STORY

The album ends with the frenetic, dance-floor-thumping track ‘Animals Like Us’.

Thanks for coming on this album journey with me!

The album ends with the frenetic, dance-floor-thumping track ‘Animals Like Us’, a song that I built around a rapid-fire rhythm from a didgeridoo (an ancient Australian instrument)…as well as samples of crickets & birds chirping, which I painstakingly edited so that they’re all singing in time with the beat!

The didgeridoo that was played on this track is one of a kind, and legendary among digeridoo players: it’s called the Earth Horn. My friend Jason Strazzabosco built it, played it on this song…& then gave it to a famous didgeridoo player named Stephen Kent. Here’s video of Stephen playing the Earth Horn - it’s pretty spectacular:

Folks have told me that ‘Animals Like Us’ reminds them of other politically-minded songs like “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” or “We Didn’t Start the Fire”.

Like those songs, the lyrics to ‘Animals Like Us’ are a sprint through American political history: specifically, a history of social justice. The chorus is “Can We All Get Get Get in this Together?”, which is as urgent and imporant a message now as it was when I wrote it.

Also like those songs, the lyrics are meant to be sung as fast as possible - so fast that I’m on the edge of running out of breath THE WHOLE TIME.

 LYRICS

No thieve deceive naive without trust no greed mislead or bleed without us
No thieve deceive naive without trust no greed mislead or bleed without us

A derelict politicker cliquer
crook a Tricky Dick
A Slick Willy Lipstick
A straw house a stick a brick
Huff-n-puff make 'em shake
Animals like us

El Bracero Cherokee Removal
Silence is approval
Zoot Suit Pachuco Riots
Stonewall Watts afire
Everybody keepin' quiet
Animals like us

I pledge allegiance to the peace a mother heart and needle teeth
A bitter truth a pretty tease in creed and color greed and treason
Feed and water the dis-ease and breed 'em lean and off the leash and
Ae don't even need a reason here in human open-season
Little martyr little beast a toothy piece in human fleece
Hey there animals have you been just assumin' that you're human?
Every seed and every bloom in every man and every woman
Hey there animals have you been just assumin' that you're human?

Can we all get get get in this together? can we all get get get in this together?

Crania Americana
Red Summer Elian
Mumia Oriental Quota
Nat Turner Farrakhan
Wallowa Valley make you wanna
Animals like us

Jim Crow Know-Nothing Party
War Relocation Authority
Model Minority
California versus Hall
All o 'y'all
Animals like us

So see how you been
So safe in your skin
Will it reach you human
Before your young eat you? human

Can we all get get get in this together? can we all get get get in this together?

A derelict politicker cliquer
crook a Tricky Dick
A Slick Willy Lipstick
A bootlicker 'til he's sick
A little prick to stick it to the
Animals like us

Crania Americana
Red Summer Elian
Mumia Oriental Quota
Nat Turner Farrakhan
Wallowa Valley paranoia
Animals like us

No thieve deceive naive without trust no greed mislead or bleed without us
No thieve deceive naive without trust no greed mislead or bleed without us

Can we all get get get in this together? can we all get get get in this together?

THE ROYAL PERCUSSIONIST

We may have been neighbors in Seattle, but musically we were worlds apart…

When I first started pre-production for All the Waters of This World, I asked around for referrals to Seattle-area percussionists that I could hire to play on the record. My friend Whetzel said that he had just the guy for me: Yaw Asare Amponsah, who was a member of the Royal Percussion Ensemble of Ghana. Yaw was interested in recording on my album...and he lived in an apartment in Seattle with his father Koo Nimo.

Of course I was familiar with Koo Nimo. He was Ghana's most famous musician, basically the Elvis Presley of Ghana, and his name was synonymous with the genre of palm-wine, or "highlife", music. But why would he be living in Seattle?

Because, it turned out, he was a guest professor at the University of Washington.

So I drove out to the University's faculty housing to meet Ghanaian musical royalty. I knocked on the door of the apartment. After a moment a stately grey-bearded man answered the door. "Hi, I'm Daniel," he said, but he was better known as Koo Nimo. "And this is Eugene," he continued, gesturing to his son behind him, a sky kid dressed in an oversized hoodie and 90s-style baggy hip-hop jeans. This was my new percussionist. He was 16 years old. And, it turned out, he had never been in a recording studio before. In fact, this was to be his first-ever paid gig as a musician.

Surprised but not discouraged, I hired Eugene "Yaw" Asare Amponsah for a full day of work on All the Waters of This World. He and I loaded up my car with traditional Ghanaian percussion instruments - two enormous atumpans and a dondo (talking drum) - and a set of congas.

Then I drove him over to our studio.

What do you like to listen to?, I asked Yaw as I drove. Rap, he said. What's it like being a member of the Royal Percussion Ensemble of Ghana?, I asked. Well, he said, technically I'm supposed to show up at the royal court whenever the king calls for music, even on short notice...but he doesn't really expect me to right now, because plane tickets from Seattle are so expensive.

Can you play in 6/8 or 3/4 time?, I asked him. Never heard of it, he said. I thought: this is going to be an interesting recording session. I was classically-trained, and most of my songs were in non-traditional time signatures. Yaw grew up on traditional Ghanaian music and rap. We may have been neighbors in Seattle, but musically we were worlds apart.

We arrived at the studio and my co-producer Patrick was watching a concert on TV. He said: hi Yaw, good to meet you, have you ever heard Pink Floyd? No, Yaw said. So Patrick sat him down to watch part of a Pink Floyd concert - Yaw's first-ever exposure to Western rock and roll. Yaw watched, politely, with a bemused expression on his face.

Then our recording session began. And yes, as it turned out, it was a challenge for Yaw to find his way "into" my music. In the end, his playing was featured on four songs on the album: most notably "The Lullaby of Loneliness", where his dondo (talking drum) can be heard in a ghostly duet with me, "talking" in the spaces in between my vocal lines.

The talking drum is held under the arm while it's played and, as the drummer squeezes the strings that hold the skin on the head of the drum, it tightens and loosens - thus the "talking" effect. Traditionally it was used to communicate over long distances. In fact, talking drums were banned in colonial Haiti once the slave owners figured out that the drums were being used by slaves to coordinate uprisings between neighboring plantations.

One of my favorite things about musical collaboration is the challenge of finding common ground between two different musical "languages". I'm so glad that Yaw was able to play on my album. It was a difficult recording session, but we were able to find places in my songs where his musical language and mine could meet - and understand each other.

Fast forward to today and Eugene is now a grown man, husband, father, percussion teacher in the Seattle area, and all-around good dude.