Die in Kalifornien lebende Songwriterin Deborah Crooks dachte, sie würde 2020 damit verbringen, zu touren und Songs aus ihrem hoch gelobten Album, The Department of the West, live zu spielen. Stattdessen schloss sich Crooks dem Rest der Welt an, um Pläne zu stornieren. Zu Hause in Alameda, Kalifornien, untergebracht mit ihrem Bay Station Band-Mitbegründer Kwame Copeland, gaben die beiden Musiker wöchentliche Konzerte auf der Veranda für ihre Gemeinde und stellten eine rockorientierte EP mit neuen Bay Station-Songs fertig. Nebenher beobachtete sie das Geschehen und hielt es fest. Über den Winter nahm sie das neue Material zu Hause auf, entstanden ist Twin Lakes, eine aus drei Liedern bestehende Kollektion die den Zeitgeist anspricht und gleichzeitig die Hoffnung auf die Zukunft festhält.
Crooks penned “New Roots” which reckons with newly revealed historical truths while imagining a society built on peace and justice, as part of the FAR-West-invented Now See Hear Project developed by Phil Ward. The project pairs songwriters with a piece of anonymous artwork (in this case artist Jennifer Flack) to use as a springboard for writing. “The painting, the Black Lives Matter movement and what I was personally unpacking all fed into the song,” notes Crooks.
An underlying theme of reconciliation, and the obstacles to mending relationships, underpins every song on the release, including “Twin Lakes.” The spare song about an experience of being estranged from a family member finds Crooks pondering how two people can have very different views about the same experience.
In a related vein, Crooks wrote “We’re All in this Together” early in the pandemic as communities were adjusting to safe-social-distancing and other measures put in place to stave off the spread of Covid-19. The sentiment both sums up Crooks’s view of the current landscape and serves as a call for a better world: “This is our chance to make it better/ call a friend, help your neighbor/ speak out when you see wrong/cause everyone belongs.”
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