Photo Credit: Vanessa Heins

Spencer Burton shares new single, “Going Fishin'”

Jenna Melanson·September 5, 2023

Spencer Burton Releases New Single & Video “Going Fishin'” & Announces North Wind Album

Spencer Burton releases “Going Fishin’,” the lead single from his next full-length album, North Wind, anticipated this fall on Dine Alone Records. Accompanied by a serene music video shot by Southern Souls at Burton’s very own farm, “Going Fishin’” and its visuals are a gorgeous country-folk ode to the beauty of sincere intentions, his animals, and the surrounding scenery.

“It’s about getting away from it all,” Burton explains about his inspiration. “Sometimes it’s nice to just feel a little free and do something you love. The past few years have been real hard. Times were tough and it seems that times are even becoming tougher. Most days I wake up concerned and stressed. I think a lot of people do. I could have written about this, but I wanted to write and release a song about something that made me feel good. Something that helps me take my mind off of it all. I think we all have the want and need to escape sometimes.”

Already living quietly in a slow country town, a period of intense world isolation prompted Burton to leave the city even further behind. An overload of negative information and fear left him feeling hopeless and uninspired to create music. He sat back for a couple of years watching what felt like the world crumbling around him. Retreating to a small off-grid cabin in Northern Ontario, Burton reconnected with nature and found peace and comfort in isolation. Taking a step back from the realities of life let him step back into making music.

“I always felt this need for importance, this need to be poetic. It came, but it felt mandatory at times. I struggled with that,” says Burton. “But then I found beauty in the simple things. A bird’s song. A rustling gale. A ripple in the water. With the beauty of those simple things came importance and poetry in an unforced, natural way.”

The majority of North Wind was written in the north woods, in solitude and reflection. And while the songs have a spiritual importance, they also speak to ordinary life away from it all—fishing, an encounter with a coyote, sitting with your own thoughts. “It’s really interesting what pleases the ear, musically, when isolated for a few weeks at a time. The only inspiration being yourself and the beauty of true untampered nature. It’s a different atmosphere than what we’re accustomed to. It really helped bring these songs to life.” Recorded again in Nashville with Andrija Tokic, like 2021’s Coyote (Still Records), North Wind fits sonically with the rest of Burton’s catalogue, but the tone is noticeably different. The songs are easier, more comfortable, and at ease. They encapsulate that same feeling he had out there alone, of singing by the campfire in the woods.

“I’m not really trying to write music these days,” says Burton. “I’m trying to write good feelings.”

He elaborates,

“the north wind really saved me over the past couple of years. It brought to me a new sense of life and a new urgency for it. I had thought my songwriting days were over, but with the help of this little guitar and a strong want for expressing my gratitude towards the north, I found myself writing again. Almost every song on this coming album was written on this guitar and in the north itself. A beautiful breeze it breathes and with every breath a song. I’m thankful for these wild places. I hope they never leave us. I’ll be here until the end of my days.”