That’s it from us for another weekend dear reader. You can find details of local events around you supporting Palestine here – sorry folks, for as long as this goes on, we are going to keep talking about it. In the meantime we leave you this weekend with a new track by the reliably superb Sam Outlaw ‘Ways To Go’ which is taken from his forthcoming LP, arriving in Spring 2024, which presumably has a name but we’re not sure what it is yet. On this new track, the understated acoustic production from co-writer and multi-instrumentalist Cheyenne Medders is Sam’s personal take on the simple songs of country legends like Don Williams and Keith Whitley. Medder’s mandolin and slide guitar weave together with dobro from Nashville studio wiz Smith Curry and Wurlitzer from touring bandmate Jeremy Long. The result is a contemplative ballad about lessons learned and the road ahead. Have a good one and stay warm!
I thoroughly enjoy the musical content, but if you want to do political comment do it from both sides! That Israel’s allegedly genocidal war is a response to a religious terror movement’s gleeful, forthrightly genocidal marauding was largely unmentioned by any of Israel’s accusers.That the terrorists retreated, hostages in hand, to a painstakingly prepared and boobytrapped subterranean city below mosques, hospitals and schools, mentioned even less. Amid these gaping omissions, one can’t but wearily conclude that Israel was bound to be accused of genocide, no matter what it did following October 7, short of bowing its head in surrender.
Is it two sides, or two extremes? I think a lot of people are somewhere in the middle.