Song Origins
Fishwater
R&R: Let me ask you about "Fishwater".
JB: Alright!
R&R: Three things occurred to me on that tune: booze, sex or fishing.
JB: "Fishwater"... The initial-- and I gotta say, this doesn't mean anything that I'm saying is right or anything. I'm entering into this as an objective interpreter of the song. And it's pretty cool. For some reason I feel willing to do that right now. A lot of times I get...
R&R: Why wouldn't you be?
JB: Well, if somebody's approaching me saying "What is it?" and they're saying "Now this is what it means," you don't want to be... You don't seem to want to cheat anybody out of their own interpretation. So that's where I'd feel okay giving mine. 'Cause people give mine more precedence. And it really isn't like that, I don't think.
R&R: So it makes you uncomfortable that someone would hear your interpretation and then they wouldn't consider a song could be about anything else?
JB: Exactly, exactly. I can say... here I feel comfortable saying [that] the initial thing about "Fishwater" was... they were just words coming out of my mouth, because that tune was born on stage straight out of just a jam in A that had a bum-bum-bum kinda beat, and we were gone. But we wouldn't even have remembered the song if somebody hadn't come up to us with a tape a couple months later and said, "What is this?"
R&R: Now that is cool! That is a cool little piece of trivia from the technological world. I mean, imagine if Leonardo had ever said, you know, "I never would have remembered my design for the helicopter if someone hadn't brought me a note, that I'd drawn myself.
JB: Oh yeah! Well, that was the truth. Fella said, "What is this? We call it 'Fishwater'." So that's what we called it. And we were on our way to New Orleans. Really excited; I think it was going to be out first gig there. Either our first gig or our first good gig. I don't know if we were playing during Mardi Gras at a frat, or if it was our first gig at Tipitinas, but we were excited about going down there. So the first thing about "Fishwater" is clam juice. You know, the broth from steamed clams. That's what came into our minds. And from there, it was like "Fiiiishwaaaaterrrr!" You know, sexy stuff. And I said, "Yeah, that's gotta be the right one!"
R&R: And "some of those women turn out to be men."
JB: Yeah! It's a tune about just excess and the nature of New Orleans, and it really doesn't go much deeper than that. You're lucky to be alive at the end of the tune.
# of times played: 784
First time played: 03/08/90
Frequency: 2.84 shows
Longest drought: 66 shows (03/08/90 > 07/26/90)
Most common lead in: Driving Song (27 times)
Most common lead out: Space Wrangler (20 times)
Most common set position: Set 1, song 2 (54 times) Author: Widespread Panic