J. Edgar Hoover - Deep Dark Secrets

I’ve written only three “important” songs. What I mean is, in thirty years of songwriting, only three of my precious creative brainchildren might make a person stop and think about something they weren’t already thinking about — something important — in ways they might not otherwise think. They are “Thoughts and Prayers” (gun violence), “A Song About This” (racism), and “J. Edgar Hoover” (gay & lesbian dignity).

These songs all came within the last three years, which means it took me a quarter century to write with such overt purpose effectively. Curious, indeed. It isn’t that I never had such axes to grind. It isn’t that I lacked empathy or conviction. I was a young, passionate activist just like the rest of my musicky peers. But I instinctively shied away from what I dismissed as “message” songs, because I wasn’t good at them. I was too unsure. Unsure of my motives. Too much ego, perhaps, and no small amount of cowardice.

Now that I’ve gotten a taste of doing it fairly well, wiser, more sure of myself, I want to do it all the time. (I’m working now on a song about grief.)

“J. Edgar Hoover” is privately my fave track off of The Beast Is Back. A rare joyful Shipe tune, it was a catharsis to write, perform, and record. If I can get away with delivering a line like “the burden gets lighter, and the love grows brighter,” it means that my skills were honed. It also means that I am willing to stick my neck out and be vulnerable. Not so ironically, that is precisely what the song is about — closet-cleaning, risking disclosure & exposure, and letting it all hang out.

I was delighted when my friend Forrest Brinkman decided to do an ad video for the song. I regretted not releasing it as the single. (Producer Tyler Fortier in his brilliance, tapped into my 80’s pedigree and gave it a young, vibrant sound. And Katie says it takes ten years off my age.)

Forrest relayed some golden feedback he’d gotten from a friend: “That song could keep a life alive.” This is the best thing said about anything I’ve done in music, because the ethos that went into that song kept my life alive. Nothing feels so satisfying as knowing that a human person has gotten out of a song what you put into it.

This all has something to do with addiction recovery: I’ve been saying, “The things you do in recovery are the same things you do to become a good artist.” Recovery requires brutally honest self-reflection and reckoning. Along the way, I had become rather obsessed with the damage done to the psyche by the keeping of secrets. The Jungian “shadow self.” The wasted energy in always hiding that which does not need to be hidden. And, conversely, the subsequent liberation and clarity that comes from bringing things out into the light.

They say that I have written too many sad songs, not enough of happy songs. Guilty. But this had little to do with me being “sad all the time.” I’m a pretty optimistic guy, warm to the touch. Nevertheless, I confess to a lot more “Good Friday” than “Easter Sunday” in my work. (And God only knows what goes on during that blacked-out Saturday in between.) Even my positive, affirming, celebratory songs are set starkly against some prior frustration and darkness. But for this “J. Edgar” song, inspired by the heroics of Billie Jean King, and the anti-heroics of J. Edgar Hoover & Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, I couldn’t help going all in with Light & Hope — for the the first time in the history of every single song I’ve ever written. (Even those latter dubious gentlemen in their meanness & shame could not escape my affection.)

It’s all just so much fear that keeps people in their unhappiness, keeps them from free expression.