”Baby Jesus Lying in the Rubble” FINAL MIX

From the vantage point of artistic output, as 2023 progresses I’ve been facing the only problem I ever like to have — writing more decent songs in the course of the year than I could possibly pack into one album project.

I already had plans to spend much of February in southern France making a recording with a fine international cast of musicians. I was starting to think about completely changing the plan for the recording project and making it all about the genocide in Gaza. But I was feeling bad about abandoning the idea of recording a lot of other material if we went that route.

Then it occurred to me that instead of radically altering the project we already had planned, the Gaza song cycle could be its own separate recording project. When the brilliant Hawai’i-based musician, Chet Gardiner, had me and other musicians there to record the Killing the Messenger album at the beginning of 2023, he mentioned the notion of working remotely with material I send him, that I record in my apartment.

I realized that this was the time to do that sort of project together, and Chet’s response was “I’m glad you asked.”

He got to work quickly, improving vocal and guitar sounds and adding tastefully minimalist layers of bass and synth to his favorite song in the cycle thus far. What I’m sharing with you here is the first song he finished. He’ll be serving us more morsels as December progresses. I hope you like it as much as I do (and the rest of them as much as I expect to!).

When we’ve got the whole batch, I’ll put them out as an album on all the music streaming platforms.