Fair Mothers release a single, ‘Rainfall, Canada’ on the seemingly resurrected Song, By Toad label.

The band – effectively Stonehaven-based Fifer Kevin Allan, joined by Full Time Hobby artist Dana Gavanski and The Leg / Modern Studies’ Pete Harvey – also has an album, ‘Separate Lives’, due out in February 2020.

The track is mixed and recoded by Matthew Young, the label’s head. He explains that the project started before the label’s ‘closure’ almost a year and a half ago.

Of the track, Allan says: “I’m so pleased that Dana sang the duet with me on ‘Rainfall, Canada’. Her voice is so pure and heavy, and Canadian. It’s about separating the real you, the seed, from the body of shit that accretes onto it over the years which, actually, you need to eat your way through.

“We got the core of all those songs in just the one afternoon on my acoustic, but it was cold that Spring and I kept gravitating over to this squeaky old black piano next to the stove, which relaxed me and all these new melodies began to come out. I went back home to Stonehaven, happy that I’d gotten the songs out of my system, and fired up by these new melodies. They kept turning into new songs that we kept on recording whenever and however we could. And it’s grown into this fantastic big project, involving some really wonderful musicians.”

The trio came together when Gavanski came to Leith to record for Song, By Toad’s Split 12” Vol.7. Playing a show celebrating Fox Food Records, who released her first demos EP, she shared the stage with Fair Mothers and sang ‘Rainfall, Canada’ with Kevin Allan at soundcheck.

Also involved with the whole Fair Mothers project are Esther Swift (harp), Faith Eliott (vocals), Pete McConville (harmonica), Sam Mallalieu (drums) and Johnny ‘Pictish Trail’ Lynch (yelling).

The album is available for pre-order now, more at songbytoadrecords.bandcamp.com.