A National guitar by the banks of a muddy river, Jason McNiff reinterprets The Waterboys ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ as a haunting rural jaunt through the American South. If you pay close attention in the opening frames of McNiff’s new video you will see a bit of the London skyline blurred in the distance but the vibe is surely the Mississippi, not the Thames. McNiff’s reedy voice echoes the best of the post-skiffle/Merseybeat singers of another era while his guitar playing is directly descended from many of Alan Lomax’s seminal recordings. The song is the first from his latest album ‘Tonight We Ride’, a collection of treasured cover songs.
“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’ is now available in wide release.
