email: requests@xpn.org
Web: http://xpn.org/requests



Any other ways you can help, like posting the Fiction Family Street Team banners everywhere you can, and posting the video and sending it in to music video sites, anything would be amazing! Call in to your radio stations as well, to let them know about the new song! Anything we can do will help! Thanks friends!

Stream the ENTIRE Fiction Family Album today!; Day 1 of tour!

As we said last week, Rhapsody will be exclusively streaming/premiering Fiction Family's brand new debut album. The streaming opened yesterday, and you can go here now to listen in! Let me know what you think... I'm going to hold off until I get the actual cd. =)

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Also new this week are the next two installments on Heartitfirst's exclusive videos with Jon Foreman and Sean Watkins of Fiction Family. One is a hilarious outtakes video, the other is the music video for "When She's Near"

Check the new ones, as well as the old, here

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Oh, yesterday was Day 1 of the Fiction Family tour! Along with it comes a bunch of new articles/press stuff, including a piece from mlive.com. Sean finally reveals the true meaning behind their name.. not just jokes. haha.

"Usually when two guys make a record together, it sounds cool to call them the 'something brothers,'" said Watkins, who plays guitar, mandolin and keyboards. "But we're not, so that's how Fiction Family came to be."

Ahh... now it makes perfect sense!

Read the rest of the article here

Here's some more pressage:

Inside Vandy
CMT
Daily Herald

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And, the first few official reviews for the Fiction Family record have begun to emerge!

Soul-Audio:
Fans of The Beatles, Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel will hear influences of these artists all over the recording. On “Elements Combined,” where Foreman and Watkins’ work together to great effect (combined elements, indeed), the vocal harmony on the bridge is startlingly similar to classic Simon and Garfunkel – it’s perhaps a subliminal clue on “We Ride,” as the first line, ‘Sunrise over troubled waters,’ echoes what is probably Simon and Garfunkel’s signature song: “Bridge Over Troubled Waters.” Beatle fans will recognize an homage to the Beatles’ “She Said, She Said” brand of psychedelia at the end of that same track. The British Music Hall / vaudevillian style of the closing song, “Look For My Baby,” is from the McCartney “Honey Pie” school, with the opening banjo straight out of the end of “Free as a Bird.” The chorus/bridge features Beatle-esque harmonies, while Foreman delivers lyrics like, ‘Yeah, you can give my regards to your house of cards /
Your dead end stars and your Pharisee shards…’ in a distinctly Dylanesque manner.

THE REST

Also, CCMmagazine

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CHARTS

Fiction Family's "When She's Near" holds at No. 45 on Triple-A today.

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Here's an awesome video from the Heavy and Light concert. It's the encore/closing of the evening, and how much more appropriate can you get than singing "A Little Help From My Friends" by the Beatles with your buddies? That's what Jon did, calling up all the performers for the night! So without further ado, here it is:



AP.net pressage

Help Promote the Fiction Family Pre-Order; Plus, new FF Article!

Well, the first official Fiction Family Street Team project is finished! Now, if you don't know what we're talking about, be sure to check it out here right now and sign up! Getting involved and helping Jon Foreman and Sean Watkins get their record off the ground is both fun and easy!

So even as the dust from the first street team project still settles, a brand new project has been announced. Here's a message from Annette, the "team leader" if you will:

Hey guys! Great job on the last project, and congratulations to the winners! Here is another chance to win some prizes. As you know, the Fiction Family album will be in stores on January 20th. That's just a few weeks away so this is the time we need you to really help promote the CD.


Please take this Fiction Family video and post it just like you would a banner. In fact, there's a banner attached to the bottom where people can click to pre-order the album. After the release date the banner will automatically change to reflect "Now In Stores" so don't worry about having to take the video down.


The fans that get the most unique impressions will win the following prizes...

1st place: $50 iTunes gift card and the Family Fiction CD
2nd and 3rd place: $25 iTunes gift card and the Family Fiction CD
(Please be sure to upload at least one screenshot of your week in order to be eligible for a prize.)




The project ends on Feb 6th so get started and keep an eye out on the Leaderboard to see where you stand! If you have any questions, just email fanservices@fan2band.com. Good luck!!

