ABOUT THE DOCTOR

Doctor Fish’s debut reveals a proud musical throwback—a guitar-wielding, storytelling, folk-rock singer-songwriter. No fake retro act, he is one of the last surviving purveyors of a style of music made famous by Jim Croce, Harry Chapin, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Paul Simon, and Gordon Lightfoot and still enjoyed by countless music lovers.

The road to Doctor Fish’s debut has been long and winding. As he sings in his “Tuesday Morning,” "You know that I’m still standing, just not where I thought I’d be.” He grew up playing saxophone in Tucson, Arizona, and pursued the path of a jazz musician through college. As a saxophonist, he backed legends like Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Cher. Somewhere along the way, he picked up a guitar and began writing songs.

The next turn in his journey found him studying ethnomusicology as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan and carrying out fieldwork in Japan. From there, he founded a thriving program of study for students of popular music at a small college just north of Charlotte, North Carolina.

One song from his Atlanta demo has brought the doctor out of retirement as a singer-songwriter. During the Covid pandemic, he realized that “Another Fourth of July” had taken on new meaning set against the political upheaval of our time. Unexpectedly, Renaissance Records offered to release it and the other tracks from the Atlanta sessions. Fish accepted and set about recording new songs to fill out the album.

A test recording of the first new song, “The Last Troubadour,” made it into the hands of multi-platinum producer David Kershenbaum. Kershenbaum brought to the project top studio musicians, including bassist Lee Sklar (James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King, and Linda Ronstadt) and drummer Denny Fongheiser (Heart, Counting Crows, Bruce Springsteen, and Shawn Colvin). Modern technology helped complete the ensemble with top session players from around the world. The process proved so fruitful that the two Davids decided to rerecord the songs from the Atlanta demo.

“Harry Chapin” serves as the lead-off single from the album. An homage to the legendary singer-songwriter, it helps celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his breakout hit, “Taxi,” and what would have been Chapin’s 80^th birthday. Harry's son Jason calls the song "a great tribute."

Where will the Last Troubadour album take Doctor Fish from here? “The offer to record the album, working with David K., it’s all been unexpected,” he notes. “So, I don’t have preconceived ideas about the future. All I can say is that I plan to ride this opportunity wherever it takes me. Only go straight and just don’t know.”

“I thought with the Last Troubadour I’d be the oldest artist ever to release a debut album, but I found out some 89-year-old dude in England holds that record," Doctor Fish says with a chuckle. Nonetheless, as a guitar-wielding, storytelling, folk-rock artist cut from the same cloth as Jim Croce, Harry Chapin, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Paul Simon, and Gordon Lightfoot, he is a proud musical throwback to another time.

SAXOPHONE, STRIPPERS & COLLEGE

The road to Doctor Fish’s debut album on the Last Troubadour has been long and winding, with each turn leaving its mark on him and his music. He grew up playing saxophone in Tucson, Arizona, and had his professional start on the instrument in the band backing Sonny & Cher when they performed in his home. “I was so dazzled that I missed the band’s entrance. I remember the conductor screaming at me, “Play!” Part of the bedazzlement of the moment came from the Bob Mackey dress Cher was wearing. In the spotlight, its gold threads shimmered. “From behind, where the band was sitting, we could see she was naked underneath,” explains Fish. “It made quite the impression on me as a teenager.”

Fish also played saxophone in a strip club in high school, with his mother instructing him not to look. “Look at what, mom?” he’d tease her. “The dancers were so nice to me and treated me like a kid brother.” Playing saxophone in funk bands rounded out his early on-the-job musical education, and you can still hear a bit of the syncopation of groups like Tower of Power in his music.

The young saxophonist then pursued formal study on the instrument at Western Michigan University. Upon graduation, he moved to Los Angeles to establish himself as a professional. He lived in Hollywood, near “Hollywood and Vine,” as he sings in his song “Arizona Skies.” When he tried out for the band of a national late-night show, he learned how fierce the competition was. “In the face of such steep rivalry, I did what every good chicken does. I went back to school,” Fish laughs. This time he worked on a master’s degree in saxophone at Western Michigan. “I was in a hole, and I decided to dig it deeper.”

PICKING UP A GUITAR

Then came the first of several dramatic turns in Fish’s life. While working on his master’s degree, he fell under the influence of singer-songwriters, who were just coming off their peak popularity earlier in the decade. He had been a hard-core “jazzer” up to that point, but the immediacy of artists strumming acoustic guitars and singing about their lives struck something deep inside him. He picked up a guitar and tried writing songs.

