12-song, full-length album, with art by Jeannine Erasmus, including song lyrics
Includes unlimited streaming of The Highway Moves the World
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 3 days
edition of 300
$20USD
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
THE HIGHWAY MOVES THE WORLD + WHERE THE WILDEST SPIRITS FLY + TOLERANCE ENDS, LOVE BEGINS on vinyl. Two hours of warm analog sound for just $40!
Includes unlimited streaming of The Highway Moves the World
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 3 days
$40USDor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
12-song full-length album, gatefold eco-wallet with art by Jeannine Erasmus
Includes unlimited streaming of The Highway Moves the World
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 3 days
edition of 1000
$10USDor more
Get all five of our albums on CD for just $30
ships out within 3 days
$30USD
T-Shirt/Shirt
Our song "Dream the Sun" was inspired by a tattoo meant to signify our confidence that the sun will rise, something we can believe even when the night is most dark and the sun is below the horizon. For additional sizes, please visit pinkertonraid.com/merch
ships out within 3 days
$20USD
T-Shirt/Shirt
The world, our world, as something we can almost hold in our hands, but not quite -- it's a theme that runs through our 2022 album THE HIGHWAY MOVES THE WORLD. You can hear it in the lyrics, you can see it in the music-videos for "Lisbet Cries" and the title track. And you can wear it! For print-to-order on additional sizes, please visit pinkertonraid.com/merch
Scott McFarlane came up to me one Sunday night in 2015, a few months after I started a singalong series at Fullsteam Brewery here in Durham where we live. I'd been hiring musicians to form a band for each event, but I didn't have the funding to keep doing that, so I'd started leading by myself on acoustic guitar. Scott offered to start playing drums, and around that same time Bill Turner approached me and offered to play bass, and we suddenly had a band for what became Songs for Humans - Durham.
Pretty soon after that, Scott played a gig with The Pinkerton Raid, and then he just kept playing them. By that time, Jon DePue was the band's bass player, and we had a good, long run together, the three of us, from about 2016 to 2020. We made two full-length albums and toured between Charleston, Chicago and, for alliteration's sake, let's say Chicopee, Mass., even though it was really Brattleboro, Vt., at the northeastern apex.
Scott's mother Helen Kendrick McFarlane is British. He used to talk so much about the Wirral peninsula, between Liverpool and the Welsh border, where his ancestors had lived. He got us singing the Liverpool FC fight song "You'll Never Walk Alone" at our singalongs. It was written by Rodgers & Hammerstein for the musical CAROUSEL but made famous by Liverpool's Gerry & The Pacemakers. Scott told us about getting married at St. Bartholomew's Church in Thurstaston, just like his parents and grandparents had before that; about helping one of his grandfather's heifers give birth to a calf that Scott named Daffodil; about his uncle Mike's band playing music on the family farm.
By the time I was writing songs for THE HIGHWAY MOVES THE WORLD in 2018-2019, I had ingested a landscape and storylines from Scott's narration. I wrote "Merseybeat" about that place and the music that Scott loved.
Just about the time I was working on this video in January 2022 with the Russian animator Alex Dar, I heard from Scott that Helen had died a couple of months shy of turning 65. She'd been fighting cancer off and on for decades. She'd gotten to hear the final audio mix of this song about her home before she passed. Helen and Jim, Scott's dad, had been fixtures at our local shows. I'm sad we won't get to play it for her at a show, but the music goes on in part because of her support and the life she lived.
-- Jesse James DeConto
lyrics
A calf was born, named Daffodil
Across the Dee she sees St. David's Hills
Sir Walter sent his Yankee son
The Wirral rhythms took him home
That Merseybeat, a ballad slow
For memories and growing old
In the church they mourn poor Eleanor
And Gerry sings, 'don't walk alone'
Old Ismay's sandstone tower stands
Old Ismay's titan fell below
The Kendricks work the noble soil
They sing and dance like wild roses
The lads and ladies dressed in white
They cross the hundred in midday light
They promise, join their houses' line
To dance in step, in truest time
credits
from The Highway Moves the World,
track released June 9, 2022
Jesse James DeConto- acoustic & electric guitars
Scott McFarlane - drums
Jonathan DePue - bass
Garrett Langebartels - electric guitar
David Wimbish - audio production
Adam Gonsalves/Telegraph - mastering
Alex Dar - cover art
Words seem too simple to describe the energy and joy and humanity of this music and these people ... there's just life in it, is all we can say. The Pinkerton Raid
Sean is a provocateur and an entertainer -- he recalls Dylan's later flamboyance, Bowie's baritone, Prince's musicianship. There's just so much good and beautiful in what he does. The Pinkerton Raid
Wonderful... some of Hiatt's best songs are here. I've been a fan since Riding with the King. This is gloriously played, too. What a band. anthonytoner
Elizabeth Morris of Allo Darlin’ returns with a new group! “Winter Sun” is a tender blend of pastoral folk and diary-like lyrics. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 8, 2019