So there you have it. If you look at the top of our page, we have the video embedded already, as instructed. Want to know the code? Go sign up for the street team, or if you're already a teamer, then sign in and get going! Let's give the guys a promotional boost and put all our support behind the great music!

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In other news, the Toledo Free Press did a new story on Fiction Family with some new news, including some more information about the writing of "When She's Near," as well as the origin of the name Fiction Family:

The collaboration clicked, Watkins said during a phone interview en route to San Francisco.

“Co-writing can be tricky; you never really know what kind of creative chemistry there’s going to be even if you’re good friends or play often, but he and I worked really well together,” he said. “Sometimes I’d have a melody idea and I’d e-mail it to him, and he’d write lyrics to go with it and send that back to me. There was some corresponding that happened, actually, most of the songs were written that way, kind of corresponding, and recording, actually, a lot of it happened that way, too.”

The singer-songwriters formed a duo, Fiction Family, which will release its self-titled debut Jan. 20.

“Jon came up with [the band name], and I liked it a lot because, first of all, everybody loves alliteration, but also a lot of bands that involve two guys are usually brothers, so we figured it kind of made sense since we’re not brothers,” Watkins said.

“‘When She’s Near’ is cool because it felt like a good mix of what we both do. It’s actually the melody to a song I wrote a long time ago called ‘Teaberry.’ I wrote it in ’03 or ’04, and I didn’t like the words, but I liked the melody,” Watkins said. “I brought the melody in and Jon did most of the lyrics. That song was really fun to co-write and feels like a solid collaboration.”

To read the rest of the story, go here

Thanks for reading! =)

Breaking News: New Fiction Family Tour Dates and Pre-Order!!

from their Myspace

Jan 13 2009 The Ark Ann Arbor, Michigan
Jan 14 2009 Ladies Literary Club - Calvin College GRAND RAPIDS
Jan 15 2009 Abbey Pub Chicago, Illinois
Jan 16 2009 The Union - North Central College Naperville, Illinois
Jan 17 2009 Ransburg Auditorium - University of Indianapolis Indianapolis, Indiana
Jan 18 2009 Creative Arts Center at WVU Morgantown, West Virginia
Jan 20 2009 Bowery Ballroom New York, New York
Jan 21 2009 Paradise Rock Club Boston, Massachusetts
Jan 22 2009 World Cafe Live Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Jan 23 2009 Crawford Auditorium Grove City, Pennsylvania
Jan 24 2009 Jammin’ Java Vienna, Virginia
Jan 25 2009 Brubaker Auditorium - Messiah College Grantham, Pennsylvania
Jan 27 2009 Gravity Lounge Charlottesville, Virginia
Jan 29 2009 Variety Playhouse Atlanta, Georgia
Jan 30 2009 Belcourt Theater Nashville, Tennessee
Jan 31 2009 Malone College Cantone, Ohio
Feb 3 2009 Neumos Crystal Ball Reading Room Seattle, Washington
Feb 4 2009 Aladdin Theater Portland, Oregon
Feb 5 2009 The Independent San Francisco, California
Feb 6 2009 Anthology Restaurant Live San Diego, California
Feb 7 2009 Largo at Coronet Theater West Hollywood, California

For tickets info, go check out the Myspace.

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The Fiction Family store is also open! There's three packages available:


Deluxe Edition Includes:

* Vinyl album
* CD album
* DVD including
o Music Video for "When She’s Near"
o Behind the Scenes of the “When She’s Near” music video
o An interview with Fiction Family – Sean vs Jon
o Photo Gallery
* CD of 3 B side tracks including
o a cover of The Cure’s "Friday I’m In Love"
o "Resurrect Me" by Jon Foreman
o "No Other Needs" by Sean Watkins
* Limited edition Fictional Family print.
* Printable Holiday Card (So you have something in time for Holiday gift giving)


Vinyl Edition Includes:

* Vinyl album
* CD album
* Printable Holiday Card (So you have something in time for Holiday gift giving)


CD Edition Includes:

* CD album
* Printable Holiday Card (So you have something in time for Holiday gift giving)

Go here to pre-order your package now! (Thanks dontcloseyoureyez!)