This album is intended to be the narrative of Empire: invasion, resistance, the emergence of social structures that appear fair but in reality are based in the same systems of enslavement and oppression, the recognition of Empire by those who benefit from it, the rising of a revolution and the new world that is built in the ashes of the old.

Two of these songs, Fury Road and Hellhound, were written during the first occupation of the White House by Trump, his sycophants, and his handlers. The rest of the album, including two songs that were ultimately not included, was written, recorded and mixed in two months. I’d never before decided to write a themed album, much less from scratch and in such a short time, but it seemed a critically necessary move on my small chessboard.

The bloody irony is that the actions of the Trump occupiers and their puppet-masters that have so upset white America have been leveled against indigenous people, enslaved people, and pretty much everyone else on this continent ever since colonial boots first set foot on these shores. That’s over 500 years of Empire. We don’t work for a return to some mythic ‘good old days’ of the 1950s or such, because there were never any ‘good old days.’ Build something entirely new.

A climate researcher once remarked that they had thought all that was needed was to do good science – show the data, the math, and the results and the public policy would follow, which turned out not to be true. He observed that what was needed first was a compassionate community that would care about such things, and that is the work of artists and poets and writers. I left the sciences to write and tour for that very reason.