Dear Friends,
Thanks to all of you who were able to join us for a lovely release party for our new music video! Here is the recording if you missed it, as well as the story I wrote a few days ago that I mentioned. Please keep spreading the word about the new album and we’ll chat soon!
-Jeremy
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I hope you are well and safe these days. This is Jeremy, the bass in Windborne, and I want to tell you a story of why music is important to me in this time. It’s longer than I’d usually write, but it feels necessary and relevant to share right now. I hope you will take a moment to read it.
When Windborne launched Song on the Times 4 years ago, I wrote, “Sometimes music can change hearts, even when minds are made up.” It’s a belief I want to hold, but faced with the stark division in this country where no one seems to change their mind about anything, I sometimes wonder if I’m just fooling myself. Am I actually making a difference traveling around the country with Windborne and singing these songs? And then every so often there are these small shifts, these breaks in our entrenchment, where a song slips into someone’s soul. I want to share one of these stories.
A year ago, we were on tour in the Midwest, and had taken a gig way out in a rural area. While some of our concerts feel like preaching to the choir, some do not. From the moment we arrived that night, it was clear that this would be a different kind of concert.
The venue was in a poor town in a poor rural county, where nearly 90% of the vote went Republican in 2016. While the parking lots at our shows are often full of Priuses, this one was uniformly pickups. At many concerts, the dinner we’re served features kale or pesto, but here it was sloppy joes, served out of faux-cauldrons to the entire audience. The organizer apologized that we might have low turnout because deer hunting season had just started, and then pulled us aside to say, “I love what you do and I’m totally on board with your message, but some folks tonight aren’t. We have all sorts of people come to these concerts, and we’ve never had a group like yours, but your artistry is wonderful, and I think they will appreciate it.”
The four of us conferred quickly in the green room to consider if we wanted to modify our set at all, and decided that no, we weren’t going to swap out any songs. That night, we sang songs of income inequality, unions, and injustice. We sang songs decrying police brutality and talked about BLM. We sang songs in other languages. We sang songs about immigration, homelessness, and the environment. And our audience clapped and cheered, and afterwards came up to chat and buy our CDs.
I had almost convinced myself that these were simply the 10% who hadn’t voted Republican, but the next day a member of the audience wrote to us, thanking us for the concert. He expressed appreciation for the wonderful harmonies and interesting histories of the songs, but it was the conclusion that really struck me: “I am a lifelong conservative, but your singing made me think with a lot of introspect about the views I hold. And I think that’s probably a good thing.”
In the big picture of our world today, it may not be much. There is so much that needs to be done. But the big shifts are made of little ones, and moments like this keep me believing in the power of music. Pete Seeger famously said, “Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.” I don’t know that we are changing history, but I do know we need music.
We launched our new album this week, Of Hard Times & Harmony, which is based around the idea of the power of music to move people. In this unusual time when we have lost all our work, and are unable to tour, give concerts, or promote the project, we are relying more than ever on people who believe in this power of music. Please watch the video, and consider supporting this album if you can.
In harmony and gratitude,
Jeremy (and all of Windborne)
