The Last Five Years With FERGUSON
FERGUSON. Photo by Jeff Genter.
After playing Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits with his high school band and dropping a solo LP, indie rocker Ian Ferguson is ready to reintroduce himself. Having played guitar since he was 12, the Tennessee native fronted the now-defunct band The Kingston Springs until 2015 and released his debut solo album, State of Gold, in 2019. Now, he’s gearing up to drop his first record as just FERGUSON — a move that comes with a symbolically experimental sound.
NEVER IN MY LIFE, which hits streaming services Sept. 26, is an study in classic pop that culminates with a test of true artistry — one he passes with flying, albeit bold, colors. The 10-track record has been five years in the making, a journey dotted with days spent poring over minute mixing details and production points.
With release day approaching, I hopped on a Zoom with FERGUSON to discuss rejecting convention, living in the music capital of the U.S. and the cumbersome, yet rewarding, creative process.
This is your first album as just “FERGUSON.” What does dropping your first name, Ian, symbolize for you in this new musical stage? Why did you decide to make that move?
You know, it's a good question. I've had a lot of people ask me that question and I think I'm just now getting to the actual correct answer. I think it was a mixture of two things.
Initially, it was kind of just a practicality reason because there was this other Ian Ferguson that came up who's kind of a country singer guy, and so I was running into issues when I started playing shows again post-COVID. Like, I remember I played a show in Kentucky and some people thought I was that Ian Ferguson. So I don't know, all this stuff. So I was like, “Alright, I need to switch that up.”
But then it actually kind of started making more sense generally. The sound of the music was a little bit different than what I had done in the past. So it kind of symbolized, I guess, stepping into a new sound, new feeling of the music, and it kind of all just coincided and made sense, so we decided to give it a go. Who knows if it'll stick. Maybe I'll be changing my name again in another couple of months, but it's good for now.
You did a lot of this album yourself, including the mixing, which is a newer skill you’ve had to learn. What was that process like for you?
It was crazy, to put it lightly. The recording of the record was actually pretty smooth, just because I had my friend, Will Brown, engineer the record. And so we went to his house, and this was pretty much October of 2020, so pretty in the thick of COVID and all that. So I go up into his attic and I recorded everything. It was so hot. The Tennessee summers are just brutal. So it was so hot that at one point my guitar, I looked down and there was this like white stuff on it. I'm like, “What the hell is this?” And I realized that my deodorant was melting down my arm onto that guitar.
But all that said, I recorded everything. I would go up, I'd lay the drums down usually, and then would play either acoustic guitar to the drums and then bass, or bass then acoustic guitar, and that would be the foundation of the track. And then I would do electric guitar, synth and then finally vocals. And the mixing was, for sure, a learning process, because I've never had any professional experience or been taught or anything, so it was a lot of trial and error — trying things, trying to mimic sounds from records that I love — which was kind of fun. But then after like four years, it’s like, “Alright, I gotta move this along.”
But yeah, it was a thing where, I described it one time to a friend, where it was like, I almost felt like the recording was building a block of marble or something, and then the mixing was the chipping away of all these things, because I would over stack these songs. If you heard them before I mixed them, they're not even recognizable. So yeah, it was an interesting process. I don't know if I'll ever do another record exactly like this one again, but you know, I'm glad it happened.
You mentioned trying to emulate some records you like for the mixing process. Do you have any examples of specific records or artists?
Oh, for sure. I mean, I'm a huge Beatles fan, so I'm always trying to get, specifically, some of the sounds of their acoustic guitars. This is a weird descriptor, but when I hear some of their guitars, the way they're compressed and mixed and all this stuff, it's like you can hear the wood in the instrument. I don't know how else to say it, but both with their pianos and their guitars, they’re just beautiful, so I definitely try and emulate a lot of that.
And then I love a lot of modern, you know? I love Tame Impala's drum sounds. I came up around the time that The Killers and The Strokes and all that was happening, so I always am a big fan of that sound and into Ty Segall and into Angel Olsen and Mac DeMarco, all that stuff.
Watch the music video for “ON A DIME (COCO IS HIGH)” on YouTube.
So you played every instrument we hear on the record. How many instruments can you play, and what is your music education background like?
