I Choose This Era

Here is me playing the acoustic part.


This song is actually the oldest song on the CD. I wrote it a couple of weeks before my daughter was born, and like "Don't Wait Too Long" (which appears on our double CD Rock All Day/Rock All Night and which I wrote when I first found out I was pregnant) I still didn't know the being I was writing to. It was also right before Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth came out, and news about the various ways in which we were trashing the planet were being regularly broadcast. That evening on the news I'd heard (again, in a new way) the ways in which the rays of the sun are so much more dangerous now than they were fifty years ago. Who knows what we are going to witness in this lifetime? But do we have a choice?

I Choose This Era

We go round the sun
The Moon goes round the earth
When the day is done
Sometimes something hurts
There’s danger in the papers
Danger on the radio
But I’ll put my arms around you and I
Will not let you go.

There’s a place called Kansas
Dorothy called it home
To me it’s just a grassland
Where I’d be frightened to be left alone
I’d much prefer a city
Even if it’s Emerald green
Home is where ever I find you
But it’s also wherever I’ve been.

And it’s not the same sun my father knew
It can burn in ways that don’t heal
But I’d take these rays with this place and your face
If that is going to be the deal

I’ll take you to the ocean
To every edge that invites me close
And there I'll make my vow to you
Before everything I love the most
There’s danger in the ocean
Danger from the sun above
But I’ll put my arms around you
And surround you with my love.
I'll put my arms around you
And I will not let you go.

Nerissa Nields
April 20, 2006

We recorded the acoustic very early in the process--I think in December 2009. We didn't put the final vocals on until December 2011, maybe even January 2012. I love the way the song came out. Katryna and I did some three-part harmony, and I am trying to get Abigail (our other sister) to learn it so she can jump up on stage with us and sing it sometime. A girl can dream.