Writin' a rap

We’re doing a double dip tomorrow. There’s a party and Quatro Veda plays, then the 6 Foot Poles, then The Bottom 99, then Largebeat. So, Oliver and I will be doing 2 completely disparate sets. At least not back to back.

This is the intro I wrote for one of our darker songs (also shown). When you hear it with the lamenting clarinet with it, it really reminds me of when Klezmer gets sad.


“When I wrote this song in 2003, I had some vague hopes that the upcoming election would help make it irrelevant. It didn’t. First came Katrina, then hard on her heels the Sago Mine Disaster.
So, I’d like to dedicate this to the brave people still struggling for survival down in New Orleans, to those 6 workers dead in the dark at the Crandall Canyon Mine and the people who just died at the Gibson County Coal Mine.”

Pick and Shovel, Fire and Flame

To keep repeating history
Let them eat policy
Let them eat cake
To keep them on their knees
feed them on fallacies
how much will take?
To not acknowledge idiocy
greed and banality
is a mistake
Compounding the insanity
fake christianity
Who’d you forsake?

And still we die
from flames and fire
pick and shovel
wind and rain
Thirst and starvation dog this nation
ragged and driven
bowed in pain
We’ve become
awestricken, dumb
battered and numb
our hands are chained
And still we die
from flames and fire
pick and shovel
wind and rain