Just look at the lyrics to Britain’s most celebratory, triumphalist song of the 18th century, Rule Britannia. James Thomson didn’t write “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves; though there’s nothing inherently wrong with slavery.” They knew it was something shameful, something to...
The first song I wrote for the Hawks was a bluegrass tune called “Mystery of Life”. Lyrics still seem to hold. “The mystery of life / is never ending / should a man take a wife / or face the sunrise alone / in the stillness of the night / a voice will come a calling /...