Sacremento’s Tré Burt has trailed his re-release of his album ‘Caught It From The Rye‘ on Oh Boy Records, the label set-up by John Prine, with the impressive, the dramatic, the poetic, the important ‘Undead God of War‘. It’s a song which was written in 2016 after the fatal shooting of Philando Castille. It’s a man, a harmonica and a guitar – and, like Dylan in the early sixties, it calls out injustice in a direct – and also beautifully written – way.
Tré Burt has described how the song came into being: “I was living in Australia during the 2016 elections and BLM protests responding to Black lives murdered by police officers, namely Philando Castile and Keith Lamont Scott. The country was wailing in pain, rage and unrest and I could hear it from across the world. With everything in me I wanted to go back home and mourn with my community during such a pivotal time in transition but I couldn’t yet afford a plane ticket. In the garage shed I was renting out one night I wrote this song, Undead God of War, in a state of catharsis. I figure if I couldn’t be home the next best thing I could do was to put it to song.
Fast forward 4 years to the present and nothing’s changed. Today, we are fighting for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmed Aubrey, Stephon Clark and the countless others. The Undead God of War is as alive now as it was when colonialists first stole this land and took it for their own. We are not surprised by this, for this is the America we are introduced to as children. It is also the America that I fight for, my first love, my demise, my home.”
Photo: Luis Rua
