Singled Out: Michael Bernard Fitzgerald's Our River

Keavin Wiggins | 06-10-2020

Michael Bernard Fitzgerald recently released his new single "Our River", one of four tracks to be released ahead of his new album "Love Valley" and to celebrate we asked him to tell us about the new track. Here is the story:

I wrote 'Our River' last year at the beginning of working on a full length record. The song starts to explore the idea of moving to a farm, and embracing a rural life. At this point in the recording process we (Producer: Josh Rob Gwilliam) and I had one song we liked for the record, and were looking for a second song that would start to cement this simple farm life theme. My thought was that if I was to write about something I hadn't seen yet, that I wanted to see, what would that writing look like? I had written so many songs about experiences I'd had or was going through but never something looking forward really. I'd also never stuck to a theme so closely.

Over the last number of years I'd been co-writing songs a lot. I work with a publisher, and that offers an avenue to write with other artists, writers and producers all over the world. It's been great to approach songwriting that way, and over the years I've written with many genre-diverse and talented writers. I set out last year to stop co-writing for a time - I wanted to find out what songwriting was for me at home. This is the first album I've fully penned since the start of my career. There have always been songs that I write without co-writers on each album, but this album is my writing from start to finish.

The instrumentation approach was simple too. We brought in a drummer at OCL Studios in Calgary (where we made the song) and tracked pedal steel in Nashville with Brett Resnik (Kacey Musgraves) and aside from that played the rest ourselves. Josh put a drum loop up on the speakers and I wrote the song in the room, played most of the instruments and wrote the parts. Katie and Jessica from our touring band over the last 10 years came in to record the female voice on the song. I like the space the song sits in. This record is my favourite work yet, 'Our River' is the first of four songs to be released this summer and fall before the full record "Love Valley" is released October 9.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here