Song 6: Lions.Chase.Tigers – “To Their Blood”

August 5

Lions.Chase.Tigers – “To Their Blood”

I worked out ten years of demons while writing a story about the demons themselves, posting entries to this blog every single day throughout 2009.  It was a catharsis that’s difficult to describe; it ultimately resulted in the collapse of a business I owned, a complete change in career, a strengthening of my relationship with my family, and a rediscovery of music and all it meant to me.  We decided that it would be fun to reissue the old Dromedary titles I’d been writing about, just so there was some way for the handful of people who were following along with the blog every day to hear them if they wanted.  I was truly excited about it.  And then a horrible tragedy happened.

On January 12, a devastating, 7.0 magnitude earthquake shook Haiti, the epicenter around 16 miles west of Port-au-Prince.  A close friend of ours was in Port-au-Prince at the time, doing missionary work, and as we heard the stories of destruction that began trickling through the news, we naturally were all frantic, with no way of learning whether she was safe.

A photo taken by my friend in Port-au-Prince days before the earthquake, which became our album cover (photo: Suzanne Buchanan)

In an effort to find information and locate my friend, I took to Twitter, and began to find shreds of news coming from within Haiti and also from the Dominican Republic.  As a result, I found myself reading first-hand stories of mass destruction, of a third-world country’s inability to rescue its injured because of a lack of tools, and of how many people were going to starve and die of disease simply because of an inability to get them food and clean water.  After we learned my friend was safe (though emotionally traumatized by the devastation in a country that held deep spiritual meaning to her), my mind still raced: how could I help?

All at once, I realized: I have a record label again. Maybe that can help?

We decided to do a benefit compilation, with proceeds all going to an organization right in Haiti that used the funds to help provide clean water to people throughout the country.  At first, I reached out to people in bands I knew, but soon decided to cast a wider net, randomly emailing bands I liked from all over the world, explaining who I was, and what I was hoping to do.

In less than two weeks, we had a download-only compilation album of 16 bands that we called Make the Load Lighter: Indie Rock for Haiti.  It came out on February 3, 2010, barely three weeks after the earthquake, and was the first album of new music that Dromedary Records had released in more than a decade.  It came out that quickly because people want to help.  Like-minded people, when you ask them to chip in, chip in.  They get it: many hands make the load lighter, like the Haitian expression “Men anpil, chay pa lou.”

One of the bands was an Edinborough-based group called Lions.Chase.Tigers.  They were a bunch of younger guys, teetering in this weird area between post-rock and ’90s emo, with a singer that had the most wonderfully thick Scottish accent.  These guys had no clue who I was, but they had empathy, and they had kindness, and responded immediately with a track called “To Their Blood,” which was taken from the band’s self-released EP.

I’m sharing that song with you, “To Their Blood,” today.  Mostly because of this: we’re dying here, around a thousand of us a day, and it’s happening while we’re split roughly in half because a cult of personality has hijacked the differences between us and turned them into an awful weapon.  A thousand people are dying every day, and we’re actually arguing over whether or not that even matters. We are in as dark a place as we’ve ever been as a nation, and we need a groundswell of empathy and care, an enormous movement of people inside this country and out, to restore civility, dignity, and most importantly (in this case) science to this pandemic.

I chose this song because it reminds me of friends who are far away, it reminds me of people I love, and it reminds me of what it’s like when people want to help.  And I need something to remind me of those things today.

“To Their Blood” is a one dollar (or more) download, and all proceeds will be donated to Swing Left, to help transform the government by winning all houses, including the White House.  Dig deep.

~ by Al on August 25, 2020.