I started playing when I was like, gosh, maybe 12 or 13 with my friends, and my dad was a fiddle player, so he came up, he met my mom in a band playing fiddle, and they never saw great success or anything, but I always grew up with that. Just in my family, people loved music and everything, so when I was younger, I picked up guitar.
But I started a band with my friends when I was younger and that was kind of my education. We kind of learned how to play while sort of writing these songs and teaching each other how to play. I taught the drummer how to play and then my guitar player taught me how to harmonize and we kind of just fed off of each other. And yeah, that was kind of my music education really.
Was that band The Kingston Springs?
It was, yeah.
So what did you mainly play in that band, or what was your main role?
So I was mainly a songwriter and would sing and play guitar.
Do you still keep in touch with any of those band members?
You know, not these days as much. I do see the bass player, Alex, on occasion, but we all have kind of gone our separate ways in a lot of ways.
Pivoting to more about the new album, while there’s a lot of experimental pop elements on NEVER IN MY LIFE, it feels pretty rooted in a classic rock sound with a heavier, almost country feel, especially on tracks like “HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ALONE” and “NEW LOVE (OH SO WRONG).” What influenced this kind of sound for you?
You know, I would say when I thought of this record, before I even wrote any songs for it, I told myself I wanted to make a record of only hit songs, which I'm not saying that's the case, but that's where my mind was at. So like short songs, catchy songs, kind of like every song could be a single kind of a thing was my thought process with it.
In the Kingston Springs days, for instance, we never delved into the world of synth very much. So listening to like The Cars, just listening to a good bit of Bowie and stuff like that, the idea of involving synth became more and more appealing to me. So that was definitely a thing. And then some of the country elements, I really do believe that being in Nashville has affected me in some ways over the years, you know? It's like, you can only go into a bar so many times and see Hank Williams' face plastered on the wall and have it not seep into your DNA to some degree. And growing up in Kingston Springs, all my friends were super Southern, and so it's a bigger part of me than I realize. So I think when it comes to writing or even singing some delivery and stuff, sometimes it'll make its way into what I'm doing.
I was going to ask about the role of Nashville in your songwriting. Are there any other ways the city has influenced your sound?
You know, I will say that we came up — when I was doing solo stuff, as well as Kingston stuff — at a really great time in Nashville. There was an incredible garage rock scene that was happening in Nashville, and Ty Segall would come through and play these tiny house shows and stuff … so we kind of were exposed to that, the sort of more newer, hip element of Nashville, if you will, as well as a lot of the classic stuff going on here. And so it, yeah, it definitely affects you.
And it's not an easy town. Everybody says that and it's true. Musicians will historically complain about the arms being folded, nobody dances. And that's true, and I'm sure I'm part of the problem. I don't mean to be, but yeah, Nashville is a funny town and it's not an easy town. It's not a town you're necessarily gonna like, get a pat on the back, you know? You just kind of got to put your head down and go.
And what's it been like kind of navigating that?
It's been interesting. I think it's funny — here comes my old man talk, but it's true — like when I was a kid, I didn't give a sh*t about it.
But as I've gotten older, I think I am a little more sensitive. I'm like, “Is this good?” It is funny navigating it because, I mean, playing Nashville when I was 15 all the way until now I'm 32, I've kind of run the gamut of different ages and experiences and all these things. So yeah, it's funny. But all that to say, I love it, and I don't know if I'll be here for forever, but it's been a wonderful place to meet people. And it's great for community, as well as you can get picked up, you know, on people's radar in the industry and stuff like that, which is an important part of it.
I noticed there’s a lot of lyrics that call back to other songs on the album, like “Break a back on a dime” in “FALSE IDOL FEVER DREAM PT. I” referencing “ON A DIME (COCO IS HIGH)” and lots of mentions of time. Is there a story you wanted to convey as someone listens to the album from top to bottom?
I'm glad you picked up on that because that is something I did on purpose, for sure. I love records that sort of harken back to other records or other songs on the record, so that was on purpose. For instance, there was a lot of happy songs, and then there's a song like “FALSE IDOL FEVER DREAM,” where it's kind of like, not a political song, but it was a political song. I don’t know, it just felt like everything's going f*cking crazy, and I'm like, “Oh my God.” So I actually wrote that in 2017, maybe, so that was kind of the first time around.
