Americana Highways presents this video premiere of New Earth Farmers’ song “Everything Was Beautiful, Goodbye,” from their forthcoming EP, Into The Great Unknown. This EP is the first release as New Earth Farmers for duo Paul Knowles and Nicole Storto, who have been playing together and releasing music for 17 years.
The song was recorded at Opus Studio (Berkeley, CA) and Cosmic Garage Studio (Albany), engineered by David Luke and Paul Knowles; and mastered by Sage Audio (Nashville).
“Everything Was Beautiful, Goodbye” is Paul Knowles on vocals, guitars, and keyboards; Nicole Storto on vocals and guitars; James Deprato (Chuck Prophet) on guitars; Nigel Twist (The Alarm) on drums; and Kevin T. White (Chuck Prophet) on bass.
The video was directed by Neighborhoods Apart (John Prine, Lilly Hiatt, Aaron Lee Tasjan). http://www.neighborhoodsapart.com/about Cool guitar distortions set up a sublime visual experience that’s fitting for the sublime music by New Earth Farmers. This is best listened to turned up loud, while you release the frustration and fears of mortality out loud.
“Everything Was Beautiful, Goodbye” is a song about loss of one’s own ego. This can happen through spiritual enlightenment or use of psychedelics. I discussed what inspired the lyrics to the song to Joshua Britt, the video producer from Neighborhoods Apart, and he was able to come up with a great representation of our vision. Joshua had done videos for John Prine and Jason Isbell that we really loved and he agreed to produce this one for us. I sent him the song out of the blue and he loved it and got right back to me. We aren’t actually singing in the video, since it was during the peak of the pandemic and we couldn’t travel to Nashville to shoot. We decided to make it more cinematic and use an actor. It’s the first single from our EP release, “Into The Great Unknown”. A lot of things changed this last year for us, and everyone really. My father passed away from Covid-19 on Dec. 3 of 2020, so I dedicated this song and video to his memory. Dad and mom bought me my first electric guitar (A Silvertone with the amp in the case) when I was 10 years old and a guitar just like it showed up in the video. I had no idea until I watched it the first time. It wasn’t planned. Nigel Twist, the original drummer from the 80s folk punk band, The Alarm joins us on this release, along with James Deprato (guitar) and Kevin T. White (bass) from Chuck Prophet’s band. We also did a slight name change for this release. We took the nationalism out of our former moniker, New American Farmers and made it global. New Earth Farmers is a way more inclusive name and we need more of that now than ever. — Paul Knowles
https://newearthfarmers.bandcamp.com/
Discover more of their music here: https://soundcloud.com/paulmichaelknowles