If you pay a visit to the Sub-pop website, the label that Fleet Foxes are signed to you can read an interesting piece about the origins of Fleet Foxes and the talent of main man Robin Pecknold:
The first time I heard “Boots of Spanish Leather,” it was as if all of the oxygen had been drained from the room, suddenly replaced with the wavering golden longing of this one song. Only it wasn’t Dylan singing, it was my 14 year-old brother Robin, belting out these heart-worn lyrics as the afternoon spring sunlight streamed through rain-stained windows, illuminating a thousand dust flecks in my cluttered college apartment. Each verse further eclipsed any hint of a self-conscious adolescent, as his fingers moved nimbly over the fretboard. It was the first of many songs I’d hear him master in the short time after our father gave us both acoustic guitars.
And as for their influences…maybe not surprisingly:
“We grew up listening to the music of our parents,” Robin notes, “The Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, The Zombies, Joni Mitchell, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Love, Marvin Gaye, Bach, Crosby Stills & Nash, Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield, and every other perennial ‘60s band you’d expect to find in the record collections of baby boomers.” (One of us is named after a Steely Dan record, for Christ’s sake…)
So where am I going with all this? The talented Robin Pecknold has recently launched a Myspace page for himself under the name of ‘White Antelope‘. There are two tracks currently on there, one of which is a traditional Child Ballad (#3) ‘False Knight on the Road’. It’s a great track, one which I’ve heard Maddy Prior cover. You can hear it here. Rumour is that he will be adding further covers to the White Antelope page in the future so keep your ears and eyes open.
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