Folk musician uses drum library and vocal layers for big sounds

The first time I saw Tim Fite, he was playing for an intimate crowd – nine people total. He was standing in tweed shants, a dress shirt and a tie with an acoustic guitar.

in his hands, giving a performance with the confidence of a bank robber.
It’s unfortunate I wasn’t there. Thankfully, the performance was on YouTube.
“Ain’t Ain’t Ain’t” is the title of Fite’s new album, which comes out Monday, and everything about it is characteristic of Fite’s creativity.

If you have a choice between reading this review or listening to the live stream of his album, listen to the album.

The beats are made up of samples that Fite and his friend, Justin Riddle, recorded in the woods, a high-school auditorium and a barn.

“We recorded a drum library, with different BPM, all different drum sounds, all different percussion sounds — hours, and hours and hours of drums — so that I’d have something to build my songs out of,” said Fite in the video “The Making of Ain’t Ain’t Ain’t.”

Layered into the beats are a myriad of sounds that create a depth to the album’s sound much deeper and vastly different than the performance he gave standing in the dirt with a guitar, but it’s still just as unique.

“So a lot of making this record was about making little sounds that I could turn into big sounds. I needed to get sounds that I could steal from myself, you know, so I’d just play them one note at a time and let them ring out and I can chop them up — you wouldn’t think that would make music but it makes really nice music,” said Fite in the aforementioned video.

While researching Fite, it became clear just how brilliant he is. Whether it’s his artwork, his music, his work ethic, or his ability to do something we all struggle with — being himself — he is magnetic and that comes through in how his friends describe him in the video “Tim Fite – Work Ethic.”

I believe Tim is not able to be defined by just music. It has to be seen as the full package,” said Timothy Showalter, the singer from Strand of Oaks. “The multiple layers of him singing along with his own songs, it needs to be seen as his own childlike art that is mixed with a lot of sadness and the humor that just inherently arises out of the sadness- that’s what makes it such a strong listening experience and visual experience.”

“I can never describe it. It’s not categorizable because he’s never in just one space or in one mode or one style,” said Stephanie Bereira of Kickstarter.

“Talking to the Air” is the eleventh song on the album, but the first that sounds like the Fite I first heard a few years ago and, unfortunately, forgot about until this week. So do what I did this week and discover how crazy Fite is.

Advocate Staff