Out August 2nd, 2024

"It has been said that we all used to 'be from somewhere'. I was lucky enough to learn to sing from my grandparents, who learned to sing from their grandparents. My bloodline has inhabited the Upland South for enough centuries for the Upland South to now live within us. The clear creeks and rocky forgotten places inhabit my voice, those streams run through my veins, and those stones can be heard in every song I sing. This is what country music means to me in a literal sense: rooting oneself to a landscape and cultural experience…because landscape and culture are forever intertwined. Most of us have lost our ties to land, we are alienated from it and in turn, alienated from each other. Our creeks run muddy, our soils broken for the machinery of profit. We are much more susceptible to exploitation and abuse by governments and economies when we are uprooted, when we lose our love and literacy with the living dirt under our feet. For this reason, among many others, I think it's important that this country music honors the experience of dispossession and disenfranchisement felt everywhere, and the most immediate way I feel this music can serve that purpose is through fundraising. To that end, the early bandcamp release of this song will be an effort to raise money for the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, and the subsequent streaming royalties will go entirely to Doctors Without Borders, so that my voice can do a small service to those facing loss of their own landscapes and cultures. My version of country music doesn’t ask you to try to emulate my bloodline, or ‘put on a hat’; I hope everyone who hears this song searches out their own roots…ones that run deep enough to survive the coming storm. I hope you find your own voice and own landscape to love, because making ourselves less useful to industry and capital is our collective path toward actual freedom. I hope our paths meet in a future refugia, and I hope you don’t let it die." ~ Nick Shoulders