Tim Fite: Tears of a Clown

I’m standing on the sidewalk with Tim Fite outside Chicago’s Landmark Theatre shortly after Fite has delivered an inspired and truly beguiling set. Bathed in streetlight, Fite shows me his pink, argyle socks before explaining that his new record, Fair Ain’t Fair (Anti-), is an album of violent regrets and was recorded during one of the lowest emotional points in his life.

Then he laughs and begins talking about his keen socks again. To say the least, Fite is somewhat of an enigma. Having lambasted capitalism and delved headfirst into hip hop on his free 2007 online release Over the Counter Culture, Fite returns to his folk leanings on the new record Fair Ain’t Fair, and outdoes Beck in his “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to genre cross-stitching and lyrical playfulness.

Fite’s on-stage presence, framed against a giant illuminated boom box, is equal parts manic preacher, B-boy, and bizarre man-child. During the show, Fite pumps his fist and wipes his sweaty brow, deftly melding sincerity with hip-hop raves before leading the crowd in a rousing version of “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.” In a quieter moment, the lights dimmed and the acoustic strum of “Big Mistake” from Fair Ain’t Fair filled the theatre.

Everyone gets to make one big mistake/ and if you’re waiting on me, well I guess you’re gonna have to wait / cuz I’m saving mine up for a very special day / when I can fuck it all up in the most spectacular way.

“Fair Ain’t Fair is the sound of the feeling that I’ve done everything totally wrong, and all of a sudden I realized it and there was nothing I could do about the impending doom that was being caused by my negligence and evil doing,” Fite says without a trace of sarcasm.

“I think the record is personal on the level that it’s a lot of feelings that everybody feels, but it also branches out into the end of the world. It’s less pointed than Over the Counter Culture, where I blatantly expressed my politics and where I stand on certain issues. It all depends on your view of the end of the world. Sometimes that seems like it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Other times it seems like the saddest possible ending to the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

The fact that the album is a reflection of a deep depression shows only in Fite’s warped sense of fear and loathing at the government and the seemingly unfair randomness of fate. Fair Ain’t Fair is Fite at his most restrained; his sample-happy layered soundscapes have largely been replaced by sparse acoustic arrangements and stripped-down percussion. Fite’s inherent joy in music making still shines through on the album, although that jubilation was almost snuffed out.

“It took a long time to make this record,” says Fite. “I was broken up with feeling really terrible. I was real sad most of the time I was making it. I was a little over-aware of my shortcoming and wishing I could do a better job. You hear it all over the record, especially on ‘Big Mistake.’ I didn’t even listen to any outside music during the making of Fair Ain’t Fair. There weren’t any speakers in that hole I was in.

“It was really weird, because just a few weeks ago I put on an album for the first time in a long time, and I was like, ‘Damn, I remember dancing to music, and I like it!’ I had forgotten how great that can be. I was in a real hole and was tuning in a lot of negativity, and I didn’t want to hear things that made me feel good. I wanted to hear sadness all the time. I think I got it out of me though. One day you wake up and it’s sunny.”

– Drew Fortune

Tim Fite: www.timfite.com
Anti- Records: www.anti.com