By Leslie Banks
Pittsburgh’s Bob Augustine digs through the emotional wreckage of modern life and discovers something surprisingly radical: the courage to believe in love again.
There’s something wonderfully screwed up about the human condition. We spend half our lives looking for love, the other half trying to figure out what the hell happened when we found it, and the rest of our miserable existence pretending we’ve got the whole thing figured out. Enter Bob Augustine, the Pittsburgh troubadour operating under the gloriously unpretentious moniker Folk-IndieBob, with “Fountain of Love (Remix),” a song that suggests maybe the secret to happiness is to quit chasing the damn thing.
And you know what? He might be onto something.
Augustine isn’t interested in selling you some Hallmark-card fantasy where everybody rides into the sunset with perfect teeth and matching sweaters. This is a guy who understands that life is one big, beautiful catastrophe, and sometimes the best thing you can do is throw your hands up and let the universe have its way with you.
“I wasn’t looking for a paradise,” he announces, immediately establishing himself as the anti-romantic romantic. There’s no grand declaration, no manufactured desperation, just the wonderfully liberating realization that some things happen precisely because we stop trying to make them happen.
Then comes the emotional knockout: “There’s a gold mine deep in my heart / There’s a fountain of love that’s ready to start.”
Hell, that’s practically a manifesto.
In an age when popular music seems determined to convince us that emotional vulnerability is either a marketing strategy or a psychological disorder, Augustine treats it like the most natural thing in the world. His songwriting has that old-school folk sensibility where words actually mean something, where a simple metaphor can carry more emotional weight than an entire stadium’s worth of overproduced pop bombast.
The remix pairs Augustine’s vocals, acoustic guitar, and percussion with Mike Hickman’s electric guitar, bass, keyboards, and percussion. It’s a combination that positions the song somewhere between the coffeehouse and the rock club, two musical universes that really ought to spend more time drinking together.
Recorded at Pittsburgh’s Electric Eye Studio, mixed by Doug Caspar at Tonic Studios, and mastered by Joseph Freeman Mastering, the production credits reflect a distinctly local creative partnership.
And here’s where things get interesting. Augustine isn’t exactly some anonymous folk singer mumbling into a microphone while three disinterested patrons order cappuccinos. His previous single, “Four Leaf Clover (Remix),” climbed to #3 on the UK iTunes charts and has been sitting pretty at #3 on the Independent Music Network’s Country chart and #5 on its Mainstream chart. Apparently, there’s still an audience for songs that believe human beings possess functioning hearts.
Imagine that.
But the real beauty of “Fountain of Love (Remix)” lies in its refusal to surrender to cynicism. Augustine acknowledges the storms, the uncertainty, and the fragile house of cards we call existence, then essentially tells tomorrow’s troubles to take a number.
Is it profound? Maybe. Is it sentimental? Absolutely. Does that make it any less worthwhile? Not a damn bit.
“Fountain of Love (Remix)” arrives November 27th, and its greatest achievement is reminding us that sincerity doesn’t have to apologize for itself.
Sometimes the most rebellious thing a songwriter can do is believe that love still matters.
Pre-save at http://tunelink.to/BobAugustine_FountainOfLove