People marched on Birmingham and Selma and all over this country fighting for Civil Rights in the 60s and now here we are in 2015, taking a huge step backwards. When we met up today we sat together for a few hours talking, crying, trying to figure out how or if we could make a difference. A white supremacist, 21 years old, walked into one of the oldest Black Churches in America, appearing as though attending bible study, and he killed 9 innocent people in their place of worship. Then last night, the Charleston Church Massacre happened. By yesterday we had the first verse, chorus and background harmonies down but we ran out of steam so we decided to break and come back the next day. We focused on a song Ian brought to the group that calls out racial injustice and violence against Black Americans. Now that we’re back in America and off the road for a bit, we’ve been working on new material in Raleigh. We went to Australia and all over the UK doing radio visits, promoting “After It All” and playing a mix of club shows and festivals in London, Brighton, Liverpool and the Netherlands. It’s been a crazy-busy year so far, we’ve been in several planes, time zones and countries. We started humming to ourselves, banging the big red drum, and crafting a song based on the idea of an ageless witch walking toward the final showdown of good and evil, set in the chaotic Armageddon of William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming.” - Ian
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Though we were already in love with the material for the album, we felt we were missing that haunting, witchy, slow burn, call-and-response magic of Bottom of the River. We sat down to write "The Beast" after all the other songs for The Dark had been collected and agreed upon. Still, they get up everyday with the memory of their own parents’ hard work in mind and stride into the conflicting sense of both pride and oppression that comes from a life where work feels like the only thing that makes us worthy. Eric and I began singing a call-and-response with the idea of a young person waking up in the the low-country, watching the morning sun filter through their window and feeling challenged by a world that seems to root against their success. “I Go To Work” started with a piano part based on a minor inversion of Pachelbel's Canon. I’m not sure what will happen with it but sometimes a song ends up on an album years after it’s been written… - Liz We miss him in Raleigh but its awesome to hear about all the new people he’s meeting and art he’s creating! He sent us over this song after a session with Billy Montana and Ashley Gorling, whose sultry alto tone is definitely doing justice to this moody duet about love that has run its course.
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He’s in writing sessions nearly every day of the week. Eric has moved to Nashville and he’s gotten right to work collaborating and connecting with other artists.