The Winter

"Now is the winter of our discontent." - Shakespeare

Luke Hawley knows about winter. He lives it over half the year up in the twin capitols of the North country and writes a piece of it into everything he pens. Hawley thrives in the tension between Winter and Spring, in the moment between giving up and trying harder. The crew he leads is a testament to it: after three years of nose-to-the-grindstone work/rock with Sequel to Adam, they threw their hands up and said, maybe it's time to give it a rest. And for the coldest winter in recent history, he hibernated, growing fidgety and restless in the process and when the sun arose to melt the snow around him, he found he had survived the winter and arrived at the cusp of spring with a familiar feeling: Discontent. So he put his ear to the ground, where he was met with the rumble and crash of a familiar friend. Jason Monroe, had awoken like a bear from the winter, pounding his chest and assaulting his drums with a fever only the spring can bring. Hawley looked to the bright sun and the far horizon, seeing high over the trees the tall frame of Seth Todd, carrying his bass like Paul Bunyan himself, ready to take a hack at a new venture for the new spring. On the rush of the south wind he heard the familiar sound of guitarist Ric McBath, his red hair carrying him like a grassfire over the middle American prairie. And the earth shook as it gave birth to the igneous shape of J. Nathan Grimes, born into his first rock experience, ready and weilding his cacophonous keys. Aesop could not have told it better; a phoenix-from-ashes story of the good that comes from our restlessness, the spring that spews from winter, the life that comes from death - these songs ooze the battle of the comfortable/discontent, the doubter/hopeful, the damned/saved. And that's only the stories the songs tell. The music is of equally warring clans: the saccharine melody sung by the grovely tenor, the thunderous low end meeting the feathery treble, the harmonic meeting the dissonent. The Winter of Our Discontent is upon you like a lion, spitting and roaring and baring their teeth. But they leave you like a lamb, with their wooly songs keeping you warm for the winter that will meet you ahead, reminding you that there is reason to keep a fervent watch while you wait for the hope that is yet to come.