Okkervil River Reveals First Song From 'The Silver Gymnasium' (Sep 3/ATO Records) At New Hampshire Town Hall's 1916 Maxfield Parrish Stage

 
This morning, Okkervil River revealed "It Was My Season," the first song from 'The Silver Gymnasium' (Sep 3/ATO Records), and more details about the new album produced by John Agnello (Kurt Vile, Dinosaur Jr., John Mellencamp, Cyndi Lauper). Will Sheff announced via Twitter: "'The Silver Gymnasium' takes place in 1986 in a small town in New Hampshire" and the new lyric video takes listeners there.

On OkkervilRiver.com, Will Sheff explains the video was filmed in the Town Hall of Plainfield, NH - near where Sheff grew up - on a stage set painted by renowned American artist Maxfield Parrish in 1916. Depicting a classic New England woodland scene, Parrish designed the set to interact with a multi-part light show to simulate dawn, early morning, full afternoon sun, and dusk. In this video, Plainfield’s long-serving Town Librarian Nancy Norwalk operates the lightshow to the accompaniment of “It Was My Season."

Sheff describes the inspiration for choosing this location:
"I remember nights as a kid where we'd go to the Town Hall and watch guys from the town get up and play little rock and roll sets in front of this beautiful three-dimensional Maxfield Parrish backdrop while ladies would sell cans of Coke and 7-Up through the concession window. As time passed in my life, the backdrop seemed less real to me and I wanted to go back to film it to see if it was really there and was as cool as I remember it. It's even cooler now thanks to the great work of Nancy Norwalk and a group of Plainfield preservationists who cleaned and restored it a decade or so ago - the backdrop is still lit by a custom lighting rig special-ordered from New York City in 1916, though the Town Hall itself is over a hundred years older than that. For the first song from the record I wanted Nancy to give everybody out there in internetland a chance to see her run the beautiful times-of-day lightshow by hand to the accompaniment of the music."

View the video, and read more about the stage, here: http://okkervilriver.com/

Okkervil River have confirmed a national tour including dates in NYC (9/26), LA (10/20), and Nashville (10/1).

Full dates here: http://okkervilriver.com/tour