Star lineup joins with Mark Erelli to address the gun violence epidemic.
I’ve been a big fan of singer-songwriter Mark Erelli for a while.
Not to oversell it or anything, but his 2016 tune “Look Up” is a work of flawless songwriting IMHO. Check it!
So I’m psyched that Mark has been working with CD Baby to distribute his newest single, which features the vocals of some notable singers and songwriters: Sheryl Crow, Josh Ritter, Lori McKenna, Rosanne Cash, and Anaïs Mitchell.
“By Degrees” is a deeply moving song. Rosanne Cash calls it “the most compassionate, vivid and non-preaching anti-gun violence song I’ve ever heard—it’s a heart opener.”
The power of a song.
Good songs CAN open our hearts, make us walk a few yards in another person’s shoes, and maybe even stir us to action. Erelli’s song attempts to waken us from the creeping numbness of yet another gun-related tragedy, to resist the fact that “you can learn to live with anything when it happens by degrees.”
On its own, the song serves to counter those degrees, but there’s another way this song serves its cause: 100% of the proceeds are going to Congresswoman Gabby Gifford’s Courage to Fight Gun Violence organization.
“I think Mark’s song really captures what people from many different backgrounds are feeling about gun violence in America. How did we get here? How do we explain this to our children,” explains Anaïs Mitchell. “I hold out hope that the tide is turning, that we can and will come together as a nation and demand legislative solutions, that we can truly tell our kids ‘we’re working on this.’”
Check out the song, a letter from Mark, and much more HERE.
Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.