Life isn’t fair. That goes for anyone in any walk of life, unfortunately. And that goes double for a star athlete who has his career cut short due to injuries, or especially a band who combines several different admirable traits together, yet ends up not quite reaching the success that many fans feel the band deserved.
If you look up the word “underrated” in the dictionary, you’re likely to find the likes of retired first baseman John Olerud, spinach pizza, and many, many bands. While we can argue all day long about whether an artist “deserves” to reach a certain level, it’s hard to feel that a band like Fair To Midland didn’t. While usually they were slapped with the “progressive” tag, their sound brings together a simply ridiculous number of influences and styles together, often on the same song. Seriously, you can hear alt-country, progressive metal, indie rock, and even folk influences that all permeate the band’s music. Much like other avant-garde bands like Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, and the like, Fair To Midland embrace their ability to blend various disparate genres of music in an almost effortless fashion. Basically, you know they’re skilled at songwriting. The band’s fans include the likes of Wolfgang Van Halen as well.
Been obsessed with the band Fair To Midland lately
— Wolfgang Van Halen (@WolfVanHalen) August 27, 2021
Even from the band’s earliest days, Fair To Midland created interesting music that diverged from a typical alternative metal formula. Their first two records, 2001’s The Carbon Copy Silver Lining and 2004’s inter.funda.stifle, were both acclaimed by the press (moreso the latter’s tendency to approach the often interesting nature of the art rock genre), but the band was close to breaking up afterwards. Then System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian signed the band to his vanity label, which gave Fair To Midland the ammunition to record a third full-length album (containing many songs from inter.funda.stifle in a re-recorded format). That album was 2007’s Fables From a Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times Is True, and it brought Fair To Midland a new audience to showcase their intriguing talents to.
Then 2011’s Arrows And Anchors came around. Earning some of the biggest critical acclaim of their career, what ended up being the band’s last album (as of now, anyway) also received commercial acceptance. In fact, it debuted on the Billboard 200 at #65. The record itself was smart and accessible (with no tracks, save excellent closer “The Greener Grass”, clocking in at over 4:42), yet still eclectic enough to appeal to previous fans of the band. For example, standout track “Rikki Tikki Tavi” shows vocalist Darroh Sudderth employing throat singing, which is surprising to even the most seasoned of prog fans. The same thing pops up on older tracks like fan favorite “Dance Of The Manatee”, which is interesting in its own right.
Other songs like “Amarillo Sleeps On My Pillow” employ more elaborate instrumentation that are out of left-field, even for a band that is considered “progressive”. Do you like banjos? Metaphors? Subtle one-liners and humor? Surprisingly heavy riffs that provide the backbone to huge choruses? There’s just so much to enjoy here.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of unique band that sometimes ends up a victim of the music industry machine. And when the band disappeared off the face of the Earth soon after 2011’s Arrows And Anchors, it soon became clear why.
Brett Stowers, the band’s former keyboard player, stated this about a decade ago:
“Lately, a lot of people have been asking me if I know anything about the current situation with Fair To Midland. I’m by no means an official source of info, but i’ll tell you what I know because I feel like the fans deserve to know what’s up.
First off, even before I was no longer in the band, FTM was in quite a bit of debt. This, I’m certain, only got worse as time went on. Second, as far as I know, FTM currently have no label or official management. Third, without getting too much into anyone’s personal life, I can say at least a couple members have expressed to me their frustration about lack of communication by certain other members of the band. Finally, the current members of FTM are spread out all over the country at this point. I would imagine that would make getting together for rehearsals/writing prohibitively expensive. (Plane rides, gas, accommodations, etc… you get the picture. Hell, it was hard enough when we were all in the relatively small area of Dallas/Commerce/Sulphur Springs.)
Read into the fact that nobody bothered to renew the band’s domain name what you will.
(which actually kind of upsets me. there was a lot of FTM history on those forums)
With all that said, like most of you, I sincerely hope that the guys are able to turn things around. Even though I was a member for 10+ years, I was a fan first. I’ll be cheering alongside you if a new tour/album/whatever is announced, but i’m not holding my breath.”
That particularly hurts to read knowing just how talented Fair To Midland was. We’re certainly not alone in hoping they make a comeback someday, because their influence lives on through some surprising sources, and considering how beloved the band still is to this day, the fact that a band like this is/was in debt is just criminal and sad, really. But at least we’ll always have the music they did release.
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