Ian Fisher (27) is a little man with a big voice, who is based in Berlin, Germany, and was raised on a farm in Missouri, USA. He has played hundreds of concerts all over the world. His songs, like the man himself, are short, simple, and honest. He is a 21st Century Country musician… just without a country. ‘Nero’, his debut album as Ian Fisher, is out on Snowstar Records.

‘Nero’ was born in early 2014 when Ian brought a few dozen songs to Berlin. Before the album was done it had spilled over into three different studios, two bedrooms, and one concrete basement (with no toilet) in Berlin, Hamburg, and Vienna. “The album has a lot to do with the destruction of who you once were in order to become something different.” Fisher explains. “I’ve really lost my Americanism, the majority of it anyway, and one of the reasons why I’ve turned back to country music is in an attempt to find a part of me that I lost.” Nero is steeped in the homegrown country and folk roots of Ian’s songwriting and shaped by a tasteful, “no fancy stuff”, German production approach. The tracks are largely lead by Fisher’s pristine voice with a consistent backdrop of close acoustic guitars and spacious piano and pedal steel guitar. Percussion is also quite present throughout the album, allowing the acoustic guitar to fall into the groove while the rhythmic burden is carried by someone else, á la Johnny Cash. Nero’s palette is broad and the variety between tracks is very rich with uncluttered and poignant arrangements that always put the songs first. Songs of a young man who has traveled so long that he is a stranger in his hometown. What’s more heroically country than that?