Fair to Midland are a progressive rock band formed in Sulphur Springs, Texas in 1998. Anyone who thinks the phrase "it's all been done before" carries real weight clearly has yet to encounter Fair to Midland. Dark, heavy, moving, cryptic, progressive art rock collides with flourishes of old-school country, Americana and Delta Blues in their sound. These Lonestar boys genre-defying and boundary obliterating ocean of sound righteously upends the old phrase "fair to middling" from which their Texas-ified moniker was drawn. ...show more

Fair to Midland are a progressive rock band formed in Sulphur Springs, Texas in 1998. Anyone who thinks the phrase "it's all been done before" carries real weight clearly has yet to encounter Fair to Midland. Dark, heavy, moving, cryptic, progressive art rock collides with flourishes of old-school country, Americana and Delta Blues in their sound. These Lonestar boys genre-defying and boundary obliterating ocean of sound righteously upends the old phrase "fair to middling" from which their Texas-ified moniker was drawn.

Arrows & Anchors, the five-piece band's first album in partnership with eOne Music, is meaner, sadder and altogether more desperate of an affair than its predecessors. "It's a very bitter album," offers vocalist Darroh Sudderth. "The last album had some light at the end of the tunnel in some of the subject matter. This one doesn't have that quite so much." This particularly invigorating yet undeniably gut-wrenching collection of songs is the product of a string of years of career strife since the group last poked their head into magazines and record shops.

Arrows and Anchors follows a change in record label, a change in management and one ("maybe two," Sudderth laughs) changes in booking agent. All of that change and upheaval definitely played a role in the creative process; artistic lemonade from business lemons. There has never been a lack of faith from the diehard admirers who have steadily adopted the band as their own in growing numbers since Fair to Midland's initial pair of self-released albums, The Carbon Copy Silver Lining (2001) and inter.funda.stifle (2004). Both were explorations into the furthest reaches of the musical psyche that earned them praise from critics, fans and fellow musicians. ...show less