Music |
Alternate Roots: Somewhere in America
By
Published: Feb 15, 2018
Category:
Rock
Another school shooting is like another Trump outrage — you get numb. But last night I started to watch a video taken inside a Florida classroom as the killer shot and shot, and the sound of the bullets was so loud I had to turn it off; I felt the accumulation of all the shootings, over all the years.
On February 2, 2005, a heroin addict entered Tim and Kim Donnelly’s jewelry store in Fairfield, Connecticut just before closing time. His motive was robbery. The outcome was two murders. The killer and his accomplice were eventually caught, tried, and found guilty. The Donnellys’ son Eric is one of the founders of a band called Alternate Roots. He had been writing around this song for years.After his son was born in 2015, he finished it.
Many thanks to Corny O’Connell, of WFUV in New York, who played a song I’d never heard this morning and surely made a lot more people than me reach for Kleenex.
The last thing that my father saw
when he was still alive
was the gun in the hands of a sick young man
with bright blue eyes.
A man who looked just like me,
as far as anyone else could see
a stranger, not an enemy
and my mother watched it all.
That was the last thing that she saw.
Somewhere in America
a phone’s about to ring.
Nothing can prepare you for
the news it’s going to bring.
Nothing ever changes.
Just the names and faces.
Somewhere in America
a phone’s about to ring.
An unlucky break
wrong time, wrong place
I’ve heard them all so many times.
If your dad had had a gun of his own,
maybe they’d still be alive.
But I still can’t believe the resistance.
The denial, the insistence
when something’s broken
that clearly needs fixing.
You can fight to change
or you can fight to stay the same.
Somewhere in America
the news is about to break.
Nothing can prepare you for
the toll it’s gonna take.
Nothing ever changes
just the dates and the locations.
Somewhere in America
the news is about to break.
How long is too long
before the words you can’t say
just speak for you.
The years have been kind to me.
I’ve got a son now of my own.
When I think of what I’ll tell him happened to you
I still don’t know.
That the world’s a much safer place.
That kind of danger,
you won’t ever have to face.
I pray he lives to see that day.
No idea what I’m going to say.
Somewhere in America
a phone’s about to ring.
Nothing can prepare you for
the news it’s going to bring.
All this while we’ve been waiting
taking time and debating
Somewhere in America
a phone’s about to ring.
Somewhere in America..
