The bars are full again on Brady Street
The sickness is we can’t breath
Cross my heart and hope to stay alive
Stay at home but don’t expect a dime
If you’re hungry, we can eat the rich
If you’re cold, we can burn their houses down
If you’re tired, yea I’m tired
We can go to sleep
To the sound
Of sirens
Rosemary tea can cure a headache
The Fireworks at night don’t keep me awake
The man in me will hold you through the night
You can stay just don’t say you’re mine
If you’re hungry, we can eat the rich
If you’re cold, we can burn their houses down
If you’re tired, yea I’m tired
We can go to sleep
To the sound
Of sirens
No one called to bring us to the
Convalescent home
Now all the residents are rotting
And the staff had died long ago
I’ve got countless corpses crowding
In a rented uhaul truck
And I guess we’re calling this outcome
Bad luck
Fuck, beer ain’t nearly strong enough
Better make it a mai tai
A three rum remedy
Come erase my memory
I’ve got paperwork that’s piling up like
Potters in the field
If this plague is a placebo
The effects they sure are real
My voice is hoarse from calling
Time of death but what’s the fuss
I’ve got a job and I’m yet to turn to dust
Fuck, beer ain’t nearly strong enough
Better make it a mai tai
A three rum remedy
Come erase my memory
I’m looking for any way
To end the day
Every body that I see’s
already dead, dying, or doomed
I’ve got blisters from the backlog
Of the hearts that need entombed
If you insist on closing distance
You’re the next cold one I’ll crack
I’m the last responder always dressed in black
Fuck, beer ain’t nearly strong enough
Better make it a mai tai
A three rum remedy
Come erase my memory
If you could float a benadryl
That’d really be beneficial
I’m looking for any way
To end the day
The worst day I’ve had
Since yesterday
about
Halloween is traditionally a time to scare and be scared, but– let's be real, nothing is more terrifying than the reality we face today. This is the thrust of Hunter's Moon, a digital 7" composed of two songs, Eat the Rich, by Johanna Rose and Cold Ones, by Sugar Ransom. Though they found themselves thousands of miles apart, the two long time collaborators realized they had everything they needed to engineer, record, and mix these two songs of a common thread: the current reality, the shared global grief, heightened poverty, social unrest, and the unanimous anxiety surrounding the unforeseeable future. Yet both songs deliver this doom in a bittersweet molotov cocktail: c'est la vie... let's burn it down.
Johanna Rose spent their summer building and living in a treehouse in the remote Green Mountains of Vermont. With no electricity or running water, they hardly imagined recording while there, but serendipitously stumbled into a unique opportunity to do just that. "I found myself in a corner bar that had been shut down since March. Jason Jack, one of the owners, set up the stage for recording and I went in to play some bass with my cousin's awesome band, The Scalawags, and ended up putting a solo track down during a smoke break." They say, "He liked it, so I started going down on the weekends and recording stuff, sleeping on the stage at night and recording by day. It was kind of a crazy place to record: it was frozen in time, with stacks of newspapers from March, posters for events that never happened still on the wall. I couldn’t imagine a better place to record Eat the Rich."
Johanna reinvents the French Revolution epitaph "let them eat cake," concurring with Roman satirical poet Juvenal's societal evaluation of panem et circenses, ‘bread and circuses,’ while nodding to contemporary rapper Busdriver's ‘Eat Rich.’ Rose’s chorus bellows "If you're hungry, we can eat the rich/ if you’re cold, we can burn their houses down," concluding with some relatable content for many Americans this summer, "if you're tired/ yea I'm tired/ we can go to sleep/ to the sound of sirens." All sung over a dreamy, harmonized, unburdened waltz. A lullaby, rooted by the deep swells of their bowed upright bass and gentle chimes of guitar.
Johanna Rose is from Milwaukee, WI where they played upright bass and sang in notable groups, Calamity Janes and the Fratney Street Band, RuthB8r Ginsberg, New Boyz Club, and the internationally renowned duo, Nickel&Rose. Rose will also be releasing an illustrated lyrical zine for Eat the Rich, which will be available on Bandcamp along with Hunter’s Moon.
Meanwhile in Texas, labs closed when the pandemic hit, and everything went virtual for Sugar Ransom, who is currently pursuing a PhD in Phonetics & Phonology at UT Austin. For sanity, she started a virtual songwriting collaboration with L.A. based Rick Wood (The Earth Satellites). “We wanted to write a song with some of these horrific news stories coming in– bodies being stored in U-Hauls, hospitals running out of beds and ventilators, medical professionals dying in droves. We wrote this as sort of an ode to the last responders, imagining the rough days had by coroners, morticians, and others directly dealing with the body count” The song eases its way in as a light fingered piano ballad, but the lyrical content is sobering, sparing no grim detail, punctuated by a choir of “fuck”s. The refrain bemoans the weakness of beer’s ABV to the present situation, comparable to the ill-funded healthcare system in the US. The song offers no silver lining, no shimmer of hope. Cold Ones is a space to acknowledge the gruesome reality in hopes of inspiring responsible behavior in those who may be experiencing caution fatigue.
credits
released October 31, 2020
Eat the Rich was recorded in Montpelier, VT by JasonJack
Written by Johanna Rose
Mixed by Johanna Rose
Mastered by Justin Perkins at Mystery Room Mastering
Vox: Johanna Rose
Accompanying Vox: Sugar Ransom
Acoustic guitar: Johanna Rose
Upright Bass: Johanna Rose
Electric Guitar: Jason Jack
Electric guitar: Sugar Ransom
Cold Ones was recorded in Austin, TX, Los Angeles, CA, and Montpieler, VT
Music and Lyrics written by Sugar Ransom and Rick Wood
Mixed by Sugar Ransom
Mastered by Justin Perkins at Mystery Room Mastering
piano/vox: Sugar Ransom
synth/guitar/ambience: Rick Wood
Upright bass: Johanna Rose
Cover art “Full Moon Mood” copyright Colleen Hardy
Used with permission
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