Photo by Shervin Laine
“The title could just as well be ‘Chasing the Sun – As it Sets on the Family Homestead,’ said Fireships’ Andrew Vladeck, reflecting on his band’s new video from their self-titled debut (stream it here). “My mom has put up our home for sale and I wanted to commemorate our lives out there. The Appalachian Trail is less then a mile through the woods. You can walk straight out the front door and make a left to Georgia or a right to Maine.”
“The setting was perfect to play “Chasing the Sun,” especially since that song was initially inspired by a ‘mad dash’ I took through those very woods in a futile attempt to prolong the day,” Vladeck continued. “I didn’t want the sun to set on a week without my father, who recently passed. Often songs transform as I write them, and this song became a hopeful one, about boldly effecting change against the odds. I was inspired by the photographs in Robert Frank’s book The Americans, many of whom became characters in the song, and I was inspired by the pro-democracy activists of the Arab Spring who were ‘chasing the sun,’ hoping no one would get burned if they caught up with it. All these threads wove together to form this song.”
