BY: JOEY REAMS
Irish singer-songwriter Foy Vance has released two new singles along with a statement regarding his recent absence. The two songs, “Sapling” and “Signs of Life,” are both coming off his upcoming album, also titled Signs of Life. There’s no official release date for this album, but the singer has shed some light on where he has been in the past year or so. Read the first few paragraphs of the letter below:
“So much has happened since last we spoke that it’s hard to know where to start. Sounds like a line in a country song. I stopped touring on the 4th of November 2017. The final dates were at Union Chapel, London. When I walked off stage that night I made sure I had some time on my own to savor the moment. That was the first time in over 20 years that I didn’t have any tour dates in my diary. Everyone around me kept asking if I was frightened by the prospect, but I have to be honest, it felt amazing. Liberating somehow. I took my hat off, wiped the sweat from my wee baldy head, and thought to myself “thank fuck we’re done with that guy for a while.
That was about 16 months ago as I type. It took a while to get into the rhythm of being off the road. Living in constant transit does something very peculiar to you. I still have my most worn clothes in a suitcase in my bedroom. Funny, I didn’t think that weird in any way until it came to mind to tell you. Marie told me I treated the house like a hotel when I first came home. I said “Darlin, come on now, calm down… let’s order a bottle of something from room service and talk about this…
It took some time to calibrate my equilibrium, but I got there by brute force if nothing else. I got a studio space and clocked in like a miner Monday to Friday whether songs came or not. You don’t get that kind of time on the road. And it takes time to create songs. The wondering about it and the singing of it in your head is as important as sitting at the instrument, playing it through. More so sometimes.”
Read the rest of the letter here.