This year, during this VERY SPECIFIC TIME (you know, while global viruses run rampant and as we're coming up on a presidential election!), I couldn't think of a song I'd rather record for the #tinydeskcontest.
Danny Jonokuchi came up with a new, absolutely gorgeous arrangement of this tune that I wrote on November 10th, 2016. And every six months to a year, I like to add a new verse into the bridge.
This song may feel...passionate (? it is for me, at least, if that's not too weird to say...ugh, it probably is), but it's never meant to be taken as hopeless. Quite the opposite. I like to think of it as a rallying cry, and I wrote it while I was rounding a new corner, mentally. I think a lot of us never felt that specific feeling we felt the day-after-the-election-day, and while I was beyond upset, I also felt a new surge of confidence and responsibility in terms of speaking up and banding together with other people as things were getting rough. That feels pretty hopeful.
Which also reminds me of making this video, because RECORDING AN 11-MUSICIAN-BAND WHEN YOU CAN'T ALL CONGREGATE IN ONE PLACE IS JUST ROUGH. Sometimes you gotta do what you can do from home (and take some help from Josh Plotner when it comes to video editing).
So please enjoy (or not! I’d rather have you hate it and feel something than feel nothing), and thank you to these absolutely wonderful musicians/artists for their talent and patience: Mike Rosengarten, Rob Rokicki, Jamie Donald Eblen, Matt Scharfglass, Josh Plotner, Danny Jonokuchi, Becca Patterson, Katie Lee Hill, Amara Brady, and Hana Slevin. ❤️