Photo credit – Rene Burrell
Americana Highways is hosting this premiere of The Bowmans’ song “Mad at the World” by The Bowmans. “Mad at the World” is was authored, produced with lyrics by Sarah Bowman, recorded and mixed by Marco Jencarelli. “Mad at the World” is Claire Bowman on vocals; Sarah Bowman on vocals and acoustic guitar; Mathias Kunzli on drums and percussion; Christian Winiker on electric guitar, Pim Kops on keys and Wolfgang Zwiauer on bass. The song is part of their forthcoming release on Mother West Records.
The Bowmans are twins and it really shows in their coordinating vocal tones. The ironies that come back to haunt you when you’ve been in a funk are truisms delivered here in trilling harmonies and energetic guitars.
I wrote “Mad at the World” while living alone in a cheap apartment and working full time as a teacher in Baltimore. I had a 5:30 AM commute, coffee maker on a timer, and never got enough rest. I was trying to do the responsible thing that people do in our society by working an exhausting and depleting job while squeezing in time around it to keep my dream of being a musician alive. I thought of Mom a lot, how frustrated she would get about work, and I began noticing many older self-neglecting, tired, passionless working women around me — and I already saw myself in them at age 22. My only refuge was KCRW’s Nic Harcourt and WXPN’s David Dye on the radio, playing the music of those living the life I wanted but was too strained and depleted to seek. I was good at teaching; it didn’t occur to me that I had any power to change course because I felt defeated by the path I chose and persecuted by life, and so I was mad at everything.– Sarah Bowman
My favorite image in the song corresponds with the lyric, “the mirrors in this house are all bending,” which is a very relatable way to describe the way we lose our sense of self when we’re living somebody else’s expectation of who we should be rather than discovering who we really are. It’s as if you can’t even, literally, see yourself correctly anymore–you can no longer trust what you see in the mirror to be an accurate reflection of who you are. — Claire Bowman
https://save-it.cc/tourbomusic/TheBowmans-mad-at-the-world