Fishboy is a four-piece eccentric indie pop band from Denton, TX that began as the bedroom solo project of front man Eric Michener. He was given the nickname on a middle-school field trip after a dare to pluck and swallow a fish at the Dallas World Aquarium. Six years and several shoe boxes full of cassette tapes later, Michener moved from the suburbs to the Texas rock-and-roll Mecca of Denton with a handful of low budget recordings released by the close-knit Austin music collective Business Deal Records. It’s here that the little project became a full-fledged rock band that has since taken on several forms, the most current of which meshes the band’s lo-fi twee pop roots with a loud, energetic rhythm section topped with the occasional horn, piano, or organ, the result of which is somewhere along the lines of fellow Texans Daniel Johnston and Britt Daniel (Spoon) joining the Danielson Famile to play for Anthony Daniels (C3PO) and Daniel Day Lewis (moustache) as they both drink Jack Daniels on a Sunday afternoon. To fully understand the latest Fishboy EP NOM, two nuggets of truth are needed: Nugget #1: The writing process of Albatross was 95% linear, in that nearly every track was written in the order it appears on the album. After the first song was completed, some thought was put into where to take the storyline and the musical flow of the album. Oftentimes full songs were completed and then scrapped because one of these two things wasn't working out -- either the plot came to a dead end or the flow of the album didn't work. When it was time to start the follow up to Albatross, it became clear that any attempt to use these songs would result in a lyrically confused mess of an album. Not that the songs weren't good; they were just abandoned plot lines to an alternate rock opera reality. And so a plan was hatched. Nugget #2: Instead of gathering the band together to spend precious writing and arranging hours on these songs, the decision was made to blindly put them in the hands of a group of musicians with nothing to lose. Michener decided to hand over all musical duties and decisions to a local Denton, TX group of super-producers known as the Om Nom Noms. Michener took one trip into the studio, recorded vocals and scratch guitar, the guitar was deleted, and the Noms reconstructed the songs however they saw fit. Some upbeat songs became ambient, some hushed finger picked songs became rockers, and anything was possible in between. The nine-song EP was titled NOM, not only after its creators, but after the sound of something eating another. It will be pressed on 12" vinyl with album sleeves that double as fold-out prints hand-screened by the band themselves, for sale on yofishboy.com and distributed to select stores via HHBTM Records.
current lineup: Through out the years Fishboy has performed and toured with liked
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