A Song About This - Black Lives Matter

Over Thanksgiving, I released “A Song About This.” It’s the best song I’ve written in years, and I intend to not make a single dime off of it for myself. In the ongoing effort of equality and justice, all BandCamp & Streaming proceeds go to the Eugene, Oregon local chapter of the NAACP.

I wrote the song during the summer of America’s heightened racial unrest, smack in the middle of a global pandemic, while releasing and promoting my comeback album (The Beast Is Back). I became bothered by the harsh disparity between my social convictions and the self-involvement required to promote a DIY music career. So I retreated to my shabby garage – the humblest space in my personal vicinity – to flesh out some ponderous lyrics I had spoken into my iPhone on the way home from a gig in on the Oregon Coast.

“I can write a song about anything / But I can’t write a song about this...” (Lyrics below)

I don’t write many socio-political songs. I rarely feel certain enough about my views, burdened by wishy-washy thinking that comes from seeing too many sides of the issues all at once. Years ago, I cut my musical teeth on hippy-folk pot-luck jams, where white kids pulled guitars and recycled “We-Shall-Overcome” and “We’re-All-One” musical sentiments. We were sincere, earnest young idealists. But by the time I started writing my own songs, gone were the days when “Stand-Up-to-The-Man” messaging scratched my creative itch. (And when it comes to the Revolution, I can never figure out whom we’re supposed to line up against the wall.) Furthermore, many political songs come off to me as either heavy-handed and superior, or awkwardly sanctimonious and ingratiating. My early experiments weren’t any better. (These days, I prefer to broach such subjects through self-deprecating characters.)

But there are two things about which I am passionately uncompromising – Racism & Homophobia. Because I know and love people who are not white and not straight.

Two questions weighed on me. “As an artist, do I have a responsibility to say and do something?” And if so: “What is my lane? (as my friend Ehren Ebbage worded it.) Will I be getting in the way?  Could I get it wrong? Would I be ‘white-splaining'?’ Might I be exploiting the issues for attention?”

To the former: Yes. To those latter concerns: Possibly. But you gotta go forward anyway, because it’s the right thing to do, and you can deal with the navel-gazing, existential self-second-guessing along the way.

I managed to get the song written by keeping it simple. Two-chords… maybe a couple extras in the chorus. And with lyrics that say nothing more than “This is what I see. This is how it feels to see it.”

“A Song About This” was written by a white guy who confesses to a fairly privileged life, free from the adversity of prejudice. The song is for white people. But I’m not trying to win the Woke-Olympics. I’m not trying to be adversarial, point fingers, or name names. It is self-confrontational. It trusts the victims of bigotry to speak for themselves, while inviting the rest of us to put the brakes on the inertia of our opinions and allow ourselves a genuine empathetic response.

I don’t know what else to say. But I had to blog something about it, to get it out there. The song says it better than any of my pedantry could.

Plus, I have a handful of wonderful people to thank for this effort. My friends who donated as much of their services and talents as they could during this time of financial struggle, because they too have strong feelings about the issue.

Co-producers Tyler Fortier (AKA Last Year’s Man) & Ehren Ebbage. Ehren performed and recorded most of the instrumentation. Tyler mixed, and added organ & vocals (with his wife Erin Flood-Fortier). Thaddeus Moore of Liquid Mastering did the post-production sparklifying. Adam Dawson of Broken Jukebox generously promoted the single. (Glide Magazine premiered us with generosity, and got the intention right.)

As always, by my side, Katie Parentice supervises and sharpens my marketing.

The lyrics:

I can write a song about anything. I got a thousand ideas on my list,

Work songs, travel songs, love songs with a twist,

But I can’t write a song about this.

They’re tearing down the statues in the square,

Getting dragged across the concrete by the hair,

Chanting “I can’t breath!” through their masks.

You know you’re down to your last when one breath is all you ask.

I write the songs about broken things,

Broken hearts, broken promises, and broken dreams.

But I never thought I’d have to write a song about my broken country.

They look a lot like people I have seen,

My heroes at the ballpark, my idols on the stage & screen.

And I think about the souls I always took for granted,

While I feasted from the strange fruit trees we planted long ago,

Centuries ago.

I can write a song about anything -- the sunlight shining through the mist,

The light in my lover’s eyes just before we kiss.

But I can’t write a song about this.

I sing praises to the working man, in factory and farm.

My Blues was never meant to cause no harm.

But the voice will surely rise to sound of the alarm,

When there’s a stranger bleeding in your arms.

I can write a song about anything,

My head in the cosmos, and my feet on the ground.

If I’ve seen it, I know it. In my music, I will show it.

But please don’t ask me to put these things down in my songbook now.

I never pointed my guitar like a gavel or gun.

But that was some kid’s father, some loving mother’s son.

This wasn’t part of the bargain, when I followed my bliss,

No, I can’t write a song about this.

I can write a song about anything.

But I can’t write about this.