The Ferdy Mayne
Brooklyn, NY | Established. Jan 01, 2009 | SELF
Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
Today, they've released their latest single, “Real Shackle,” which truly exemplifies their diverse sound. The instrumental is more on the indie-folk side with a bubbly undertone. The vocals are in direct contrast to the feel of the instrumental being more rugged, raw with a punk rock flare. Where those two feelings intersect and become one is closer to the end of the track, culminating with a grungy guitar solo. The track is the perfect embodiment of what a listener should come to expect from The Ferdy Mayne. - Sound & Silence Magazine
Whatever the case, The Ferdy Mayne is essentially a project of troubadour Shane O’Malley Firek, a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, by way of Nashville, by way of Michigan. Firek folds each of these stops into The Ferdy Mayne’s sound – the Dylanesque folk of Detroit’s Rodriquez, the country-folk weirdness of Nashville’s Bobby Bare Jr. and the New York street punk poetry of Jim Carroll. The avant-garde comes in the form of Firek’s voice – which ranges from the energy of Kristian Matsson (Tallest Man on Earth) to the growl of present day Dylan, to the moodiness of Sea Change-era Beck. But to say that Firek sounds like any or all of these artists is a disservice – there’s a lot of originality and talent going on here. - 50thirdand3rd
In a way, Firek's Ferdy-flares mirrored the all too fleeting (but often necessary/unavoidable) transience of these above-hallowed^ alternative venues. Which, having been swooned by the gristly, gargled swoon and gloom of his dark, twangy music, a whiskey-shot Americana, gaunt and profound but fractured upon its landing in the clotted cradle of urban gutters, made it that much harder to accept the band's somewhat start-and-stop status, heretofore. But the band was never put on hold - as long as Firek wrote, it lived. And it was that writing, the lyrics, not just their throaty, quavering delivery, but the words, that can be the most striking about their songs. "It is an entity onto itself," he said, "(its) solidifying and we'll write more soon. It is fun. We enjoy fun." - Deep Cutz
Man it’s tough to keep up to date with new music from all the great bands we feature on the site.
A while back we featured the eccentric sounds of The Ferdy Mayne, a project of sorts of Shane O’Malley Firek, a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn by way of Detroit. You can read that HERE.
Well it’s been a while and I see that The Ferdy Mayne released a new single this past March. We’re a little late bringing this to you, but here it is.
Real Shackle is a mix of Bob Dylan and Jim Carroll. Rambling, freaky folk street poetry with a little twang.
Word is there’s an album in the mix… - 503rdand3rd
The Ferdy Mayne is the musical vehicle for Shane O’Malley Firek, the itinerant songwriter who called Detroit, Nashville and Brooklyn home before cleaning up his personal life and moving to L.A. “Los Angeles is a shimmering object at first glance,” Firek says. “It is unreliable, similar to the unreliable dream of New York City, but I trust in the truth that you can sharpen the tools you came here with.”
His debut full-length “The Ferdy Mayne” will arrive in March, the latest chapter in a story that has seen the singer-guitarist play his outside-the-box Americana with some 40 bandmates, battle alcohol abuse, spend time in jail and finally come out on the other side. The single “Define My Name” shuffles in from left field with a lyrical sense that recalls the likes of Lambchop or Bill Callahan: “Define my name, little Joan of Arc / Monk cherry tree, won’t you bury me? / I want it sticking out the side of my head / With the flower or the fruit / Define my name little casino hawk / Monk cherry tree gonna come after the dark / I want it sticking out my chest / I want to see it fly again.” Out of that stream-of-consciousness emerges just enough of the familiar to make the Ferdy Mayne’s world a place of wonder: a beautiful guitar solo, a pleading chorus, a spacey Western twang that makes you think now that Firek has ridden off into the sunset, there’s a happy ending somewhere in the horizon.
The album, the follow-up to EPs released in 2009, 2013 and 2014, is out March 24 via Greater Peaks Records. - LA Buzzbands
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
Photos
Bio
The story of Shane O’Malley Firek, the single constant member of The Ferdy Mayne, is one of journeys – physical, spiritual, and a combination of the two.
“I was going through massive change when I was writing this material,” Firek explains. His moves from Detroit to Nashville, then to New York City, and now on the eve of the release of his self-titled debut album, to Los Angeles, all inform these songs.
It’s a lot of movement, the other side of the coin of confinement, which Firek also knows something about. It’s likely the same optimism about his first glimpse of Los Angeles that kept him going before arriving there.
Firek accomplishes on this album what any artist hopes to who has lived through pretty good and really bad, and that is to fully inform the work with experience.
“All songwriting is informed by place, and I wrote what I felt within whatever place I may have been in. I scrape emotion from the bare bones of locations. I was decimated by each new experience and had to put myself back together again,” he says.
Firek is most proud of his lyrics, and unlike some songwriters, he fights hard for them, sometimes over the course of many years.
“When I write songs, it takes a very long time. Very rarely do songs come quickly, aside from a few on this record,” he says. One that came more easily is the album’s first single and music video, “Define My Name”.
“This is the single most focused song on the record, lyrically,” he explains. “What else can it say? Define my name. Surreal, poignant Ferdy lyrics. This is what I do best.”
True enough.
Firek’s lyrics are indeed poetic, not in the labored over sense, even though the relative time spent may say differently, but in the sense that they flow as if being channeled.
From “Define My Name”:
Define my name, little Joan of Arc
Monk cherry tree, won’t you bury me?
I want it sticking out the side of my head
With the flower or the fruit
Define my name little casino hawk
Monk cherry tree gonna come after the dark
I want it sticking out my chest
I want to see it fly again
While The Ferdy Mayne is decidedly Firek’s very own “guitar band” alone, as he terms it, he has also attracted some 40-odd players to the project since he launched it in 2008, playing with musicians ranging from guys he grew up with, to some he found on Craig’s List mere days before stepping into a studio.
“I’ve been pulling this cart for almost ten years,” he jokes.
That said, the upcoming album has the fresh vitality that a first record should, and shows influences both very obvious and more obscure, from Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen to Merle Haggard, Wilco, and Lambchop.
Firek’s laser-focused love for the specifics of other’s work also serves to put his own pride in perspective.
“I am in love with this record, and I want people to love it, too, but if the world doesn’t want it, I definitely have plenty more.”
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