Fleming & John

Fleming and John is a musical husband and wife team, Fleming McWilliams and John Mark Painter, currently living in Nashville, Tennessee. The couple met while attending Belmont College in Nashville, and immediately began collaborating on songs. While pursuing a record contract, Painter began playing in studio sessions for artists like dc Talk, Sixpence None the Richer, Indigo Girls, Jars of Clay, Nanci Griffith, and Jewel. In 1994, the band recorded "Harder to Believe than Not To" for I Predict A Clone, a tribute album to Steve Taylor. The following year, the couple released their first album, Delusions of Grandeur on Universal Records. Friend and fan Ben Folds, who called Fleming and John the "Carpenters of the 1990s with Led Zeppelin's rhythm section", invited them to open for his band. They continue to perform and record with Folds from time to time. And during Ben Folds Five's success of "Brick" Fleming & John helped on a side project of Folds' called Fear of Pop. John still did a lot of the orchestrations for Folds' albums, from Whatever and Ever, Amen through Songs for Silverman. (Ben Folds himself played drums on a number of songs on the Delusions Of Grandeur album.) Recently, Painter produced Folds' ex-wife's record Frally. Painter also did a lot of work for the Hoodwinked animated film's soundtrack. In 1998, Fleming and John released their second album, The Way We Are, which spawned a minor hit with the single "Ugly Girl". The duo has what is essentially a secondary career as a cover band, providing recordings of other peoples songs for tribute albums, soundtracks and compilations. Songs covered by the band include "Winter Wonderland" (to the tune of Led Zeppelin's "Misty Mountain Hop"), "Eldorado" (Electric Light Orchestra), "California Dreamin'" (the Mamas and the Papas), "Somebody to Love" (Jefferson Airplane), "After the Lovin'" (Engelbert Humperdinck). A longtime concert favorite has been Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe" to the tune of Zeppelin's "Black Dog". The band has mainly laid dormant since the tour for The Way We Are completed in the late 1990s. However, their page on MySpace indicates that they are starting work on a new album in May, 2006.