Fish became so enamored with the art of the singer-songwriter that he took a break in the middle of his master’s studies to move to the San Francisco Bay area for a year. He went in search of the live music scene that reigned there a decade before but discovered it had largely dried up. His sojourn still proved valuable. He cut his teeth as a performer at a local club and began the study of Zen. He remains a student of Zen, as reflected in the line “Only go straight and just don’t know” from his song “Tuesday Morning.”

BECOMING DOCTOR FISH

Another dramatic turn waited for Fish when he returned to Western Michigan to complete his master’s degree. The music school dean asked him to take over a world music class for a professor who had a heart attack. He enjoyed the experience so much that he decided to pursue a doctorate at the University of Michigan in ethnomusicology. At Michigan, Fish studied with William Malm, an influential scholar of Japanese music. Fish’s studies with Malm included fieldwork in Tokyo for two years studying under the leader of an important Shinto performance troupe.

After earning his doctorate, the newly titled Doctor Fish became a professor at St. Andrews College, a small liberal arts school in North Carolina. During his time there, he would travel to Atlanta to work on a demo album of his original music at the recording studio of Ichiban Records. “It was a great room with wonderful session players, but it was underneath an auto supply store.” We’d have to pause if they started grinding brake drums upstairs,” he laughs.

ATLANTA DEMO

The demo revealed Doctor Fish to be a serious folk-rock singer-songwriter, but the world had moved beyond that style of music. As one label representative put it to him, “Your music sounds old.” The demo went nowhere, and the doctor decided to move to Japan. “It was a kind of self-imposed exile, and it was great. I lived in a wonderful city at the base of Mount Fuji.”

Doctor Fish’s exile ended with a return to North Carolina to create a program of study for popular musicians at Catawba College. The curriculum offered development for musicians woefully underserved by higher education, and it thrived. Some of the doctor’s students went on to enjoy the type of commercial success that had eluded him. While at Catawba, Fish brought together other schools with similar programs in popular music to establish the Association for Popular Music Education and served as one of its early presidents.

BECOMING A RENAISSANCE MAN

The doctor served at Catawba for over twenty years and was content in his role. Then another, more recent turn in his life took place. While secluded at home during the COVID pandemic, he realized that one of his songs from the Atlanta demos, “Another Fourth of July,” had taken on new meaning set against the political upheaval of our time. Fish created a music video to go along with the demo recording of “Another Fourth of July” and shared it privately with friends and acquaintances in the music industry. One of them, John Edwards, the founder and president of Renaissance Records, asked if Fish had any other recordings squirreled away. If he did, Edwards was interested in releasing them as an album.

Doctor Fish seized the opportunity, but there was a problem. There were not enough songs from the demo sessions for a full album, so Edwards agreed to have Fish fill out the playlist with new songs. A test recording of the first one, “The Last Troubadour,” made it into the hands of multi-platinum producer David Kershenbaum. Reaching out to Fish, Kershenbaum expressed interest in working with the doctor. “It was like a supermodel calling you up out of the blue for a date.” With Kershenbaum on board, the concept of the Renaissance album expanded.

WORKING WITH KERSHENBAUM

The producer brought to the project top studio musicians, including bassist Lee Sklar (James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King, and Linda Ronstadt) and drummer Denny Fongheiser (Heart, Counting Crows, Bruce Springsteen, and Shawn Colvin). The two Davids also decided to rerecord the songs from the original demo session along with the new ones. The magic of modern technology helped complete the ensemble heard on the album with top session players from around the world. It includes Nashville and Brazilian musicians, a New York string quartet, an Atlanta horn section, and an Israeli cellist.

The sessions for the album brought Kershenbaum and Fish close both musically and personally, with the latter referring to the former as The Professor for his deep knowledge of production.

"HARRY CHAPIN"

One song on the new album stands apart from the rest and will serve as its first single. “Harry Chapin” is a tribute to that legendary singer-songwriter built on the melodies from his break-out hit, “Taxi.” Like “Taxi,” “Harry Chapin” is a story song that recounts how the doctor learned about Chapin’s music. The new song comes at an opportune moment. 2022 marks the fiftieth anniversary of “Taxi’s” release, and December 8th would also have been Chapin’s 80th birthday.

Where will the Last Troubadour album take Doctor Fish from here? “The offer to record the album, working with David K., it’s all been unexpected,” he notes. “So, I don’t have preconceived ideas about the future. All I can say is that I plan to ride this opportunity wherever it takes me. Only go straight and just don’t know.”