I wrote the first verses of this song years ago. It had a lot of different iterations; I remember covering many different subjects in my diary through the verses. I had the chorus for this song, different to the one you're hearing, but it just didn't have the heart - and I felt like this song always was going to be about speaking up, about protecting our freedoms. My great grandfather was a Dutch dentist under Nazi rule and hid a Jewish family and an American pilot in his attic. He got killed for doing so. Like my Dad says - I hope I could be that brave in order to fight for freedom. So I figure the least I can do is speak up when I feel like it's time to bring light to a subject of importance.
The rest of this song fell into my hands in a hotel room, on one of the last days of 2019. I was touring New Zealand, and the fires in Australia were just on a whole other level. And that combined with some personal stuff just led to me playing my guitar alone in my hotel room, trying to sing through the tears. Just that feeling of; what can I do? What do we do? How can we see eye-to-eye on things as so many different people ? And that's when the rest of the song just poured out.
I finished the song and asked if Paulie B - who I worked with on my first album - had some free dates in the following week. And he did. I asked The Dreggs - a fantastic acoustic duo - to come jam the song before recording, and that happened super naturally. So we all went to studio at 3pm one day, and left the next day at 8pm with the song finished. Nothing was forced or rushed and that's what I think is really special about this track, it truly just came together in the sweetest way.
This song isn't just about the fires. It isn't just about the irresponsibility of our governing body giving mining companies access to our limited drinking water. And it isn't just about Australia. It is most importantly about putting fear aside and coming together. It is about freedom of speech, our freedom to protest, about our freedom to tell the truth: our freedom to ask questions. And what has been overwhelmingly obvious is when my country was on fire people used their differences to help each other. And we as the people of the world need to understand and continue to grow a sense of unity in a time when we are encouraged now more than ever to be fearful of these differences. Deep down, many of our underlying fundamental values are exactly the same - and these are the ones we are coming together to protect for our next generations.