Tag: Good Night America

Black and gay, life in America for Harris was never going to be easy. Under the current administration, it’s even more difficult. Which is pretty much the starting point for the third from the now 72-year-old North Carolina-born singer-songwriter who’s also an actor, activist, author and an award-winning educator. Recorded in Muscle Shoals and produced by Freebo, who plays fretless bass and tuba, with Will McFarlane on guitars, The America Chronicles blends soul, folk, Americana and R&B in songs that confront the complexities and contradictions of America.

It opens with ‘Ruthie’s’, a keyboards-driven soulful groove that speaks to the right wing racism that has been given licence in the current climate as he sings “I don’t feel welcome cause here they come marching/Like we the people with constitutional rights” and about trying to avoid confrontations (“I met a man named Leviticus quoting from the Bible/Wrote a chapter in the book, had a copy in his hand for proof/That’s why I try to stay aloof/They’re just God-fearing people with family values/And they don’t value no family with people like me/That’s why I try to let em’ be”). Living in America is given a gladiatorial context in the lines “No escape from the lions, let the gladiator games begin/And I called to the crowd for mercy but still not justice comes/Only their down turned thumbs”, the song ending as he asks “What makes them think they’re so beautiful/What makes them think I’m so wrong/Don’t they know we all can be beautiful/Why does it always take so long/On the line between church and state”.

That disquieting snapshot of the zeitgeist gets further expression in the Bob Marley loping ‘Don’t You Hear Them America’, and its plea for understanding and compassion (“Our children are dying, what can we do/Don’t you remember we were children too/There should be laughter instead of tears/There should be happiness instead of fear”) and a roll call of school shooting tragedies “from Compton to Columbine to Sandy Hook” as he calls out the crocodile tears (“We’ ve all had enough of….your thoughts and prayers/Enough with the blah blah, but do you really care/We got problems, we got to solve them/Can’t run away from them, we have to resolve them”).

Featuring sax, trumpet and flugelhorn, the slow-walking piano-led gospel of ‘Tulsa’ again talks of wilful blindness to Black lives matter (“America’s been had again/Some white folks done got mad again/But let’s not worry and just pretend/That everything’s OK/Don’t teach those kids our history/It’s best it stays a mystery/Cause if they knew what you have done/They might be ashamed”). The song draws attention to the fact that the city has banned or challenged “the books that tell the truth”, among them Lord Of The Flies, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, The Outsiders, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Brave New World, Bridge to Terabithia, The Lovely Bones and Gender Queer: A Memoir, implicitly condemning the complacency (“we’ll stay happy, and play along/Like everything’s OK……And we’ll pretend that Tulsa is just a city/In the state of…… Oklahoma”).

Harris was born in the segregated city of Edenton, the soulful, funky grooved song of that name, Maria Lewey and Cindy Walker on backing vocals, a memoir of growing up where “Everybody knew their place/Everyone had a smile on their face/with folks looking out for one another”, but how, metaphorically, today, “grandma’s house is all burned down”.

Lewey and Walker again on gospel-coloured backing, opening unaccompanied, the proliferation of deaths in the Black community (“Another mother’s child lying dead on the ground/Went searching for justice, there was none to be found”), mostly at the hands of the police, is the subject of the steady walking rhythmed ‘Standing Your Ground’ (“Late one evening bout quarter to ten/Black boy went to market for some candy and then/Wrong place, wrong time and the gun shot sounds/The defendant told the jury he was standing his ground”) as he asks “Just imagine how you’d feel if things were turned around/And it was your son murdered cause’ of standing your ground”. But it’s not a partisan protest, the problem runs deeper in America’s gun pandemic and self-righteousness (“Young people being shot for making simple mistakes/Don’t matter their color, hate is all that it takes/Wrong door, wrong car, wrong driveway…Big men, big guns, big egos to fill/Don’t even need a reason, got a license to kill”).

Finger-clicking and semi-spoken delivery, ‘Down’ continues with the theme of how “Government ain’t worried about you/You can rant, you can rave/You can find some other animal to save/But government do what it’s gonna do”, taking a wider lens (“East and West are cutting razor thin…You got bombs to the north and genocide is marching forth”) and how, while “we all got the best of intentions…when push comes to shove/The open hand becomes a fisted glove/So much for the brotherhood of man”.

Guns are the focus once more on ‘In For The Kill’, a number that bears a surely intentional musical echo of Armstrong’s ‘Wonderful World’ as well as the spirit of Marvin Gaye, as he ironically sings “I’ve seen people bearing guns, fully armed/And I’ve heard that weapons heal us more than harm/I’ve heard war will bring us peace and peace will last”, but that history blindly repeats itself (“There are those who hear the drum and heed the call/They go marching to the same beat after all/And the silver birds of war are on the wind …Yes I’ve heard that God and time are on our side/Yes I know that we’re a nation full of pride/Still it’s odd to see the past come round again/And to find the new world order/Is still the same old men/In for the kill”).

The final three tracks all have American in their titles. Featuring French horn, ‘This Is America, Right’ is a mockingly jaunty fairground ride that borrows musical DNA from West Side Story (“We love to sing God Bless America/Land of the free, home of the brave/Life can be happy in America/As long as we all remember how to behave”) subverting the founding principles in the lines “Don’t want no riff raff in America/Don’t send your tired or your poor/America is for Americans” as he ponders “What does that mean, we just can’t tell anymore”. This is an America of “All for one and one for some” where “They lie to the crowd/And keep us deaf, blind and dumb/Misinformation from the internet/No wonder we are so confused/That’s why we can’t agree on anything/Depending on where/You go for your breaking news”. In a timely note in the light of Trump’s increasingly despotic measures, it cautions “The Constitution’s here to stay/If “We The People” still means anything/You’d better wake up before it’s taken away”.

The album sports one cover, opening with the National Anthem, he counterpoints it with Elton John’s ‘Border Song’, drawing out the song’s inherent Band influences, before closing up, Alice Howe on featured vocals, with the organ and piano shaped ‘Goodnight America’, which, evocative of Stephen Foster and Broadway musicals, is a benediction lullaby about getting back in touch with the country’s soul, “lookin’ for some shelter/From all the Helter Skelter” and finding the way back home and, while the storms may be closing in, clinging to the hope of “Another day is dawning/And the sun come shining through”, and, like a parent who still loves their errant child, he bows out with “I| loved you then, I love you still/You will always have my heart/And … yeah we’ll all keep trying”. I’m reminded of how Steve Goodman once sang, “good morning America, how are you, don’t you know me I’m your native son”. Harris is too.

Mike Davies

Artist’s website: www.kempharris.band

‘Good Night America’ – official video:

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