Sawyer Gebauer is an anxious man. As Catch Prichard frontman, he seems to quake with deeply-rooted angst as evidenced through the group’s new song “Worried Man” (pre-save), the last single ahead of their debut record I Still Miss Theresa Benoit (out April 23). I’m a worried man / I eat myself to the bone / Can’t drink no more / Cause it swims in my head, he sings with a gravelly bellow.
Thematically, the track “dovetails with generations of songs,” offers Gebauer, “and captures the familiar yet unconscious archetype that runs through every human. Whether Sage or Outlaw, the anxiety most of us feel is both perpetual and prehistoric, rooted in the belief that something savage is out there, hidden, powerful, waiting for our demise to feed its own survival.”
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“While untrue, the traitorous ghost lives,” the Oakland-based musician tells American Songwriter. With decorative horn blasts and light percussion, “Worried Man” fully displays Gebauer’s “own brawl with anxiety that [I] could neither name nor understand, and through these experiences, this storied song was born. We are narrative and fiction. We are self-creations; constructs of phrases we recite and morals we uphold that form who and what we call ‘ourselves.’”
The four-minute and 30-second song also frames around “the trials and teachers of our fears that call us to see them for the shadowed tricksters they are — demanding us to remember who we truly are and always have been,” he says. “When we realize these illusions as calls from the soul, we will understand their power as our own.”
Everything I know has changed its shape / And even the light has changed its shade, he continues with a trembling croak. And you think you know yourself / Then the fear hits hard / Feels like there’s no end / There’s only the start.
Catch Prichard’s forthcoming I Still Miss Theresa Benoit (pre-order here) bottles up what it’s been like for most musicians working amidst am ongoing pandemic. Near the tail end of February 2020, Gebauer entered Decibelle Recording in San Francisco to lay down his vocals despite feeling quite lethargic and mentally hazy. Turns out, he was positive with COVD-19 symptoms. Even though the band — also featuring Travis Snyder (pedal steel), Chris Clayman (bass), and Tim Decillis (drums) — expressed reservations, they ultimately decided against re-recording the record.
Listen to “Worried Man” below.
Photo by Rochelle Arucan
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