Bill See - Bow to No One (2025)

Tracklist

01. The Heart Survives
02. Tell Me the Mystery
03. Under the Influence of R.E.M.
04. Rock and Roll Salvation
05. To the Outsiders
06. The Boat Trip
07. Light Up the Darkness
08. Willie Says
09. I'm Still Your Man
10. Dream New Dreams (Back to the Garden)

Author, musician Bill See will release Bow to No One, his first solo record in over a decade. The record speaks to the troubling moment America finds itself in 2025 with the kind of heart on the sleeve idealism that made his band Divine Weeks one of the great woulda-coulda bands of the late 80s and early 90s (per All Music Guide) and the LA Times called one of the top 10 bands in the city.
It's been a circuitous route back to making a solo record for See after spending the last 15 years publishing two books (memoir 33 Days: Touring in a Van, Sleeping on Floors, Chasing a Dream and the fictional Everything That Came Before Grace) - not to mention tying a bow on Divine Weeks' career with 2018's We're All We Have which Variety called one of the year's 10 best.
However, during Covid, he'd convinced himself he was done with music and music was done with him, but while watching his childhood home burn down during the recent L.A. fires something was awakened and songs started pouring out - all driven by acoustic guitars - but the record is decidedly not for campfire singalongs. He calls it, folk rogue. I like the idea of what The Alarm did on their first EP - kinda like early Bob Dylan with The Clash backing him but with only acoustic guitars.
After the self-declarative opening track, The Heart Survives, Tell Me the Mystery roars out, an angry conversation with God (you've got a lot of explaining to do 'bout who lives and dies) while To The Outsiders muses on what really imbued the American dream: mythic heroes like Woody Guthrie to literary underdogs like Boo Radley and Lenny Small to the forgotten idealists like Phil Ochs and Abby Hoffman. Got that haunting feeling something crucial's been lost, too many got trampled over, at too great a cost, it laments.

' Bow to No One is not so much a protest record against Trump's America but about waking up in the middle of your life and realizing your days are numbered but maybe that's not such a bad thing. We could all use a sobering reminder, he explains, that you better get busy doing the thing you're meant to do because nothing's guaranteed anymore. Not old age and not democracy either. You gotta keep fighting for what you believe. A lot of the songs talk about there's marching to be done. Because if ever there was a time, it's now. You gotta lead yourself. Don't wait around for Gods or false idols to give you direction. When the real world stops making sense, dream one up you'd wanna live in. Go back to the garden and dream new dreams.

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