It’s the end of the summer and we have hit our goal in the studio. In May we said we wanted to have 10 songs ready to track and record. Last Friday we finished #10. A song written by Marc entitled “Must be Night”. This record will be our best so far. Of course I always say that at this point in the recording process. Our goal as a band is to continually improve our music. So it is natural that we think our next album will be better than the last. This time we have taken the whole summer to prepare , compose and arrange the music. I believe the result will be noticeable. The title of the new record is “The Great Divide”. The title track asks the question “How can everyone be so sure, when no one’s got the cure”. I like it because the lyrics do not take sides but instead focus on the schism in our country. It does seem that there is more anger and hate than there has been in recent times. Some of us remember the Vietnam war era. The country was similarly divided at that time. There was plenty of anger and hate between the long hair pot smoking hippies and the truck driving pro war rednecks. See, people called each other names back then too. A band called Buffalo Springfield wrote a song called “For What It’s Worth”. The lyric in the song that always sticks with me:
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say Hooray for our side.
That was 1967. Seems like we have not learned how to disagree any more productively since then. Instead of signs and sit ins, we have Twitter and Instagram. Better technology, same message. Hooray for our side.
Musicians are still an important voice in our culture. I hope this new song will inspire folks to try a little harder to be tolerant of a different opinion than their own.
