BIO
Jeremy Fetzer, hailing from Canton, Ohio, is a 35-year-old, Nashville-based guitarist and instrumental music composer. Fetzer is co-founder and one-half of instrumental outfit Steelism whose 2014’s 615 To FAME and 2017’s ism received critical acclaim from NPR, Billboard, & Rolling Stone. Steelism has performed on stages such as The Newport Folk Festival, Austin City Limits, and the Kennedy Center and Fetzer has worked in the studio with artists such as Kesha, Dolly Parton, Lambchop, Andrew Combs, Caitlin Rose, and Ruby Amanfu.
For more of Fetzer’s studio recording credits visit his page at AllMusic.com.
Fetzer’s newest endeavor is Fetzicon, an instrumental label imprint through Thirty Tigers, founded in 2020. The first release, “Mendocino,” was an original instrumental single featuring Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Duane Eddy. Duane Eddy, most famously known for his iconic twangy sound and work with Lee Hazelwood on the 1958 hit “Rebel Rouser,” has been a long-time musical hero of Fetzer’s and an inspiration in his instrumental music direction. “Mendocino” is a western-surf instrumental epic with Fetzer and Eddy trading leads over a driving rhythm section, soaring with co-producer Jon Estes’ rich string arrangements, recorded by an 18-piece studio orchestra in Lisbon, Portugal.
“I was introduced to Duane and his wife Deed back in 2012 at a Sirius Radio event in downtown Nashville where I performed with Caitlin Rose and Spencer Cullum. They couldn’t have been kinder,” Fetzer said. “I took a chance years later – I had the basic melody theme and band arrangement of ‘Mendocino’ and kept hearing a Duane Eddy-esque guitar sound playing the lead. Steelism studio collaborator Charlie McCoy gave me Duane’s contact. It’s been an incredible experience getting to know Duane during this recording process – he has incredible rock and roll stories for days. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Kinks… these bands were all inspired by Duane Eddy, and we’re so lucky to have him around and here in Nashville.”
“Mendocino” is available everywhere via Fetzicon/Thirty Tigers with a limited edition pressing of 7-inch Vinyl featuring an exclusive B-side mono mix and gold-stamp numbered jackets.
An EP to follow, Phases, is the second release on Fetzicon/Thirty Tigers and available now.
“Each of the four tunes is unique but tied together by Fetzer’s conceptual vision as he pushes the groove in various moods and directions without breaking a sweat.” - American Songwriter
Phases strings together four original instrumentals with guitar and analog synthesizer melodies weaving together over hypnotic, cinematic landscapes. The EP was inspired by film scores of Jonny Greenwood, Brian Eno’s Apollo, and Brazilian composer Antônio Jobim. All of the original instrumental music was co-produced with Jon Estes, mixed by Grammy-award-winning engineer Jeremy Ferguson at his Battle Tapes Studio and mastered by Grammy-nominated engineer John Baldwin at the historic RCA studio A.
“Wherever Fetzer takes his Telecaster, you can expect the melody lines to be clean and crisp and to lead off into places you didn't expect. Today, Fetzer has announced he's launching a new label just for instrumental music called Fetzicon. And its first release is a doozy.” - Nashville Scene
In September of 2022 Fetzer is set for a new series of instrumental singles with the first being the original “Finch”—a reverberant guitar instrumental taking us back to a mid-1960s West Coast jazz bar where the regulars have a run-in with the local surfers after having a few too many cocktails.
In recent years, Fetzer has also started a graphic design company, Fetzer Design, that specializes in album art and has worked on Grammy-Award winning and Grammy-nominated projects for Jason Isbell, Boz Scaggs, Delbert McClinton and Bobby Rush.