Something New

Fortress Of The Bear

In early 2020, I had booked the legendary Georgia based rock band Drivin’ N Cryin’ to play a pair of shows in the Pacific Northwest in August of that year. I needed another band for the Seattle show, and I found Fortress of the Bear on Sonicbids and thought they sounded great and would work perfectly for this show. They agreed and we were confirmed, but covid hit almost immediately after that and ruined everything, both shows got canceled. Fortunately, FOTB reached back out in 2022 when they were planning to release their incredible Heroes Around album, and that show in August of 2022 was the beginning of expanding Prepaid Friends involvement in the Seattle scene. Since then, I’ve seen FOTB 17 times and booked many of those shows. So, I knew I needed to get a song from them for this compilation.

They released an EP of new material in September of last year called Wake the Dead, another really strong collection of songs. Ultimately, my favorite track was “Something New” and I started using it as a placeholder for a playlist of the compilation that I would listen to, in order to work out the sequence of the tracks. It sat so perfectly between “Inseparable Love” and “I Walk Alone” that I couldn’t imagine any other song being there. I’m grateful they agreed to contribute it to this collection.

Guitarist Greg Hagstrom shared his thoughts about it: “The song started with the opening guitar riff, which was written while messing around in open E tuning. It all came together on a weekend band retreat to Ocean Shores. That’s where all the songs on ‘wake the dead’ were born. It was the first serious writing session/batch of new material with Keola in the band. ‘Something New’ really highlights the power of Matt and Ks vocals together.”