And now it's just as pertinent now, but that song is more the sound of it, I guess. The lyrics aren't necessarily pointing to anything, but it just sounds like an evil machine, which is kind of on purpose. And that's the case with a lot of this record, I think, is lyrically, I'm maybe not as on it in some ways, but just the sound of songs is important in that way.
And then the final track, “FALSE IDOL FEVER DREAM PT. II,” that was a wild experience to make that. This is during COVID. I was in a house with like eight of my relatives. We were all packed in together, and so I couldn't record anything. So I would go, I would drive to the small town — there's a Walmart in town where I was at, Dixon, I was outside of Nashville —and I would sit in the parking lot with my iPhone and all the different characters you hear in that song, I did all that. So I would act out these characters and some of them were like screaming, so I probably looked like a total nutcase. I'm just by myself going, “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And yeah, so that song was a trip, but it was kind of fun. It almost felt more like making a movie or something than it did even recording the song. So yeah, I don't know. There's all sorts of different stuff on there.
Watch the music video for “NEVER IN MY LIFE” on YouTube.
I was going to ask about that track, “FALSE IDOL FEVER DREAM PT. II,” because it really does feel like a fever dream. How did you come up with this idea?
Because it's such a pop heavy record in a lot of ways — as far as like the structure of the songs, how short they are — I wanted to have something right at the end that just really f*cked everything up. Like basically, if somebody is listening to it — not that they're not seeing what I'm trying to do — but they're just like, “Oh, that's a cool song,” you know? And they're like, “Oh, that's another cool song.” And then they kind of get through it so lightly. Then by the end, I just wanted to just drop this thing on them where they're like, “What the f*ck, this is weird.” So there was a lot of intention behind that, for sure, to kind of break it up, I guess.
It’s interesting because earlier you said you wanted every song to feel like it could be a single, but then there’s this closing track. Why was it important to end the album this way? Does it go beyond just wanting to grasp that attention a little more?
That’s a great question. I definitely came up at the time where pop music was not necessarily the most — what's the word? It was maybe a little bit more manufactured by larger sorts of systems, if you will. And so pop music at one time kind of became a little bit less cool than it had been at one point, whereas, you know, in the ‘60s it was really cool, and then in the ‘80s it was really great in a lot of ways too. But all that to say, I guess I was kind of nervous about making such a pop record that the artistic element of it kind of got sucked out because I was just trying to make catchy songs or something. So ending with that song, I felt like it sort of put a nice blanket or saran wrap over the whole record where it's like, “Oh, maybe if you're viewing it this through this angle — through this kind of almost weirder angle — it actually makes the the pop songs cooler,” rather than more like, “Oh God, this bullsh*t,” you know?
Do you have a personal favorite track on the album?
Definitely. I kind of have two. Well, I think my favorite is “HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ALONE.” If I'm ever in my car and for whatever reason I'm listening to the record, I always just jump to that one first. So yeah, that one is probably my favorite. I do love “NEVER IN MY LIFE” as well. That was a fun one. But I would say “HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ALONE” is my favorite.
Do you have any plans to celebrate the release the album?
You know what's funny? That's a great question, and I've thought about it a lot, and over the years of mixing this record, I would always think to myself like, “Man, when the time comes, when I finally put this thing out, I'm going to go have a nice dinner. I'm going to go celebrate, be wild, something.” And now that it's coming up here on the 26th, I'm kind of reaching this peak in my life, in a sense, sort of broken and battered.
I'm not arriving necessarily in a triumphant way. I'm arriving in like a, “Holy sh*t, that took the breath out of me.” I'm not complaining by any means … but I guess it'd probably be better for me to just maybe get a good night's rest.
After you get that rest, what’s next?
Once the record actually comes out, we have definitely thrown the idea around of maybe getting up to New York. It's a drive from Nashville, but it's a very doable place for us. And so we might go up to New York, whether we do that at the end of this year or the beginning of next year is kind of unsure, but we'll definitely hit the road.
And I do have another record. I'm trying to almost do the equal and opposite of what I did with this record, where I took forever, I overthought everything. I'm now trying to just knock a record out for the end of the year and maybe put that out early next year. It's kind of the nice thing about not having a label, I suppose, is you don't really have the constraints.