The Pinkerton Raid “They Were The Children”
Americana Highways is hosting this premiere of The Pinkerton Raid’s song “They Were The Children” from their forthcoming album, which is set for release in the fall. This song, though, will be available on February 27th. The album was produced by David Wimbish with James Phillips; engineered and mixed by James Phillips and mastered by Justin Longerbeam.
“They Were The Children” is Jesse James DeConto (songwriter) on acoustic guitar; David Wimbish on piano and accordion; and James Phillips on percussion and clarinet.
As Jesse James DeConto says of the song, “My kids were born in 2001 and 2004. As a dad, I’ve raised little ones through 9/11, Katrina, a wave of police brutality, deadly white nationalism in Charlottesville and on January 6, COVID lockdowns and lethal ICE raids, all piped into their tender human hearts and minds through TV, social media or the ambient grief of those around them.
“All of these American traumas piled up in a short quarter-century, and I struggle to think of anything that measures up in my comparatively naive experience growing up in the 1980s and ’90s. We had the end of the Cold War and Rodney King, Chernobyl and the Challenger, Oklahoma City and Columbine, but none of those felt like the personal existential threats of Sept. 11, COVID isolation or the lethal assaults against Capitol police and peaceful demonstrators by MAGA and by the government itself. Back in the ‘90s, we didn’t know school shootings or political violence or racist policing, much less the threat of climate change, would increase, rather than fade with the long arc of progress. Those are terrifying realities for a young mind to ponder.
“I was working as a journalist in New Hampshire on Sept 11, and I remember interviewing a local family about how their kids were dealing with the news. The dad told me they were blissfully unaware, more concerned about their cartoons and hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.
“I think it made sense to me at the time, when my firstborn was five months old, but 25 years later, my kids, living as adolescents through the ongoing Trump era, and now young adults, have been painfully aware. My eldest lost her federal job in forest conservation to the Elon Musk DOGE cuts. 9/11 wasn’t an isolated incident but a historical marker in the breakdown of America’s place in the world. “They Were the Children” is me recognizing just how hard and different it has been to grow up in the 21st century, and it’s me trying to cultivate hope that we can recover what the selfish, the greedy and the power-hungry have stolen from our kids, to “face down them bandits and take back the joy.”
Young folks have grown up amidst truly abject widespread, global traumas. In the song the Pinkerton Raid shines a spotlight on the despair and heartache of the events that toppled the pride that we once knew, together. It’s immensely moving.
Find more details here on their website: https://www.pinkertonraid.com/
Enjoy some of our previous coverage here: REVIEW: The Pinkerton Raid “Jagged Vacance Winter Songs by Other People”