Hiss Golden Messenger Defend Public Schools
North Carolina’s Hiss Golden Messenger is one of my favorite current live acts going. And not just because lead-man M.C. Taylor’s wife is a public school teacher like my own. But that certainly helps.
Hiss Golden Messenger has fought to remain a voice of light in the growing darkness. To see how they have been this for me, just browse some of the posts marked “Hiss Golden Messenger” here at Holiday at the Sea. Taylor’s honest approach to fighting for hope is something that resonates with me the way few current artists have.
The band’s new project, Forward, Children: A fundraiser for Durham Public Schools students, sees the release of a live recording from one of the band’s home-town concerts on 01/11/20 of this very year; just before the Quarantine hit. Taylor says of the release on the band’s Facebook page:
Good morning! Today, we put out into the world ‘Forward, Children: A fundraiser for Durham Public Schools students.’ This is a fully multi-tracked, mixed and mastered 15-song live Hiss album from our performance at the Cat's Cradle—one of our most venerable hometown venues in the North Carolina Triangle—on January 11th, 2020. It is available for download on Bandcamp now and will hit all streaming services on April 3rd. ALL proceeds—every penny—from this record benefit students in the Durham Public Schools system that are currently struggling with food insecurity in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. At a time when anxiety seems to be our default emotion, I realize that this is a big ask, but I implore you to donate as much as you can to help feed our kids that depend on public school in order to eat. And while listening on the streaming services is the way that many of us interact with music these days, purchasing this album on Bandcamp puts far more food on the table. Dig deep, please. There are so many people to thank in the making of this album—so many that I could easily take up the rest of this section naming them all. Special love, however, goes to the Hiss band: Phil Cook, Chris Boerner, Alex Bingham and Al Smith, and our engineer Luc Suèr, who recorded and mixed this show. When I hear a performance like this in light of where we all are now, it’s amazing what stands out to my ear: Community. Gathered joy. Spirit, and a little bit of sorrow. What a Saturday night feels like in our little shared corner of the universe. May we find those times again soon. Changed, perhaps, for the better. Thank you all for listening.
Stream the album here: